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The young couple, from Dunedin, have told the Sunday Star-Times of their harrowing two-year battle to regain custody of the girl, who was taken by Child, Youth and Family at just 14 weeks because the agency wrongly suspected she’d been abused.
The parents had to sell their house in Dunedin and move to the North Island so they could continue to see her (their child) on supervised visits.
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We need to be clear about the $60,000 for this unfortunate couple.
They spent probably closer to $90,000 on legal costs and got a fraction of that back.
This family are net loosers in many many ways.
There is no compensation for the hassle or distress this family have suffered.
Obtaining that through a civil suit is probably just more drama and hassle and chances of success probably low.
Comment by Allan Harvey — Sun 9th March 2014 @ 9:02 am
This is a situation that has been around for as long as relationship vandals have sought out families to interfere in. Paul Chill wrote an article with a very good description of the short term impact of removals onto children.
There are many thousands of reasons for which removal from parents might be justified, every one of them with a risk matrix of false positives and false negatives. These well known risks in making these decisions, leads to massive social damage from wrongful decisions.
The Stuff article considers legal costs and housing costs, but has ignored the wider costs that have been wrongfully dropped onto this family and for which no recompense has been offered, either by the mistaken judge John Coyle, CYFs or Government.
The Stuff article ignores the feelings and security of the child and the parents. The Paul Chill article gives a little window onto the children’s hurt, doesn’t cover long term impacts onto the security of the child. The child was denied access with her parents, at the very time she needed this the most.
Most removal decisions could be avoided, if parents were licensed, before they were allowed to care for babies and young children. Better still, if young adults were advised of the quality of their parenting skills, then some might choose to not have children, when they would be at great risk of not being able to satisfactorily care for them.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sun 9th March 2014 @ 9:13 am
This case exposes the extraordinary lengths CYF will go to to prove them selves correct. It is noted that even a high court order does not remove the fear of being spied upon by CYF, something many have been saying for decades.
Child abuse is horrific! However nobody appears to offer support and encouragement to the families. In this case it was stated by the judge that $60,000 was assistance towards legal costs. No mention of ongoing costs to cover repairing the child after an unnecessary intervention, and the family ground into the ground both emotionally and financially.
Leaving CYFS as abusers of both the child (Via an unnecessary removal) ant the parents and their families.
Equally Doctors diagnosis of rickets should have caused the original decision to be revisited.
Unfortunately the only winners would appear to be the Lawyers.
Comment by Alastair — Sun 9th March 2014 @ 10:41 am
@Alastair (#3); …not just the lawyers; CYFS as well. They’ve been granted $60,000 of tax payer funds to compensate a family for their incredible stupidity and are given a free license to go and do it all over again (and again ad infinitum) to other equally undeserving families; unrestrained, unconstrained and without impunity. Who was censured in CYFS for this omnishambles? Who in CYFS lost their license to wrest kids from their families without fair and just cause?
When the government had google remove the CYFSWATCH web site in 2007; that simple act closed the curtains on the then governments complicity in perpetrating real, provable crimes against families. This simple act gave CYFS carte blanche to continue to act out their fanciful ideals of what a “socially developed” society would and should look like. Individuals (kids) and individual families have become fair game in the desire of the social manipulators to mould a compliant society out of the wreckage of broken families.
The time for an independent CYFS watch dog is long overdue.
Comment by Bruce S — Mon 10th March 2014 @ 10:44 am
The recurring issue here is that the Abuse Industry Professionals at Starship assume all injuries are caused by parents unless the parents can prove otherwise. The presumption of innocence is not in the Starship hierarchy’s ideological frame work of abuse.
This uncurbed abuse of power has been going on for far too long.
Regards
Scrap
Comment by Scrap_The_CSA — Mon 10th March 2014 @ 11:13 am
I contacted panic which is an organization that says it advocates for people dealing with Child Youth and Family. I discovered from one of the advocates, that they evaluate the parent on an ongoing basis and report to Child Youth and Family. So, they are far from independent. Its something people should know when they consider advocacy from this group.
It brings to mind bais the advocacy service for people on benefits, which is actually part funded by the Ministry of Social development (Work and Income), conflict of interests anyone?
Comment by Tizone — Sun 16th March 2014 @ 7:07 am
Tizone i am unsure of where you are getting your facts from. Which advocate said the things you are alleging? PANIC is independent an do not report back to CYF, PANIC have their own processes and code of conduct to follow. PANIC is setup to families,parents and caregivers.THERE IS NO REPORTING BACK to CYF as some sort of informant that you are claiming PANIC to be. If you have any proof to your claims then publish it,I am sure it would be very interesting read.However if you have no proof an are simply spreading malicious rumours to discredit the hard work PANIC does then I suggest you stop.
Comment by Leah — Thu 10th April 2014 @ 1:38 pm