Social policy approaches associated with need, risk and rights - Essay Example

?Social policy approaches associated with need, risk and rights High-quality child care and protective actions can help build a strong foundation forthe development of young children and ensure that children have all the requirements which help them to learn and live a healthy life. Strong social policies are needed that support both child development and the needs of low-income working parents. To protect the rights of the children, the department of Child, Youth and Family Services plays an important role. It is a department of the New Zealand Public Service in terms of Part 2 of the State Sector Act 1988. The CYF operates under the Public Finance Act 1989 while its responsibilities are formed under other related legislation. The CYF was formed in 1999 to protect the rights of children and to improve outcomes for children and youth at risk. It ensures the delivery of efficient social services along with assisting and supporting the children at risk. It is responsible for ensuring safety to children and young people who have been harmed or offended or are at the risk of being harmed. They do this by the provision of specialist and rehabilitative services. Child, Youth and Family Services help to improve the wellbeing of defenseless and exposed children. It also works for young people exposed to similar risks. Child, Youth and Family services working either in association with other departments or alone funds a number of community-based services. CYF has agreements with a range of Maori, Pacific and community service providers. The department of Child, Youth and Family Services helps the Government to fight child abuse especially for children present in foster care or orphan children who are adopted. The department provides adoption services and keeps a regular check on the foster care and the homes where the adopted children are present. The department works to provide information and education to such children in order promote public awareness of child abuse and degree of neglect in them so that they can differentiate between love and abuse. Along with education, the department puts emphasis on legal care and protection and provides youth justice services children and young people and their families. It helps in development and funding of the required community services for the children and youth at risk. It gives policy advice and services to the Minister of Social Development and Employment and the Government. The Department’s social work is based mainly on the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 some of the most far-sighted and innovative legislation. This Act emphasizes the role and responsibilities of families and communities and provides for family decision-making through legal processes known as the family group conferences. The department of Child, Youth and Family Services also works under the legislations of the Adoption Act 1955, Adult Adoption Information Act 1085, Adoption (Intercountry) Act 1997, Guardianship Act 1968 and The Social Worker Registration Act 2003. The Social Worker Registration Act 2003 was introduced and passed into law on 9 April 2003. The main purpose of the Act is to improve the efficiency of social work in New Zealand. A social worker who wants to become registered under the Act, is required to have qualification of social work, and needs to pass social work competency assessment. The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 believes and operates on the principle that the primary role in providing care and protecting a child or young person is the responsibility of the child’s or young person’s family, Whanau, hapu, iwi and family group. It is only when the children are not safe or are at risk of being harmed or offended then according to the principles of the act the children should be placed in family like settings where they develop a sense of belonging while their personal and cultural identity are maintained. When the children are given for adoption, the department of Children, Youth and Family services prefer families who are related to the child if not then that family is given the priority who shares the same ethnic, tribal, racial or cultural background with the child. Spencer (1987) states that if the child is abused by an abuser who is from a minority ethnic group, the victim child is most likely to racialise the experience of abuse. He would perceive the experience and the abusive behaviour as being related to that person’s ethnicity. On the other hand if the abuser is from a majority ethnic group, the behaviour is classed as an individual deficit rather than related to ethnicity. Hence children who are placed in fosters and given for adoption should be placed with caregivers from their own cultural group in order to develop a positive role modeling in the child. This is a straightforward imperative. The vision of the department is to see safe children and young people in strong families with responsible communities. They should be free from abuse, neglect and offending. The department of Children, Youth and Family Services can achieve this vision by getting closer to such defenseless children and by listening to their stories to make them comfortable and at ease. The needs and risks of different children living in different situations are different. It is important to point to needs and risks of the child according to the place and condition in which he lives. On the other hand the rights of all children are the same. According to Alcock et al (2003), “Social policy intervention has been justified in terms of three overlapping approaches associated with need, risk and rights. Both need and risk approaches depend on judgments being made about which people in which circumstances have needs or risks that require action or services. A rights approach is regarded by many as based on fundamental entitlement and an equity.” This statement can be explained by differentiating need by risk. Situations of high risk of abuse (e.g. sexual abuse) or harm to a child or young person require a social work investigation. However, situations of risk are different from conditions of neglect. Neglectance occurs in times of stress and poverty. In such conditions an investigation would only hurt the feelings of the family making them uncomfortable. In other conditions such as relationship difficulties and child behavioral issues do not require investigation as these conditions do not show risk of abuse or harm to the child or young person. Cultural identity plays an important role in providing the needs and rights of a child or a young person. However, the rights remain the same for all the children no matter which culture they adopt. The needs of a child and his family can be identified through a child and family assessment (investigation) and provide relevant services in response to meet the needs. The Child, Youth and Family act uses the differential response model. This model enables a timely response to notifications of child abuse, neglect and insecurity of care by increasing the social work workforce to respond to the notifications. The differential response model forms a closer relationship between CYF and NGO service providers. According to Connolly (2004a:41): “The success of a differential model depends upon the creation and development of community support agencies which are strong and are willing and able to work in partnership with the state to protect the rights of children. However, such partnerships are not easy to establish and maintain at certain times.” NGOs work along with the Government and also individually to protect the rights of children and young people. They provide their services even before they get notifications. The legislative changes which are planned provide ways the NGOs to improve care and protection more than before. Another way to fasten the process of protection of rights is by taking child and family assessments on behalf of the department. After the child and family assessment, NGOs may also provide longer-term services that support families. Different policies, services and professional practice developments focus individually on needs, risks and rights. By doing this the appropriate service is provided by the social workers and the state has announced the policies accordingly. This way the children who are at risk are given the most attention so that their future and self respect can be preserved so that they can grow up to be confident individuals without having disturbing thoughts of their childhood. A child most likely to be at risk is he who is placed in a foster with a majority of children present their belonging to a different ethnicity, culture, race or religion. Children living in majority with their own kind consider themselves to be superior over the ones belonging to the minority group. They tend to bully the children from the minority group and hurt their sentiments by causing them harm by degrading their ethnicity, leaving a bad impact on the children at such early stages of life. Such problems are most common in whites and black colored people. The white children consider themselves to be powerful and boss around the blacks. Along with abuse and harm to the child, this produces hatred among the children. When the degree of hatred is increased the children are provoked to cause harm either to themselves or to the ones bother them. A child who is adopted by parents who already have their own children are also suspected to be at risk because the children be develop a sense of jealousy when they see their parents give attention to the newcomers. Such children tend to harm the adopted children to take out their anger and revenge on them. It is the responsibility of the social workers and adoption associations to keep a check on such families and to keep direct communication with the adopted children to get feedback from them. The social workers should have knowledge in judging the children as many children do not like the new setting of the place where they are shifted tend to lie so that they can be removed from their and placed somewhere else. In such cases the social workers should give surprise visits to the families to see the living atmosphere of the house and the behaviour of the family members with the child and the child’s behaviour with the new family. In 1989, an Act of the Crown introduced Family Group Conferences as a key way to address youth offending and to decrease it. “Family Group Conferences (FGCs) are run by Child, Youth and Family Services, a state owned organization attached to the Ministry of Social Development. Family Group Conferences are intended to achieve the goals of diverting young people from courts and from custodial options and encourage dealing with young people in the community and within their families as much as possible; holding people liable for their offending; involving victims, families and young people in the process of decision making; innovating measures to assist with reducing reoffending” (Maxwell, Robertson, Kingi, Morris & Cunningham, 2004a, p.5). As mentioned earlier, the policies are set differently for children who are at risk and for the ones who are in need of help. The children who are in need of help are from families who cannot afford to send their children to school or even afford the day to day expenditure. Such children tend to be malnourished with slow growth of the organs. Some are so poor that their financial situation causes death of the newborn and young children. Children belong to poor families are pushed towards child labour destroying the childhood of the child only to earn money at an age when he should be busy with books and friends. The policies for them are different since the social workers do not have to worry about them being harmed or abused by their own family or caregivers. However, the social workers have to give attention to the needs of such children present in families living in stress and poverty. The needs include nutritious food, water, care, parenting, clothes, shelter and education. The social workers can concentrate directly on these factors if they know they do not have to put the family under investigation. In such conditions, investigations put forward to test whether the child is at risk because of his poor health can lead to hurt the prestige and honor of the family who cannot afford to provide the needs of the child. When the Government and the social workers working for social work associations or groups know and are satisfied that the children are not at risk of being harmed or abused but are in need of the facilities required to live a normal and healthy life, they try to introduce new policies which would help the families improve their living style including education for the children and young adults. These policies strongly enhance the health of the children because they are present in their homes with their family or caregivers. They may be neglected due to the elders such as parents being under stress but when their needs are fulfilled through funding from such associations they calm down and concentrate on their children’s upbringing. Children’s rights are the human rights of children with more emphasis on protection and care given to the young child. The rights of all the children whether they are living in foster homes or their own warm homes with their caring parents are the same. A level of equity has to be developed when introducing policies discussing the rights of children. Their basic rights include their association with both biological parents, ensuring human identity along with the basic needs such as food, state-paid education, health care and criminal laws according to the age and development of the child. Children's rights include the allowance of living of children in a physically, mentally and emotionally free from abuse environment. Other rights include the rights to nurturing and care. Children's rights can be explained in a number of ways, including a wide range of civil, economic, cultural, social and political rights. Young children are dependent on adults who make the decisions for them. Rights of children can be divided into two classes. The rights include introducing policies in society for protection from harms with which the children are threatened due to their dependency on others. The policies designed to fight for the rights of children label the two classes as the right of empowerment and to protection. Children have the right to be provided with an efficient standard of living, health care, free education provided by the government till a certain age and services. Children have the right to play and enjoy their childhood and store memorable memories. The other rights of children are a balanced diet, a comfortable and secure place to sleep and access to schooling. The most important rights of children are protection from abuse, neglect, discrimination and exploitation. To preserve this right the social policies work on making safe places for children to play, increasing awareness in parents to teach their child about abuse. Other rights of children include the right to take part in communities and participate in programs and services arranged for them. This includes children’s involvement in youth voice activities, libraries and makes the children as decision makers. The economic, social and cultural rights of children are fulfilled by the participation of parents, caregivers and teachers of the children. The policies lined by the social work associations help to fulfill the basic human needs which include food, shelter, education, health care and employment. The economic and social rights include adequate housing, clean drinking water and water for cleaning, hygienic living standards and the cultural rights include the protection of minorities and indigenous people. The third generation rights which include environmental, cultural and developmental rights which further include the right to live in healthy environments with safe surroundings. Services by social workers ensure that the different groups of people have access to political, cultural and economic development. Rights and obligations expected by the state The state would issue rights to protect the cultural entity between children and people of different cultures to maintain peace and brotherhood in the country. All cultures are important and this fact should be learned by the children at an early age so that they can understand the importance of protecting the honor of others cultures. Same is the case with ethnic and religious beliefs. Children should be taught in schools to respect different races especially if they are in minority. The state should allow free primary education to children. The children from poor families should be given benefits such as weekly pocket money from the states side so that they do not get discouraged from life due to the hardships they have to see. The state should introduce schemes for paid employments to young adults who wish to work along with studying. The state should fund the families who do not have sufficient earning due to which they are forced to live an unhealthy and unhygienic life. The state should offer free medical checkups to the underprivileged along with free treatment. Rights and obligations expected by the target group The target group includes the people being affected from the domestic violence. Domestic violence tends to create disturbance and stress in the lives of the people who are facing it and the immediate family members of the victim. The social workers should try their best to resolve the domestic problems of families or people undergoing domestic violence. They should get free weekly counseling which would give them a chance to let out all the stress trapped inside them and can come up with ideas and strength to fight the violence instead of being suppressed. The rights of children especially the children living in foster homes or in adopted homes should be strictly preserved and strongly protected since children are the youth of tomorrow. If the children lack confidence and become scared, their future will get dark. If the right actions are not taken at the right time, child abuse would not be eliminated from the world. Children should be given the right to freedom of speech, freedom of fear; freedom of thought, ownership over owns body and the freedom of choice. Their basic needs should be fulfilled which include, a proper diet, clean drinking water, a secure place to live and someone to listen to their problems and issues. Rights and obligations of the Community The community can play an important role in decreasing the domestic violence and child abuse in the country. If the community is strong and stands up for each individual it won’t be surprising to see that country successful. The community should be careful of children who are being ill treated. They should inform the concerned authorities about the issue so that the social work associations and the state can take appropriate actions to diminish the violence in order to make the country a peaceful place to live in. The community should not be bothered by investigations when they report incidents. The community should keep a check on the people around them and should try to help them if they see they need financial help or moral support to fight financial crisis or domestic violence. Conclusion The social workers work in order to protect people from domestic violence and enhance children care and protection. The social workers do this by helping the suppressed and give them hopes to look ahead towards the brighter side of life. Along with the social workers working for Non-Governmental Organizations, domestic violence and children mishandling can be controlled by increasing awareness in schools to teach the students the about abuse and how to fight back in such cases or who to contact in such conditions. In order to eliminate children abuse and domestic violence from the world the people have to take essential steps to support the needy and orphan children and to protect their rights at all times. Needs, risks and rights influence the policies to act accordingly by focusing on the required factor. Classifying policies into these three classes helps to maintain the efficiency of the policies and saves time of the social worker which in turn provides help to the right person in an appropriate manner. Reference Bandman, B. (1999) Children's Right to Freedom, Care, and Enlightenment. Routledge. p 67. Calkins, C.F. 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