By Kim Choe
The new Children's Commissioner has an optimistic forecast for New Zealand's child abuse rates, saying numbers will drop dramatically in three years if the Government invests in prevention schemes.
One group working to prevent domestic violence says it's likely to take much longer, especially if services are spread too thinly.
Children's Commissioner Dr Russell Wills has only been in the job for just over a week but he isn't under any illusions about how bad the problem of child abuse is.
Despite child abuse rates being among the highest in the OECD, Wills says he expects the number of cases to plummet in the next three years.
Domestic abuse prevention organisation Shine says the fall won't be dramatic.
“I'd love to think that it was possible, [but] I can't really see it,” says executive director Jane Drumm.
Mrs Drumm says there isn't enough information about the effectiveness of abuse prevention programmes.
She says the inter-agency exchange of information between the police, Child Youth and Family and other community organisations is a good idea in theory, but there's no system in place to measure its effectiveness.
“In this country we can't afford to go down the red herring tracks. We simply can't afford it and so we do have to think, if we're only going to do a few things, what are those few things, and do they work,” she says.
But Dr Wills says his own child abuse screening programme in Hawkes Bay shows they do. He says if investment is made in schemes like this, the numbers will follow.
3 News