FROM CANADA TO NEW ZEALAND

Committed to saving young lives

Crossing cultures
Paula Tyler, the new head of the Child
Youth and Family Services Department,
says there are similarities and differences
New Zealand and Canada
Phil Reid, The Dominion Post

Paula Tyler, the new Canadian chief executive of the troubled Child, Youth and Family Services Department, is not promising any miracles. Children will continue to die on her watch.

“There is no magic solution,” she says, two weeks into a job that at times seems like the public service equivalent of rugby's hospital pass. “There isn't a single child protection system in this world where children known to the system do not die.”

How, then, should her performance be measured? “By how many children live,” she responds without hesitation. Ms Tyler, 51, was headhunted from Edmonton, Alberta, where she had been head of the Children's Services Ministry since 1999. The former teacher replaces Jackie Pivac, who resigned as CYFS boss in November after another damning review of the department and widespread public concern over the death of Featherston schoolgirl Coral-Ellen Burrows, in which CYFS was revealed to have ignored calls from the murdered girl's father. The fact that there was an international search for a new CYFS boss and that it went to a foreigner who did not even know there was a vacancy till she was shoulder-tapped is a sure indication that not many locals wanted it or were not thought capable of handling it.

“Let me make it clear,” she says. “My view of this department is it's a department where we have a responsibility to respond to situations where young people have been put in peril by their families, not by government or anyone else. But we have to do the very best that we can to ensure those children are protected.”

New Zealand is about as remote from the prairie province of Alberta, population 3.1 million, as Ms Tyler could have come. The ministry she ran there was bigger than CYFS, handling such things as child disability services, daycare subsidies and family violence prevention programmes as well as CYFS-style child protection work. It did not have the youth justice work that CYFS handles. She sees Canada as a country with its own culture, trying to stand out from its dominant neighbour the United States, much as New Zealand has its own culture distinct from Australia's.

“The history and the peoples are very different. In Canada we still have many indigenous people resident on reserves which are poor – agriculturally poor – placed in remote areas to serve the purpose of the dominating culture.”

She appreciates how Maori culture infuses New Zealand society, adding that, though Maori children come before CYFS disproportionately, that is an issue for society as a whole.

“My experience in Canada has shown me that indigenous communities have exactly the same desire to look after their kids as everyone else does, but recognition of the culture and adaptation of the service is important. That does not mean standards have to be lowered.”

Basic human nature is the same the world over, she says. However, she would never assume to “transport a programme or approach holus bolus”. She cites the CYFS family group conference system for youth offenders as an example of a New Zealand idea that came out of the Maori culture, was adopted more broadly in New Zealand, then went to Canada, but not in exactly the same way as here. Ms Tyler does not believe everything is as grim as the news media paints it.

“There's always the perception that things are getting worse in the youth justice side, when in fact they're getting better. You do have through history the occasion where a young person will take a life. That's always been the case, it's not something new. That doesn't mean it's not serious and needs to be taken care of.”

She says young people get into crime through things that happen early in their lives, so a good early childhood and education are important. Many countries are moving toward early intervention programmes targeted at pre-schoolers.

“We know there is usually a gap between when a child is born and then enters formal education when we don't see much of the child. We don't know which families need help, which kids are being put at risk. These programmes provide some support for families at risk so they don't spiral out of control and arrive at school unaddressed.”

Put it to her that this sounds a bit like the Plunket home-visit system that has been wound back by budget cuts in the last decade and she says she doesn't know enough about what New Zealand does yet.

“Most families need very little support that they can't get through friends or their extended family. If I'm doing okay, quite frankly I don't want someone in my home on a regular basis. It's my job to raise my child.

“On the other hand, if I'm in a very risky situation, isolated from others and perhaps with a drug or alcohol problem and a young child, one of the things I really need is to have someone come in on a regular basis.

“With some families, problems are chronic, intergenerational, they need a huge amount of support. Some families periodically will need help in a crisis. Others will never need help.”

Ultimately, she says, the safety of children will not lie in departments or systems but in strong families and communities, and she wants CYFS to strengthen links with community services groups. She wants to look at a mentoring system that would match a family doing well with one that isn't, to provide parenting advice that does not come from social workers. She wants to make CYFS stronger and give it stability. “I wouldn't have taken this job unless I had a strong sense that I have strong government and administrative support. It takes time, but we'll get there.”

David Mcloughlin
18 August 2004

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3007110a1861,00.html

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