Research on Child Neglect in NZ
Abuse is harming a child:
- Physically (eg, giving them hidings)
- Emotionally (eg, yelling or swearing at them, shaming or rejecting them) Shogun did this
- Sexually (eg, involving them in sexual activities).
Neglect is failing to meet a child’s physical and emotional needs – that is, not giving them the care, supervision, love and attention they need to grow up safely and happily (eg, failure to provide food, warm clothing or health care).
Emotional abuse and neglect can cause serious and long-term damage.
Early signs of abuse and neglect
These include problems that need to be checked out:
- parent has a drug, alcohol or gambling problem
- parent does not engage with their child or has a difficult relationship with them
- child doesn’t have enough clothes on and is often cold and hungry
- child has unexplained or changeable emotions (eg, withdrawn or depressed)
- parents frequently yell at, swear at or shame a child
- child seems scared of a particular adult.
21/9/20 – https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/abuse/child-ok/recognising-abuse-and-neglect
Data
- Between 1 January 2019 and 30 November 2019, 11 children and young people have died as a result of homicide in New Zealand, because of a result of child neglect and abuse. Of the cases where the relationship to the victim was known, 27% were mothers, 24% were fathers, and 17% were de facto partners.
- https://www.childmatters.org.nz/insights/nz-statistics/ – 21/9/20
- By the age of 17, 23.5% of children had had at least one report made regarding their welfare to child protection services, while almost 10% had been subject to substantiated abuse or neglect, and 3% had been put into foster or alternative care, with boys being more affected. Data from 2018
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/08/study-one-in-four-new-zealand-children-reported-welfare-agencies#:~:text=By%20the%20age%20of%2017,with%20boys%20being%20more%20affected.
In the year ended 31 March 1961, child welfare officers handled 6,607 cases.
In 2014, 146,657 notifications were made to Child, Youth and Family yet the
population aged 17 and under had grown by just 30%.
The rate of substantiated physical abuse grew more than ten-fold from 2.5 per
10,000 children in 1967 to 29 per 10,000 in 2014
For the last fifty years, families that feature ex-nuptial births, have one or both
parents absent, large numbers of siblings (especially from clustered or multiple
births) and/or very young mothers have been consistently over-represented in
the incidence of child abuse.
Maori and Pacific families exhibit more of these features and have appeared
disproportionately in child maltreatment statistics since earliest data
analysis in 1967.
While the incidence of child abuse has climbed, the death rate from child
maltreatment has fluctuated between 0.7 and 1.4 per 100,000 children since the
early 1960s. Of the seven deaths recorded in 1967, two children were European,
two were Pacific, two were Maori and one was part-Maori.
The growth of child abuse has accompanied a reduction in marriage and an
increase in cohabiting or single-parent families.
The high rates of single, step or blended families among Maori present a much
more compelling reason for disproportionate child abuse incidence than either
colonisation or unemployment.
Maori children with a single parent are four times more likely to be abused than
those in a non-single parent family; Maori children whose caregiver had spent
80% or more of the last five years on a benefit were 19 times more likely to
suffer maltreatment than those with no benefit history.
Like non-Maori, Maori children with two-parent working families have very low
abuse rates.
The likelihood of a child being in poverty and abused is smaller than the
likelihood of being on a benefit and abused.