A damning report on Child, Youth and Family says children in state care are being moved up to 60 times between multiple foster carers because the agency is not giving enough attention to their long-term care.
The report by Children's Commissioner Russell Wills, the first of what he plans as annual reports on Child, Youth and Family, also reveals that 117 children were abused last year while in CYF care.
It says the agency is focused on "front-end" investigations as it struggles with 150,000 notifications of possible child abuse or neglect each year, but does not provide enough ongoing supervision and support to foster carers and staff looking after 5133 children in state care.
"While the quality of front-end social work practice we observed was generally high, this was not the case for 'back-end' practices, ie, the services that CYF provides to children following initial assessments and investigations," the report says.
"Ineffective case management can lead to care placements breaking down and children having to move ... we heard of children who had had upwards of 20, 40 and in one case over 60 care placements in their short lives. This is not acceptable."
The report says there were 88 cases of substantiated abuse of children by CYF caregivers in 2013-14, plus 25 of children abused while with their parents but still formally in state care, and five abused in unapproved placements.
These figures are much higher than the 23 to 39 children a year abused by caregivers reported by the agency itself in the past four years.
Dr Wills' report says CYF has difficulty recruiting and retaining staff, employs many casual workers in its residences, and staff are "insufficiently trained and supported".
"Inconsistent management of young people results in young people acting out, sometimes aggressively," it says.
Two-thirds of the children told Dr Wills' team they were happy with how much contact they had with their families. But a third were unhappy.
"I'm one of four but I've never met my siblings. We were separated at birth. They won't introduce you," one young person said.
Maori make up a growing share of all children in care, up from 52% in 2010 to 58%, including 68% of young people in the nine CYF residences, compared with 24% of all children under 15. But only 23 to 24% of CYF staff since 2006 self-identified as Maori.
The report adds only 20% of young people in state care, and just 15 per cent of Maori in care, left school with at least NCEA level 2 in 2012. The national average is 75%. It says 30% of the children in care aged 14 to 16 were charged with offences last year, compared with 1% of that age nationally.
"It is not uncommon for a young person leaving care to quickly end up homeless, jobless and lacking support from a caring adult," it says. "Many will become parents themselves very young. Others end up in prison."
Dr Wills recommends setting targets for NCEA pass rates and other long-term outcomes, putting more resources into ongoing care, boosting staff training, setting up an independent advocacy service for children in care, prioritising Maori cultural capability and iwi links, and raising the care-leaving age from 17 to 18.
Report grim, but nothing new - minister
Social Development Minister Anne Tolley told Radio New Zealand this morning she thought the report was pretty grim, but it was nothing new.The majority of people in the prison system had been in the care of CYF, she said.
But attempts to improve the system in the past had been nothing more than "quick fixes" and a complete system overhaul was required, she said. "I'm absolutely determined that we will get a system that does put children at the heart of everything that they do."
She agreed with Morning Report presenter Guyon Espiner when he suggested she'd had seven years in power, yet the situation was getting worse. "That's why I'm leading a major overhaul."
However, Mrs Tolley said she did not want to fall into the trap of throwing more money at CYF and hoping its problems would go away.
She said she was fine with Dr Willis' recommendations and will take a paper to Cabinet next month with a business case developed by a panel led by economist Paula Rebstock to transform CYF from being focused on "transactions" such as investigations to being a "child-centred" agency.
"I'm expecting that the new system will require extra resources in there. We certainly have to lift the capability of our care placements and really get better support," Mrs Tolley said.
She said CYF had care agreements with five iwi, was about to start a six-month trial with Tainui, and was seeking deals with all other iwi.
CYF should be top priority - Labour
Labour's Jacinda Ardern also welcomed the recommendations and said her party had raised the leaving age to 18 in 2008 - a law reversed by National later that year.
Ms Ardern said the report painted a "terrible picture" of children in care, and fixing CYF should be a top priority for the Government.
"The minister was right to call for a review of CYFs through the expert advisory panel but she is wrong to imply that resources aren't part of the issue.
"This is a department that is doing its best. It is focused on the front end - getting kids out of immediate danger - but what happens to them next is dire. It has been described as 'dump and run'."
Ms Ardern pointed to the report's findings of limited resources and high caseloads, and said the expert advisory panel could not fix everything.
"This is undeniably a department that needs more than advice and recommendations, it needs cross government support. And so do the 5000 children they are caring for right now."
'Systemic issues'
Public Health Association chief executive Warren Lindberg welcomed the report, but said the focus should also be on the social issues that underlie why children are taken into care in the first place. He said the biggest challenge was for society to tackle those issues.
Conservative lobby group Family First responded to the report with a renewed call for an independent watchdog to monitor the policies, procedures and the resourcing of CYF.
"If CYF was a family, it would have had state intervention by now," national director Bob McCoskrie said. "Despite the important work it does and some excellent social workers, there is increasing evidence of massive systemic failure in the organisation as a whole."
Mr McCoskrie said CYF performed a necessary function but the lack of accountability to its process and procedures, and its overwhelming workload, should concern all families.
Unicef New Zealand national advocacy manager Deborah Morris-Travers said the report pointed to a range of systemic issues.
"It goes without saying that a child taken into state care should never be worse off as a result of that care. But ensuring the long-term wellbeing of children who may have been traumatised by abuse and neglect, or who have committed an offence, requires skilled, coordinated input by social workers, teachers, health professionals and others.
"The State of Care report suggests the state, as a 'corporate parent', is currently failing to provide this."
Ms Morris-Travers said that, in addition to the report's 53 recommendations, the Government needed to invest more in the Children's Commissioner to strengthen its monitoring of CYF.
"These issues are too important to be left to chance."
- Simon Collins of the New Zealand Herald and NZME. News Service
