Child abuse prevention charity says banning abusers from parenthood is an unnecessary step

A Christchurch-based charity dedicated to preventing child abuse says the government should fully consider and invest in alternatives before implementing measures to ban abusive or neglectful parents from having children.

Chair of the Family Help Trust, Dr Annabel Taylor, said the drastic measures suggested are not an acceptable solution when intensive work with such parents has been shown to work.

“Suggestions that it is OK for us as a society to use the courts to remove the right of some to have children are problematic and defeatist. Do we actually and officially want to give up on people to such an extent and deem them totally incapable of change? That is the basis of these suggestions. When there are other approaches that have been proven to work, for more than 20 years, proceeding with such a drastic alternative is not acceptable,” she said.

The Minister of Social Development is reported today to have said that the government may introduce court-ordered sanctions to stop parents who have abused or killed a child from having more children. Dr Taylor said the Family Help Trust works with such people, and others from families facing multiple problems, to become effective parents.

“On in excess of 1000 cases over more than 20 years we have some amazing success stories with these families. We have shown via independent evaluation that it is possible for people to turn their lives around and become effective parents, even from the most hopeless of backgrounds. It is not easy, but it can be done, and with proven systems in place, in the hands of highly skilled social workers, it is possible to help even those parents in the most challenging circumstances. That has to be a better way than banning people from becoming parents,” she said.

The Family Help Trust is a Christchurch based charity that employs a team of seven skilled social workers. Supported by a mix of grants, charitable donations, corporate sponsorship and some Ministry of Social Development funding, it provides a long term early intervention home visitation programme in the homes of Canterbury infants at the greatest risk of child abuse, working with their parents to address the causes of family dysfunction.

Dr Taylor says legal sanctions to prevent parenthood are unnecessarily harsh, when less severe measures will prevent child abuse and neglect.

“Better resourcing programmes that are proven to help socially deprived families is more effective and morally acceptable than courts sanctioning individuals against parenthood.

“There are also other relatively simple and inexpensive measures that could be developed to help rectify New Zealand’s woeful child abuse statistics.

“All parents require support to bring up their children effectively. For some, because of their background, that need is greater and more complex than what most of us experience. Such people invariably want to be good parents, though they lack the skills to do so. Rather than banning them from parenthood, we need to look after them and work with them more effectively.

“Under the government’s green paper published last year, there is already an opportunity to improve information sharing on high risk mothers in the category the Minister refers to. A first step would be to have an alert system for pregnant women who have killed, seriously abused or neglected children, and others with similar backgrounds. Our approach would be to assess carefully each situation in terms of safety and then work intensively with mother, baby and the wider whanau to ensure ongoing safety.

“There are a number of human rights issues here, as well as those around the biological capacity to have children. If there are no community measures to support parents who most require that acute support, that is a human right as well,” she said.

In an average year 10 New Zealand children die at the hands of family members. Families most likely to kill their children are beset by poverty, crime, fragile mental health, unemployment, lack of education, poor housing, drug abuse, and histories of violence and victimisation.

Around two per cent of the New Zealand population, or approximately 80,000 people, is estimated to fall into this ‘too hard basket,’ facing multiple and complex personal problems that hinder them from being effective parents.

ENDS

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