environment

Opinion

A socially toxic environment

More and more parents are becoming convinced New Zealand is not the great place to bring up kids it used to be

It’s axiomatic that children are a country’s future. Their well being decides the health and prosperity of a nation in the years ahead.

So it’s come as a bit of a shock to New Zealanders to learn that all is not well with their youngsters.

This is especially true for the Maori and Pacific island communities which have higher proportions of children than the general population. The number of Maori kids under 15, for instance, represents 44 percent of the race, while Pacific island youngsters in the same age group account for 38.5 percent of their community - compared with 23 per cent for the population as a whole.

With the number of under-15s projected to rise until the year 2001, it’s clear from the figures that the health and welfare of these youngsters will have a significant impact on the well being of the Maori and Pacific island populations for some time to come.

At the moment, indications are not good for many children in New Zealand.

Laurie O’Reilly, the Commissioner of Children, goes so far as to say: “No longer can we see New Zealand as a safe place for children and families.”

He talks about the country heading towards a “socially toxic environment”, and if that’s true for the population as a whole, it’s even more so for Maori and Pacific island people who have larger families than Pakeha and figure disproportionately in the lower income groups.

Some statistics compiled by the United Nations Children’s Fund show what O’Reilly means by a “socially toxic environment”.

New Zealand has the highest rate of youth suicides in the industrialised world and the sixth highest infant death rate from child abuse. It also has the second highest percentage of single-parent families, a condition UNICEF describes as

having a “close and consistent connection in all industrialised nations”, with kids growing up in poverty, A Department of Social Welfare study showed three out of four of New Zealand’s single-parent families were in the bottom 20 percent of the nation’s income-earners.

Th at group included four out of 10 Maori and Pacific island families and a study on child poverty said there was clear evidence of a correlation between l° w income and increased family stress, P oor child health and disrupted educa hon.

All the signs are that things are getting worse. Notifications of child abuse, neglect and behavioural problems to the Social Welfare Department rose from 7500 a year in the mid-1980s to 25,000 in 1992 and more than 30,500 last year, Police investigated 272 cases of chil clren under 14 being left alone in 1994, a n se °f 154 percent on the previous year.

T hey weren’t merely cases of parents g° in g to the movies or the pub for the ni B ht some had gone to Australia on

holiday.

There is evidence of serious levels of family violence, and 50 percent of moth ers anb children admitted to women’s refuges are Maori, with another 10 per cent Pacific Islanders, New Zealand’s children are not just vic t'ms °f violence but are increasingly

becoming perpetrators. Shocking police

figures show kids under 14 committed 930 violent crimes last year - 90 of them b Y youngsters under 10.

Total offences by under-14-year-olds

exceeded 13,400, prompting the govern ment to consider changing the law that sa Y s children under 10 cannot be charged wit h a crime and those between 10 and 13 can face only murder and manslaugh

ter charges.

Public demand for a change had been

fanned by the case of a 13-year-old boy who raped girls aged eight and six. Police said they were powerless to do anything about him.

Community workers blame cuts in social welfare benefits that year, which they say provoked an increase in family poverty, for the worsening plight of the nation’s kids. There is little doubt that cuts had an effect. The government’s own figures show nearly 262,000 children lived in households dependent on bene fits at the end of June last year, two-thirds of them with sole parents - and these are predominantly Maori or Pacific Islanders.

A Department of Social Welfare study conducted last year found 365 charity food banks had been set up around the country, about a fifth of them in the pre vious 12 months. It estimated they were distributing more than 40,000 food parcels a month to families. That is over 1300 a day, a shocking indictment on a developed country. The report noted that “Maori and Pacific island people are con siderably over-represented among food bank users”, even while observing many were reluctant to use them because of the “barriers of shame and stigma associated with seeking charitable aid”.

The Salvation Army reported that the number of people it provided with food parcels had jumped from 2124 in the first quarter of 1991 (before the April 1 bene fit cuts) to 10,261 in the same period the following year. By the first three months of 1994 it had jumped further to 14,900.

The government insists there is no need for families to be desperate or their children hungry, saying child support, allowances and supplementary payment programmes are adequate.

Many Mums and Dads are not con vinced and it’s certainly doubtful whether New Zealand in 1995 is the “great place to bring up kids” it always used to be.

From

David Barber

in Wellington