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April 11, 2013 at 11:00 AM

Interest was expressed at the inter-agency meeting in knowing more about the Children’s Action Plan and the Children’s Teams. This is available on www.childrensactionplan.govt.nz (read the menu titles in the left-hand margin). Some salient points for our purposes would include the following:

• The Children’s Action Plan to be treated as a living document, open to ongoing consultation and change.
• Child focus (i.e. children’s needs come first) to be reflected in all social sector policies and practice.
• High emphasis, including legislation if necessary, on information sharing amongst agencies and sectors.
• Legislation and code of practice to oblige all public sector frontline workers to recognise and report child abuse and neglect, including exposure to family violence, and to take responsibility for the wellbeing of children and ensure all workers are trained to do this by end 2015.
• A Child Protect Line to record all concerns about children at risk.
• Children’s Teams operating an early response system for children in all regions, currently being piloted in Rotorua and Whangarei. These would conduct triage, allocation including of a lead worker, and a lower threshold than that operated by CYF.
• ISO to redistribute funding to the more effective service providers participating in the process.

We will be consulting with West Auckland shortly on how we can participate in this, particularly in promoting the interests and meeting the needs of children exposed to family violence.