Early Intervention
Early Intervention
UnitedFuture strongly believes in the theory of having ‘a fence at the top of the cliff rather than an ambulance at the bottom’ when it comes to dealing with young offenders or at-risk youth. It is a fact that most violent and serious crime in New Zealand is committed by people that have previously been convicted of petty misdemeanours at a young age.
It is UnitedFuture policy to:
- Encourage schools to implement a character education programme.
- Expand successful early intervention programmes such as Parents As First Teachers, Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY), Family Start, and Project Early.
- Promote free parenting programmes for all new parents, and ensure that families at-risk are also referred to them.
- Get tough on truancy by establishing a national, centralised database to track student enrolment and attendance.
- Enable education authorities to seek ‘parenting orders’ requiring the parents of chronic truants to attend parenting classes, as well as ‘parenting contracts’, whereby the parent and the school agree on steps they will take to improve the child’s behaviour.
- Expand the Social Workers in Schools Programme
- Ensure that the ‘No Crime is Too Small’ policing strategy is backed up by rapid responses to restore the damage made by petty crime such as vandalism
- Use reparations, electronic monitoring and work on community projects (e.g. removing graffiti, house construction) as initial sentencing options for youth offenders, established through contracts drawn up between the police, the offender and their family, and backed up by harsher supervision for compliance failures.
- Increase community sentencing options for ‘entry level’ property crime such as tagging, vandalism, theft and graffiti, in keeping with our ‘No Crime Is Too Small” policing strategy, to send the message that crimes against property are crimes against people.
- Support NGO mentoring programmes, such as the Buddy programme, whereby at-risk youth lacking responsible role models are in regular contact with others in the community who can have a positive influence on their behaviour, and the behaviour of their families.
- Increase funding for Plunket to increase home visits to double the current levels as a specific strategy to identify families at risk.
- Promote free family mediation services to offer support and guidance to family relationships in difficulty.
- Establish restorative justice styled disciplinary programmes in schools to combat bullying and other misbehaviour, requiring the student to understand the implications of his/her actions, involving the parents, and arriving at a punishment (e.g. community service) that is an alternative to suspension or expulsion.
- Increase the number of truancy officers, especially in areas with persistent high rates of truancy.
- Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling.
- Ensure that schools implement anti-bullying strategies, safe classroom programmes and tough anti-drug policies in consultation with the police and other agencies.
- Increase funding for appropriate early intervention supervision and diversionary programmes for youth at risk.
- Extend the age at which family group conferences may be employed for first offenders, and ensure that they all include re-integrative and rehabilitative elements, and that any reparations, apologies or punishment agreed to are enforced.
- Establish links with the business community to mentor and support a- risk young people.
- Foster co-operation and information sharing between police, courts, schools, community groups and social services when dealing with at-risk families and youth.
- Merge District Truancy Services and the Non-Enrolment Truancy Service, increase their funding, and require the new organisation to work more closely with schools, police, welfare agencies and non-governmental organisations (e.g. Maori Wardens) to ensure that they respond quickly to truancy before it develops into a bigger problem.
- Establish a research programme to ascertain which early intervention programmes work and are worthy of being rolled out nationwide.
- Increase funding for adult literacy programmes, and ensure that every community education centre runs such programmes.
- Increase resources for mental health professionals to ensure that those who may pose a risk to others or themselves are adequately assessed and treated.
- Amend the Privacy Act where family members are primary caregivers so they may be fully informed of the care and release of their unwell relative, with consequential rights of appeal in decisions that place the patient in community or home care.