May 19, 2015
All-Pakeha CYFS review flawed
Manurewa MP Louisa Wall says a review of Child Youth and Family is fundamentally flawed because it does not include any Maori.
The review is chaired by former Commerce Commission head and includes police commissioner Mike Bush, the Social Development Ministry's chief science advisor Ritchie Poulton, former maori party chief of staff Helen Leahy and Duncan Dunlop, who heads a children's advocacy charity in Scotland.
Ms Wall says more than 2000 Maori children are in CYFS care, or 56 percent of the total.
That means an independent Maori perspective is critical to any reform.
"It's within these institutions that racism exists and it's these institutions that are failing our children. If non-Maori are going to oversee a system and create and refine it I think that actually it won't meet the needs of our people and particularly our kids," she says.
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