Thursday, December 23, 2010

Odd. Most odd.

The Ministry of Social Development, on behalf of CYF, are acting as a collection agency for the unnamed 9 year-old abuse victim. They have set up a trust fund (inferred) and are advising people who want to give gifts, to drop them at their local CYF office.

Am I churlish or cynical or just plain curious about this exercise?

It is a first in my experience.

The appraisals of CYF'S role in what occurred have ranged from slightly critical to thoroughly damning. Personally I prefer to sheet the blame back to the culprits. If we didn't have so many poor excuses for parents there would, after all, be no CYF.

But is this initiative a face-saving effort? Is it 'appropriate' for an agency that has arguably failed this child already, to assume the public will want to entrust to it gifts and money that will supposedly make her once again feel "special and cared for"?

Perhaps it is entirely consistent for the primary public agency tasked with protecting the safety of children to channel the inevitable public expression of sympathy when it has been unable to fulfil that charge.

In which case, what about all the other victims of abuse?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it's just the height of hypocrisy, especially when the horse has bolted, and CYFS helped to cause the problem. People are shocked by this case, and rightly so. But will anything change anytime soon? Not unless the govt does a mental overturn. Not likely. Socialists, the lot of them.

Anonymous said...

What angers me is the claim that child abuse is everyone's problem. When I can't effect any change in government welfare policy, I don't see why I should charged with being responsible for the problem.

Gloria

ZenTiger said...

Good questions to ask. I think this is beyond the role of MSD, and they could easily have acted as a facilitator or broker to an abuse charity that would make use of the excess donations.

Since they've started though, they might also want to set up a trust fund that could fund a campaign to reinstate the death sentence.

Anonymous said...

There are so many things wrong with the way CYF's has handled the case (and a large number of other cases). It's also concerning that a number of other agencies were involved but missed the abuse and/or ignored the obvious signs.

Some people will say that CYF's are understaffed and need more money themselves. I think the problems are much more deep-rooted than this, and stem back to how they operate. If they dealt properly with problem cases in the first place they wouldn't blow up (which results in a lot of additional staff time). With complex cases they need senior social workers involved or at least closely monitoring the situation. And they need to be more mindful that some abusers can be excellent liars, and not believe everything they hear.

The sad thing is that I can't see things changing any time soon. I don't hold out much hope in any review. How many more children will suffer and die in the meantime?

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