News Jaya

CYF boss apologies after parents go public - not for wrongdoing, but because those his department hassled were "upset".

A parent tells how he smacked his child

"I grabbed hold of her ankle and smacked her bottom" Two of his fingers went above the line of her belt, leaving red marks on her back.The smack worked. She stopped kicking and was soon apologetic.But the mental health service was about to give her a full medical examination. Lisa told a nurse about the red marks and the smack.A few days later, at 3pm on a Friday, CYFS staff rang. They had received a claim of abuse and they wanted the children out of the house while they investigated.

The question is, was CYFS right in doing that. How did it know the red marks were caused by a smack?

It didn't.

The social worker described the situation at the time as "critical". Family First has this case up on its website - ['case 5] noting that the family were interviewed by the police for for five hours. The kids were removed, even though she was told that the marks were caused by the child falling on a vaccuum cleaner. On the Monday, CYFS spoke to the older daughter at school to find out how abusive her parents were and left her in tears. One wondered why they didn't speak to her on the Friday before she was told to get alternative accomodation.

But it took involvement from the media to get an apology from CYFS bosses. CYFS boss Ray Smith said CYFS could have done a better job of talking through other options". Like hell they could have. He didn't say what those other options might entail.

"I want to stress that removing children from a home is a last resort and that is not what happened in this case... I am sorry that the girls were upset and unsettled by our involvement with their family. I acknowledge that, in this case, we could have given [the parents] better advice on how to explain to their children what was happening." He said the parents were "good parents", but the agency had been "asked to get involved simply to see whether a family that appeared to be struggling needed our help".

What a load of crap. That is an outright lie. The parent said that the agency got involved not to offer help but to investigate the allegation of abuse and kick the children out as a first resort after a complaint, thus interfering with the lives of good Kiwi parents. Then he has the audacity to say in a column today that:

This does not mean that CYFS is interfering in the lives of good Kiwi parents.

But he has admitted CYFS did just that in the above case. The parents had no option but to accede to CYFS demands.

Since when is CYFS there to "help" parents on how to "explain what was happening" when they don't even listen to explanations as to what did happen?