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Since all policies address problems, they necessarily include implicit or explicit constructions of these problems. This paper explores how child maltreatment has been constructed in New Zealand's child protection policies. It questions the underlying assumptions of this problem construction and seeks to shed light on what has been omitted. Utilizing a qualitative content analysis of eight key policy documents, this study reveals the construction of child maltreatment has been dominated primarily by a child-centric, risk-focused approach. This approach assigns blame and shifts responsibilities onto parents and families. In addition, the vulnerability discourse and social investment approach underpinning this perspective have allowed important structural factors, such as poverty and inequality, to remain unaddressed. This paper also highlights the one-dimensional focus on the lower social class to control future liabilities. We suggest that the harm inflicted by corporations on children's well-being is another form of child exploitation currently omitted from the problem construction. We suggest that child abuse should be defined and understood in policy as harm to children's well-being and argue that the state should prevent and mitigate harm by addressing structural forces of the problem as well as protecting children against corporate harms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Article 5 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises the importance of parents and wider family members in ensuring that children are given appropriate directions on their rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This paper analyses the wording of Article 5 and four New Zealand case studies to test the possible interpretations of Article 5. The paper builds on the work of Landsdown and Kamchedzera (Landsdown, 2005; Kamchedzera, 2012) who have done previous comprehensive analyses of the ambit and significance of the wording in Article 5. Article 5, like all international instruments, is not designed to provide prescriptive answers to challenging problems where there is a clash of which rights should prevail for children in particular situations. The central theme of this paper is that where there is a clash of a child's rights, the tiebreaker should be which right in the particular situation will best enhance the unique identity of a particular child. The paper draws on the work of Ronen (Ronen, 2004) which argues that the purpose of a child's rights framework is so the child can construct their individualised identity which is authentic and real for that particular child. The New Zealand case studies have been chosen to exemplify particular aspects of Article 5 and see how they are played out in particular court settings and whether the outcome enhances or inhibits the child's opportunity to develop their unique identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand is undergoing major change in service delivery to children and families. A new Ministry for Children Oranga Tamariki has been established to oversee 5 work streams, one of which provides intensive intervention with families requiring a statutory response to child protection concerns. The government minister responsible promised that the service would be child‐centred and trauma‐informed. To date, these terms remain undefined, and there is no shared understanding of their meaning. Practice frameworks to support the work of the new ministry are still being developed, creating something of a vacuum in the meantime. The focus of this paper is the challenge of implementing trauma‐informed practice in the child protection service provided by the Intensive Intervention work stream. Limited research or commentary on trauma‐informed practice in this context currently exists. Drawing on the relevant available literature, the concept and its application in child protection social work is explored. An ecological framework is used to discuss the changes needed to achieve this. Particular attention is paid to the impact of historical trauma for indigenous people due to New Zealand's colonial history and their over‐representation in care and protection services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The White Paper on Vulnerable Children before the Aotearoa/New Zealand parliament proposes changes that will significantly reconstruct the child welfare systems in this country, including the use of a predictive risk model (PRM). This article explores the ethics of this strategy in a child welfare context. Tensions exist, including significant ethical problems such as use of information without consent, breaches of privacy and stigmatisation, without clear evidence of the benefits outweighing these costs. Broader implicit assumptions about the causes of child abuse and risk and their intersections with wider discursive, political and systems design contexts are discussed. Drawing on Houston et al. (2010) this paper highlights the potential for a PRM to contribute to a neo-liberal agenda that individualises social problems, reifies risk and abuse, and narrowly prescribes service provision. However, with reference to child welfare and child protection orientations, the paper suggests more ethical ways of using the model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The mental health consumer movement initiated the development of the recovery approach, in which self-determination, human rights and the living of a hopeful life superseded merely symptom management for people living with mental illnesses and addictions. To what degree has this reimagined path to recovery shaped social work practice? In this paper we analyse the perspectives of eleven social workers doing child protection work in Aotearoa New Zealand. We examine also the accounts of thirteen parents living with mental illness or addiction who have been involved in child custody investigations in Aotearoa New Zealand. We ask whether the social workers understand recovery as possible for such parents, and if so, how they see it occurring. We found that there is a substantial difference between the way the social workers and the parents conceived of such ‘recovery’. While parents' descriptions of recovery reflected those of the mental health consumer movement, social workers tended to operate with a focus on clinical intervention, symptom and risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, child welfare services experience chronic workforce shortages and high rates of staff turnover. One strategy adopted to fill critical workforce gaps is the international recruitment of social workers. Child welfare employers in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have a shared tradition of recruiting transnational social workers to address ongoing labour shortages in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. This raises questions about the impact of this practice for those migrating social workers and about practice with indigenous populations. This paper scoped publications to identify emerging themes about social work movement between these countries, with a focus on knowledge that can prepare transnational social workers for the unique Australian context, including working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The review found that international recruitment to statutory child welfare in Australia is not well researched, with limited evidence about the profile of recruits, the effectiveness of this strategy and retention rates. The demographics and experiences of overseas qualified social workers in child welfare over the past 40 years in the various Australian jurisdictions remain relatively unknown. There are major gaps in knowledge about the ways international recruitment affects outcomes for children, and their families, in Australia's statutory child welfare services delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in English-speaking jurisdictions, including Australia, North America, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, about the prevention of sexual abuse perpetrated by children against other children. The aim of this review was to identify opportunities for research, policy and practice which could enhance the prevention agenda relating to the perpetration of sexual abuse by children through conducting a Critical Interpretive Synthesis. Eleven electronic databases were searched in the period from 22 April to 23 May 2013 and included: SocINDEX, Social Services Abstracts, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, Family and Society Studies Worldwide, Project Muse, PsychINFO, Family and Society Plus, Jstor, Expanded Academic ASAP, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Key individual journals were also searched, including Child Abuse and Neglect and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, as well as the grey literature. The search was guided by the research question: How could the prevention agenda relating to sexual abuse perpetrated by children be enhanced? The systematic literature search yielded 3323 titles, and 34 of these papers were included in the final synthesis. The authors identified five domains operating in the evidence base: characteristics, causes, communications, interventions and treatments. A synthesising construct emerged from the review: prevention-enhancing interactions. This construct referred to the potential for enhancing the prevention agenda which exists as the evidence domains interact with one another, and with the public health model of prevention. The authors consider this review to be a timely contribution to the current agenda pertaining to sexual abuse perpetrated by children. It provides researchers, policy makers and practitioners in the field with an evidence-informed conceptualisation of opportunities for enhancing prevention work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to protection orders for women experiencing domestic violence has recently been identified as a problem in New Zealand, and ways of addressing this problem are now being developed. Police-initiated protection orders, called safety orders, have been proposed to provide immediate protection to women who experience domestic violence and to overcome some of the evidential difficulties that can arise through representation in the Family Court. This discussion paper was commissioned to provide a review of the literature relating to safety orders. The paper uses a conceptual framework to identify the implicit assumptions associated with safety orders initiated by the police, and then compares these assumptions with the relevant research findings relating to police interventions, the actions women take to protect themselves and the court's responses to breaches of protection orders. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the ongoing need for education of the police and court personnel, and the need for compassionate involvement of women and their advocates in new initiatives. Research is encouraged when new initiatives are under development in this area to detect unintended consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the concepts underpinning the reasoning processes of social worker's decision‐making provides important insights into how social work practice is undertaken. This paper examines one of the major discourses used by social workers in decision reasoning in a non‐governmental organization child protection context in Aotearoa/New Zealand: family maintenance. This study found that family maintenance as a concept was strongly privileged by social workers. This resulted in attempts to preserve families and created a hierarchy of preferred decision outcomes. A preference for family maintenance was supported by legal, moral, psychological and Māori cultural concepts. This pattern of constructs underpinned the ‘weighing up of harms’ when considering removal, and generally reflected a child welfare orientation. In addition to this, it was found that ‘family’ was broadly defined, and could include people who had a relationship with the children, or Māori definitions of extended family, in addition to legal ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about how mental health services consider the parenting role and the well‐being of children when assessing parents with acute mental illness. This paper investigated how crisis mental health services addressed child well‐being in the Wellington region, New Zealand. This mixed‐method case study included: (i) an audit of the electronic clinical records of all adults presenting to the crisis assessment team; (ii) interviews with 22 key informants; and (iii) a documentary review. We found that data about children were not systematically collected. Less than half of (49 of the 104) the records of patients who were parents included information on their child's well‐being; only six (6%) contained a specified plan for action. The focus for services was the adult patient. Key informants were unclear about their role. They identified inadequate training and institutional support, inflexible funding models and limited availability or inappropriateness of referral services as problems. They saw a need for children to become more visible, for collaborative working to improve the use of existing services and for new funding models, resources and roles. Existing national policy documents contained little guidance and no practice guidelines were in use. These were lost opportunities to improve support for the parenting role and promote child well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the qualitative phase of a New Zealand study of young people who had been exposed to "risky" environments from a young age. These young people had experienced traumatic events such as abuse, violence, addictions, mental health issues, and many had been excluded from school. The young people (aged between 13 and 17) were users of multiple services (statutory and nongovernmental services including: child welfare, juvenile justice, remedial education, and mental health services). Qualitative interviews (n = 109) explored young people's experiences in their families, communities, education, and their perspectives on support provided by services and their own support networks. Three thematic clusters emerged as central motifs in young people's experiences and are the focus of this article: navigating "risky" environments; services and support; and, working to find different pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the findings of the qualitative phase of a New Zealand longitudinal study on vulnerable young people’s transitions to adulthood. The young people were aged between 12 and 17 years at the time of the first interview. The paper focuses on one key finding, how youth enact agency through their relationships with significant others: families, social workers, teachers and care workers. These youth had experienced sustained exposure to harm including abuse, violence, addictions, disengagement from school and mental health issues. The qualitative interviews focused on young people’s experiences with services (child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and education support services) their key transitions, and the strategies they used to locate support and resources. The thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that a search for agency was a central motif in young people’s experiences. This was reflected in three thematic clusters: making sense of the world, having a voice and acting on the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and contrasts child death review (CDR) structures and processes in six countries - Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, England and Wales. It presents findings from a comparative study based on analysis of data from 18 case studies. Data were collected through a combination of documentary analysis, interviews and observations. The study found that CDR processes vary according to: where the function is located and whether review is undertaken at state, local or national level; whether review is rooted in legislation; the focus of review; whether dedicated funding is provided; whether families are involved in the process; and whether structures are supported by useful data systems. It was not possible to evaluate the effectiveness of different review systems but the findings suggest that structure makes little difference in terms of determining the extent to which CDR findings inform prevention effort and activity. While factors such as lack of funding, lack of national data, or lack of legislation may hinder the work of CDR teams, CDR findings have informed prevention initiatives despite such barriers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Messages Standardisation and aggregation of data at national or state level are crucial for effective CDR., A model of individual review, cross-case review and themed review can result in real learning and practice change., A public health model of CDR offers the most potential in terms of prevention., Families can contribute key information but participation must be managed sensitively and take account of cultural issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, engaging families in decision-making has grown in popularity across child welfare systems internationally. The family group conference in particular has generated interest as a practice model that facilitates broader family engagement in care and protection. As the practice has flourished, research has been undertaken to strengthen the knowledge base and to support the introduction of family engagement strategies across jurisdictions. This paper examines the recent research relating to family engagement strategies in child welfare and explores the ways in which family involvement in decision-making can be incorporated into emerging protective practices. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper which discusses, issues related to relocation disputes in New Zealand and England that were presented during the Law Faculty Seminar at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand. It notes the deviation of New Zealand courts from the English approach on the basis that it proceeded on a flawed interpretation of the welfare of children. It depicts the development of relocation law in New Zealand and in England, citing the similarities and differences at various periods.

Broad international comparisons of paid parental leave often leave New Zealand's policies looking less than adequate. This paper compares current policies in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The extent to which either country has been able to implement maternity and parental leave policies has been comparatively limited, but the UK's relationship with the European Union has led to more comprehensive policies than those found in New Zealand. New Zealand will not be forced to comply with a regional or international standard, and it is unclear if there is sufficient momentum for change without such compulsion. However, the UK experience has demonstrated that these types of policies are certainly feasible within the context of the "liberal" welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the extent to which New Zealand children have benefited from New Right economic policies and argues that the invisibility of children, the role of public concern about children and the social construction of childhood are factors which have facilitated implementation of these changes. Attention is drawn to the ways in which the personal and the political spheres intersect in children's lives. Rather than focusing on either the micro level of intervention in the lives of individual children or the macro level of societal change it is argued that the dualism itself must be transcended in order to move forward from the current position. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julian Le Grand has argued that a key component of welfare reform involves changes in the assumptions about human behaviour which are embedded in social policies. Policy assumptions have been transformed from espousing a belief that social service providers act as well-intentioned knights and recipients as passive pawns, to a stance in which all participants are regarded as self-seeking knaves. These ideas are particularly pertinent to policy developments concerning financial obligations for children, and this paper examines these issues in relation to child support policy in New Zealand. It highlights the evident and inevitable failure of this policy to meet its primary stated aim of revenue generation. In New Zealand this failure is compounded by the creation of parallel systems for dealing with children and families, one for financial obligations and the other for care and development, which are founded on diametrically opposed assumptions about human behaviour and capabilities. This confusion is symptomatic of a wider failure in government policy towards families in New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the author's opinion on the article Choosing Between Child Protection Programmes by Freda Briggs and Russell Hawkins which appeared in the 1994 issue of Child Abuse Review. Only three statements in the Briggs and Hawkins' paper are surprising. There are now child protection programmes in most western countries. As might be expected, each programme is claimed by its creator to be unique and superior to all other existing programmes. The reality is that no one knows for certain if these programmes are helping to reduce the incidence of abuse. Children have the right to information which might keep them safe and the best way to teach them is with age-appropriate material presented through teacher commitment and parental support. It was therefore no surprise that Briggs and Hawkins found that the New Zealand programme was more effective because of the teacher commitment, parental support and age-appropriate material. The most important conclusions of the article are that child protection programmes appear to be most effective when they are designed for a particular culture, are part of a curriculum, develop children's self-esteem and are adopted by the entire school. Messages about preventative strategies for children need to be reinforced by a variety of approaches.