The women’s refuges in the news; And the funding crisis
I have often found it hard to believe women’s refuges would stand and say, “Women are only victims” because women’s refuges often take in women who are part of the problem. They work closely with CYFS and I have known of board members being on both boards.
Sometimes women’s refuges take children away from the mothers and place them in CYFS care. In more recent years women’s refuges have made programmes that mothers must attend to help them be better parents. The refuges are consistent in putting the needs of the child as important and sometimes they even ask the father to take custody of the children.
Mothers are also referred to addiction centres for treatment (when needed) and some programmes allow the mothers to keep their children while in treatment. These programmes have been funded through women’s government spending plus other donations from business and even judges. These programmes are also available to fathers and their children. Both sexes can share the facilities in programmes well developed.
Always there is discussion between organisations as how best to deal with family problems and research, networking + programmes is seen as a positive way forward.
In one day we have 2 spokespersons for women’s refuges in the news. One is for damage done to the refuge ……
“Someone has come in and turned the fire hose on full bore.
“We think it may have been an act of revenge by a woman who stayed here last week.
“We make no apologies that when women stay here they have to join our programmes about the care and protection of their children.
“Some women we have to tell to help themselves so they can help their children.”
And the other is over the murder of three-year-old Nia Glassie.
Rotorua leader Merepeka Raukawa-Tate said: “Maori women in particular need to look at who they are spending their days with, who they are sleeping with. Some lead crap lives, are crap parents and are with crap partners.”
I have heard from refuge leaders, menz groups are also part of the solution.
CYFS has connected with men’s groups especially for funding towards aiding male youth and safe houses for men have opened in the past few years which take referrals from the police and other organisations.
A problem shared is a problem halved and I think that even though we have had decades of bias towards men and fathers, men and women need to bond together to come up with the answers and implement the solution.
Times are tough with the crisis of the economy and our new government is looking to cut costs where they can. One of these areas is prison where males are the greater amount of inmates. The women’s prisons have already been upgraded while the menz are in the process. So it is the menz who will miss out.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins has slammed the “extravagance” of the previous Government’s prison building programme and is looking at using pre-fabricated modular units to slash construction costs by more than half.
As an example of Labour’s extravagant spending, she cited the $380 million Spring Hill Corrections Facility in the Waikato which worked out at around $660,000 per cell to build once all costs were taken into account.
“You can buy two houses for that. You’ve got to do better than that.
Another area to receive funding cuts will be the community sector. The law centres are just one area cuts will be made.
There is a funding crisis looming at 27 community law centres across the country: the government is cutting funding by 44 per cent across the board in the year ahead.
The women’s groups will most likely fight to keep funding coming into the community for women and children as they are in the UK.
Councils face legal threat over ‘failures to help women suffering rape and domestic violence’
More than 100 local authorities are to be threatened with legal action over claims they have failed to provide specialised services to women victims of rape, domestic violence and abuse.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said it will write to the targeted authorities within a month asking them to explain why they were not providing adequate services, as required by law, and will take further action against those failing to give a satisfactory response.
‘This is a call to action for everybody who cares about this issue, and a firm reminder for those in local and national Government with the power to make a difference.
‘But for those councils who continue to ignore the dire need to shore up services and plug the gaps, we also have a stark reminder – the commission is ready and willing to use its enforcement powers.’
It would also be in men’s interest to pressure leaders to keep men’s issues at the community level alive and well.
Julie- The word MENZ is the name of this website, and is owned by John Potter.
The plural of men is men’s, as in men’s groups.
you say-
“CYFS has connected with men’s groups especially for funding towards aiding male youth and safe houses for men have opened in the past few years which take referrals from the police and other organisations.”
Could you give some examples- as we have not heard of any, CYFS still maintain a stony indifference to fathers, and curl up like a snail with salt on it’s tail when men’s groups are mentioned.
Comment by John Brett — Thu 5th February 2009 @ 8:46 am
John, could you rephrase your question.
Fathers and aid for male youth are not the same. I wouldn’t even say mothers are supported by CYFS. It would be a conflict of interest.
And of course as organisations build safe houses for men they will be used.
Comment by julie — Thu 5th February 2009 @ 9:51 am
Hi Julie
What part of my reply did you not understand?
I asked ‘What men’s groups have CYPS contacted about for funding towards aiding male youth and safe houses for men have opened in the past few years which take referrals from the police and other organisations.’
As for CYPS supporting mothers, I have experience of CYPS actively supporting mothers to get custody of children, and assisting mothers to write allegations and gain protection orders even when there is no justification.
I have experience of CYPS actively supporting mothers, and refusing to even talk to fahters. Why do you think that a little thing such as conflict of interest would worry them?
Regards
John
Comment by John Brett — Thu 5th February 2009 @ 4:46 pm
Julie, Hi
In the past I too thought Women’s Refuge was doing a great job of helping women in need.
I thought their mission was a noble one. Not any more.
First I have my experience where I know for sure they threatened my wife with prosecution if she did not seek a protection order ( You will be seen as negligent they told her).
At work a woman who separated from her husband and did not get a ‘good deal’ with custody
with regard her daughter ( shared custody). She thinks she deserves more as her husband
managed to avoid paying child support. She told me women’s refuge asked her to request help
from them which she declined then and regrets now. When i told her my story she told me if
she knew she would have pressed from the beginning with a protection order as that would guarantee
total control over decision made over the custody of her daughter with the help of women’s refuge.
Womens refuge is not helping women. It is ‘sidetracking’ them.
I am sad they managed with treachery to deviate from otherwise a noble mission.
Comment by tren Christchurch — Thu 5th February 2009 @ 6:50 pm
John, I am not going to give you the information you require. You need to find these things out for yourself. I am not wanting to come over as mean but just look what has happened over the ‘Buddy programme’.
In fact, why don’t you contact the buddy programme and ask them what other services are offered and who funds it. Men are trying really hard to get things up and going. And they are working around feminists.
Why don’t you phone the police and ask them where they refer the men also.
Comment by julie — Thu 5th February 2009 @ 8:46 pm
Hi Tren, I understand what you are saying. There are still a lot of volunteers at women’s refuges. It is hard to know what all women are told. Plus I don’t know of all refuges around the country. Only 5 areas at the moment and some past leaders.
But … I can understand why women in these places feel this way and do the things they do.
And yet, … there are some wonderful men who work really hard in Chch speaking up for men in refuges and the like. The women are appreciative I hear. They say (I am told) , “We never get the balance. We never hear from the other side”.
This just shows how important work is needed for men’s needs. And how valuable it is.
There is a special man down south. He rallied up men and with men’s money and labour built the Aorangi Men’s Centre in Timaru. (I think it is Timaru)
http://antimisandry.com/news-articles/mens-centre-ii-17471.html
Comment by julie — Thu 5th February 2009 @ 8:59 pm
Dear Julie
This is turning into a strange discussion- you are saying that there is assistance being made available for men, but also saying that you are keeping it secret- why?
Re the Big Buddy program- has something happened? Am I responsible for something? What?
As you know I have had involvement with this crowd, and decided that their program was unsafe, and badly conceived, my decision was not to become involved.
I have several issues with the Buddy program, one is that the crowd running it do not recognise how vulnerable the big buddies are, and have no process to protect them.
You may know that I have been on the receiving end of false allegations, and discovered that you are guilty on allegation. This experience made me decide to walk away from my own four grandchildren because for my own safety. The same risk applies to any man fool enough to be a ‘Big Buddy” in this Man Alive program.
Comment by John Brett — Fri 6th February 2009 @ 3:03 am
Mmmm the plural of men is “men’s” is it ?
Men is already a plural, men’s means BELONGING to men
Comment by OnceInALifeTime — Fri 6th February 2009 @ 7:27 am
John, I have edited this comment so we don’t end up arguing.
I know that men are sceptical of anything NZ does for men. And I understand it has been frustrating for years.
I also empathise with the pain fathers have been through and are going through. I can do this because I have been through it myself.
But to me NZ needs to keep trying and keep moving forward. I have been keeping men up to date on what groups and funding agencies have been doing over the past 2 years. A lot of scepticism from both sides makes it hard for groups to progress.
Would you mind finding out for yourself and then write your opinion on whether they are good enough or not? I don’t want to be defending groups in the community or men/women who help any more.
I say what I say, and I know others in the community will read it and look into it themselves if they are interested. That is a good thing because then the word spreads.
Comment by julie — Fri 6th February 2009 @ 9:02 am
I think the whole point of Julie’s posting has been lost a little. I take it that its purpose was to inform and through that help empower the reader. I have my own concerns with the politics of women’s refugee, but as Julie points out this umbrella organisation is run by volunteers, some of which have their own agendas. The same could be said of the men’s movement. Like the Family Court it has it sizable failings, but like the Family Court its intentions are noble. It is individuals with their own agenda (such as governance feminism) that stuff it up.
I am grateful for Julie’s informative posting and feel she makes a significant contribution to this discussion site.
Gerry
Comment by Gerry — Fri 6th February 2009 @ 11:40 am
I’ll say again-
There are NO men’s groups receiving any assistance from any Government source, unless you count Man Alive as a men’s group.
Comment by John Brett — Fri 6th February 2009 @ 12:25 pm
The Big buddy program is despite many good intentions merely a sticking plaster applied to a haemoraging gash.
It is a useful and token conscience salve and cover for cynical anti family adherents who loot the public coffers.
It is the sad result of cow towing to feminist pork barrel politics – feminists who have worked diligently to put in place laws and processes over the past thirty years to bring about the to be expected demise of the nuclear family unit through the systematic and ongoing demonizing of men in general and the associated socially engineered mass scale de-fathering of children.
300,000 kids without a father in the house in NZ.
For evidence of part of this process one need look no further than to ones local ‘family’ ‘court’ where without due legal process and corroborative evidence good parents (most often fathers) are still routinely shaken down and thrown out of the lives of their children.
It is a similar picture across the western world.
Rather than placing an ambulance like the Big Buddy program at the bottom of the cliff (with it’s intention of supplanting real fathers with feminist vetted male mentors) and patting ourselves on the back for giving wayward boys ‘male role models’ we should instead turn our attention to dramatically strengthening marriage as an institution by scrapping the no fault divorce laws as a start. We should also look to tear down the ‘family’ ‘court’ and replace it with an institution that is open, transparent and has as it’s core value the desire and drive to keep families intact rather than dividing them and the spoils of them up.
For the evidence is overwhelming for those who care to look into the issue that in the vast majority of cases kids do much better in INTACT families with fathers present.
We need turn only to the prevailing language we use to see just how terrible blinded most are to the issue of the decline of marriage, the rise of divorce culture and the creeping prevalence of fatherlessness.
For we often talk of solo parent families, as if such a thing actually exists.
Indeed it is a travesty of justice, a feminist inspired lie and a complete oxymoronic contradiction in terms to talk of ‘solo parent families’.
It is a form of delusion.
There is no such thing.
One parent plus child/ren doesn’t constitute a family.
What we should be talking of instead in more truthful and realistic terms is of fractured or broken families.
Instead we don’t whilst we have sky-rocketting levels of divorce (initiated mostly by women, no doubt encouraged by the feminist created pay offs offered to them) and it’s concomitant rise in under-parented out of control lawless youth who present an ever growing raft of health and safety concerns for themselves and the wider community.
It is a sobering fact that over recent decades the prison population (mostly young men) has risen faster than the rate of university placements.
As much as I admire Julie’s concern about people’s welfare I don’t think the answer is to have yet more taxpayer funded welfare programs (which would only be terribly at risk of further feminist capture in any case) but instead to admit to ourselves and each other that what we have doesn’t work. Not by a long chalk………and throwing some more money at the problem by creating another government program as another ambulance at the bottom of the cliff isn’t going to make the cliff disappear, nor stop folks being pushed off it.
We need a fundamental rethink and reevaluation of our social values in NZ…….especially the value of fatherhood and family values………………….and by family I mean intact family not some disingenuous PC lesser version.
Anything less is merely a recipe for more of the same.
Comment by Skeptik — Mon 9th February 2009 @ 11:13 am
Skeptic, what you ask for is fair. Discussion is always good. But these things you talk about has already been discussed.
You are not here so you don’t see what is happening. So I will tell you.
Every time an important man speaks up and asks, “Why can’t we go back” he ends up on TV or radio saying how ugly life was in the past for his family. He gets reminded off the past that he lived or that his parents lived.
To ask to go back is like being one small person against the whole country.
To put men’s issues in mainstream means to listen to what men say. To hear that they are worth more than what the feminists say. The feminists are not just wrong but show ‘man hate’ in their words and tactics.
You seem to forget that you don’t just demand a voice. You have to earn it. Especially if you want something solid to go with the voice. Else you are just yesterday’s news and forgotten when today’s news comes along.
I have a choice like everyone else and I have to decide which men to follow. Do I follow the men who action or do I follow the men who speak and have no action?
I choose the former because I know they will show results. Even if it takes another 10 years.
Talk is cheap. The difference between knowledge and wisdom is that wisdom actions.
Edit: And besides, the people who are in charge are all form the 70’s. How do you work with people who themselves protested madly to make reform in the first place.
Comment by julie — Mon 9th February 2009 @ 11:29 am
Julie,
Some further thoughts – I don’t need the dichotomous thinking of speaking vs action.
Speaking IS an action.
Furthermore as a great spokesman for men’s rights Warren Farrel once said people don’t hear what men don’t say.
So I reckon it’s fruitful to bear allegiance with both types…..those who recognize and speak up about issues and those who take action about them………inclusivity of purpose.
You don’t have to work with 70s heads, you can, indeed I’m sure you already do, work AROUND them….. safe in the knowledge that one day enough of them will have karked it for your generation’s voice to be the socially dominant one.
That’s WHY it’s imperative to keep speaking out so the coming generations don’t get sucked into feminist ideology and perpetuate another generation of misguided manhate.
Then again perhaps arrogant western feminist stupidity has already tipped the balance.
What I mean is some say it may be too late with the huge increase in Muslim populations and the relative demise of western christian demographics we may be seeing the death throes of what has been the dominant world culture.
Perhaps it is already being inextricably supplanted from without and eroded from inside by socialist feminism.
Numerically in any case more family friendly and socially cohesive cultures such as Islam are by far outbreeding the sex in the city modern western women. It seems therefore that therefore in the bigger world picture cultures which respect their menfolk much more than the west are on the rise whilst our is in demise.
Comment by Skeptik — Mon 9th February 2009 @ 11:31 pm
Islam is a third world backward culture bent on dominating the world. IT WILL NEVER SUCCEED. It is us has been formulated by the Arab dictators as a crowd control , telling people how to think and behave, but in practice it just creates many many poor brainwashed people, the dictators will never share their wealth. In the 15th century when Islam started , Arab countries were amounst the most adanced in the world, they have made no social progress BECAUSE of this religion
It is a hierarchical setup, well, yes, fascistic too, interested in keeping people with their minds in the past , but desperate for modern weaponry.
One day in the near future, Iranian moslems who have had to live in a “theorcracy” will rise up , and fight for freedom of thought , but until then their terrorism will continue to threaten the free world that they hate so much.
Yes it has many advantages for men like us, who have been abused by the social engineered laws that have allowed women to emotionally terrorise US, but come on , one day moslems will make social progress
Comment by OnceInALifeTime — Tue 17th February 2009 @ 9:29 am