Weeks after New Zealand’s Abuse in Care inquiry findings were laid bare, the country’s only child safeguarding charity is calling for an overhaul of the Children’s Act, saying current legislation is failing vulnerable tamariki.

Parliament’s Social Services and Community Committee today heard from Safeguarding Children CEO Willow Duffy about changes required to the Children’s Act 2014 to protect children from abuse.

Safeguarding Children, established in 2011, has been advocating for change in legislation for many years. It is made up of people with frontline experience, such as social workers, nurses and police.

Today, Duffy told the Committee the Children’s Act is a weak, forgotten piece of legislation that repeatedly exposes children to risk.

“When we take our children to sport, youth groups, or perhaps to private music or math lessons, we would assume the people looking after them have undergone a safety check. Sadly, that’s not always the case,” says Duffy.

Currently, there is no legal requirement in the Children’s Act for volunteers working with children to undergo a police check. There is also no legal requirement to police vet employees of non-government funded organisations or private businesses that provide services to children.

“That means most volunteers and many others who work with children are not legally required to undergo safety checks, despite the potential for them to engage in unsupervised, one-on-one contact with children,” says Duffy.

As part of Safeguarding Children’s oral submission to the Committee, Duffy, who has worked in child abuse prevention for 20 years, outlined four asks of the government – all of which hinge on reforming the Children’s Act.

“We want legislation that requires anyone working or volunteering with tamariki and rangatahi to be safely recruited to ensure our children are safe and receive the same standards of care wherever they go.”

Ensuring organisations are child-safe is another focus area, says Duffy. Currently, privately funded organisations are not legally required to have child-safeguarding policies in place. There also is no protection afforded to whistleblowers who know or suspect abuse is occurring.

Duffy says the findings recently made public by The Abuse in Care, Royal Commission of Inquiry shows Aotearoa has one of the worst records of child abuse in the world.

“Disturbingly, organisational child abuse by those in positions of trust and power continues to occur at an unacceptable rate across our country, in faith-based institutions and state care settings but also in other settings. This abuse is carried out by people who are entrusted with the care and development of children.

“We have to fix our broken child protection systems. New Zealand children, parents and carers deserve better.”

Safeguarding Children’s four asks of the Government are:

1. A demand for child-safe organisations, with child-safe standards embedded in legislation.
2. Mandatory safety checks, including police vetting for everyone working or volunteering with children.
3. To link whistleblower policies to independent reporting bodies.
4. Mandatory safeguarding and child-protection training.

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