In the course of our study of this problem it was frequently pointed
out to us that there was a real need for a thorough and continuous
study of this problem by those who from their training, experience, and
occupation were best qualified to advise as to the scope and extent of
the problem, as to its general causes, and as to the practical ways of
dealing with it. From information in the possession of the police and
of the Department of Justice it appeared that the extent of the evil
was in fact not so alarming as one might be induced to believe by a
perusal of the reports in the newspapers; there was, however, plenty of
evidence to suggest that misconduct amongst adolescents was increasing
and that this aspect of the matter was one for grave concern. There was
support for these views in written memoranda submitted by two of our
Magistrates, Mr Sinclair and Mr M. C. Astley. The Secretary for Justice
and Controller-General of Prisons, Mr S. T. Barnett, wrote as follows:
"My suggestion is that, as a first step, the Ministers in charge of
social Departments, e.g., Education, Child Welfare, Justice,
Police, should be requested to direct their Permanent Heads to
concert together and get down to a group study of the problem and
report to Government on the practical measures to meet it.
"Within these Departments are experts who can get down to the facts
and who ought to be able to propound some suggestions to ameliorate
the present unsatisfactory state of affairs. They should, of
course, be authorized, and indeed requested, to enlarge the
departmental group and to take in representatives of principal
welfare organizations."
The suggestions made by Mr Barnett were adopted, and the work
recommended by him is being carried on. The results have not yet
been made available to us.
We think that in matters of this kind fact finding carried out by
experts in a thoroughly scientific manner is fundamental, and in a
later portion of this report we have a specific recommendation to
make on this subject.
Specific Recommendations of Mazengarb Committee Relative
to Child Welfare Administration
In paragraph (4) of the report of the Mazengarb Committee--pages
57 to 60 inclusive--there are a number of comments and suggestions
relating to the Child Welfare Act and its administration. We have
examined these paragraphs very carefully, and we set out below some
excerpts from the report furnished to us by the Director of Education.
Our views are given immediately following the extract from the
opinion expressed by Dr Beeby, which is as follows:
"We have always felt that the spirit of the Child Welfare Act 1925
placed an obligation on us to do preventive work, and there are two
Cabinet decisions, one going back to 1941, which certainly give the
authority. However, we agree that it might be desirable to have the
obligation expressed explicitly in the Act. Indeed, in the draft
Child Welfare Bill prepared by the Division some eighteen months
ago you will find this done in two ways:
"(1) On page 43 of the draft Bill I sent you you will find Part
I devoted to preventive work, and clause 1 begins, 'It shall be
the _duty_ of the Superintendent to take positive action to
prevent children, etc.'.
"(2) On page 1 the definition of 'Child in need of care and
protection' is so widened as to cover every possible type of
preventive case, if read in conjunction with the amendments
passed during last session and with the Cabinet authorities to
spend public funds on such children.
"We do not think it necessary to increase the powers of Child
Welfare Officers for these purposes. To give them more actual
powers over children who have not committed an offence would be to
risk justifiable public objection to interference with the liberty
of the subject and the rights of parents."
_Page 58, paragraph (b)_
In its report the Mazengarb Committee said that the establishment
a few years ago of a Ministry of Social Welfare, and the urgent need
for more preventive work to be done, suggest the possibility of better
administration if "child welfare" were given an independent status
under the Ministry for Social Welfare.
This suggestion was examined by the Director of Education and by
the Superintendent of the Child Welfare Division of the Department
of Education. They reported fully to us, and their views are set out
below in summarized form.
The strongest arguments that were placed before us in support of
the view that child welfare should be a separate and independent
Department were to the following effect:
(1) The Superintendent would--as the head of his own Department--be
the captain of his own ship subject only to the direction of his
own Minister.
(2) The Director of Education has a huge Department of his own to
administer, and he cannot be expected to give to child welfare the
full measure of attention it should have.
(3) The Minister of Education must in the main find his principal
and absorbing interest in the school system, and he could hardly
devote to child welfare the same degree of attention that could be
expected from the Minister of Social Welfare.
(4) There would be times when the Superintendent must find it
burdensome to have to work through a Department with far-reaching
special interests of its own.
(5) The public standing and prestige of the Superintendent of Child
Welfare would be enhanced if he were recognized as the head of his
own independent Department.
The arguments on the other side may be summarized in the following way:
(1) Child welfare by itself would make a relatively small
Department and as such it might tend to become inbred and to
stagnate.
(2) A separate Department of Child Welfare would cost more than at
present because it would not be able to rely upon some of the
staffing and administrative facilities of the Department of
Education.
(3) Some of the institutions now conducted or controlled by child
welfare are really schools and as such they would always need to be
under the real control of the Department of Education.
(4) In actual practice no one could define with precision where the
functions of child welfare could be separated from those of
education.
(5) Over the years child welfare and education have worked out
their own joint policy of administration. They have in fact worked
along in harmony and with effective co-operation, and there
appeared to be no sound reason for disturbing a set-up which was in
fact efficient, economical, and harmonious.
We were completely satisfied that the present arrangement has the full
support of the Director of Education and the Superintendent of Child
Welfare. This view has also the support of the Public Service
Commission. After a study of the evidence that was placed before us we
came to the unanimous conclusion that matters should be left as they
are.
If it was decided by Government that child welfare should remain linked
with the Department of Education it would be advisable that some form
of administrative procedure should be worked out to define the
relations between the Director of Education and the Superintendent of
Child Welfare in so far as their respective approaches to the Minister
of Education and the Minister of Social Welfare are concerned. It was
clear to us that the present set-up is both efficient and harmonious. A
detailed plan for the due performance of the various duties was worked
out and agreed to by all interested parties. As it is a purely
administrative matter, we have not felt that it was necessary to embody
it in this report. Suffice it to say that in our opinion child welfare
should remain a part of the Department of Education, that its
Superintendent should have a right of direct reference to the Minister
of Social Welfare, that the Minister of Social Welfare should be
directly responsible for the administration of the vote applicable to
the Child Welfare Division, and that the administrative plan placed
before us should be adopted and applied unless and until varied by
agreement between the Ministers concerned.
_Page 59, paragraph (c)_
Dr Beeby said:
"It is true that no regulations have ever been gazetted prescribing
the duties of Child Welfare Officers. The provisions for them under
the Act are merely permissive, and we think it would be a
retrograde step to gazette any. The duties of the Superintendent
are adequately defined in the Act, and, as in other parts of the
Public Service, he delegates such of those powers as he thinks fit
to his subordinates. The Division's work has been done on this
basis since the passing of the Act, and we can recall no incident
where the absence of regulations has caused any difficulty. To
define the powers might well be to restrict them and to interfere
with the very preventive work we all desire.
"There should, as the Committee suggests, be some mention of
Honorary Child Welfare Officers in the Act, but their powers,
again, are better given by delegation than by legislation. It is
very desirable that the extent to which use is made of an Honorary
Officer's services be allowed to vary with the requirements of the
district and the ability of the officer."
We agree with the views expressed above by Dr Beeby.
_Page 59, paragraph (d)_
The Mazengarb Committee pointed out that the practice and procedure of
the Children's Court may tend to vary from place to place throughout
the Dominion because the Court was not presided over by its own
specially appointed Magistrate.
On this point the Director of Education said:
"This comment is true. The position has arisen because of the
practical difficulties of having the work carried out by specially
appointed Magistrates. The volume of work involved could justify
the appointment of only a few such Magistrates, and, because of the
geographical spread of the work, they could not handle it
expeditiously."
On this point we have no recommendations to make. We feel that the best
possible results are being secured by the Magistrates having regard to
their numbers and to the conditions under which they work.
_Page 59, paragraph (e)_
The Mazengarb Committee felt that it was a pity that proceedings in the
Children's Court were not conducted in a separate and distinct building.
It should at least be possible, said the report, to hear and determine
the cases in a room other than the ordinary Court room of a Magistrate's
Court. This was rather in the nature of a counsel of perfection. In
less-densely populated districts it would not be easy or economic to
provide separate accommodation of the kind envisaged. In larger and
busier centres it was often necessary to study the convenience of the
Magistrates themselves. The present Committee has no specific
recommendation to make in this connection.
The best that can be done is in fact being done.
_Page 60, paragraph (f)_
On the subject of the publicity to be given to proceedings in the
Children's Court the Mazengarb Committee said:
"There may be reasons why a Children's Court should be open to the
public ... The public has a right to know how child offenders have
been dealt with. The Committee does not recommend any alteration in
the provision prohibiting the publication of the name of any child,
or of any name or particulars likely to lead to identification.
Subject to this, it is desirable that reporters should be allowed
to attend."
With these views we find ourselves to be in complete agreement.
_Page 60, paragraph (g)_
The Mazengarb Committee appeared to hold the view that when children
have been placed under supervision there was no adequate "follow up"
procedure.
The following is Dr Beeby's comment upon this paragraph:
"It is a little difficult to see just what the Committee are
suggesting in this paragraph. If they are proposing that a Child
Welfare Officer be required to report progress to a Magistrate for
his personal information and to enable him to check on the
correctness of his judgment, there can be no possible objection.
When asked for, indeed, this is already done. If, on the other
hand, it is proposed that the Magistrate have continuing authority
over the child, then it would turn the Court into a social work
agency and would run counter to the whole trend in the development
of Children's Court and child welfare work from the beginning of
this century. The Magistrate would be compelled to take on
responsibilities for which he is not trained, and Child Welfare
Officers would tend to become merely junior probation officers
attached to the Court. One of the advantages of the present system
is that the Superintendent, being the final authority, can ensure
uniform standards of case work throughout New Zealand. If it were
left to each individual Magistrate to decide exactly what should be
done with children, it is certain that wide variations in
principles and procedures would occur. Experience has shown, for
example, that some Magistrates, with no first-hand knowledge of our
institutions, would send to them children for whom they are not
established to cater.
"With regard to the Committee's suggestion that there 'should be
some person or body apart from the departmental officers to whom a
child could turn for help ...', we would agree that something like
the Visiting Justice system of the Justice Department might apply
to our institutions as a guarantee to the public and as a
protection to both children and officers. However, to extend such a
system to children boarded out in private homes would be to ask for
endless trouble. People would be loath to accept State wards into
their homes if it laid them open to official visits from laymen
whose sole function was to hear complaints from the children. The
visits of Child Welfare Officers and of Inspectors of the Division
must, we feel, be accepted as the main guarantee to the public of
fair treatment."
Without expressing any decided opinion, the Committee felt that
what the Director of Education has to say is worthy of consideration
by Government.