United Future Policy Statement

Early Intervention

United Future will:

• Ensure that all schools 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, to replace the current fragmented system.
• Provide for education authorities to seek 'parenting orders' requiring the parents of chronic truants to attend parenting classes, as well '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
• Establish a 'three strikes' rule for youth offenders, whereby the number of family group conferences that youth offenders may face would be limited to three before the third offence triggers a custodial sentence, even if it would not individually warrant such a sentence.
• Substantially increase penalties 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.
• 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, home detention, curfews, and work gangs 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 sentences for compliance failures.
• Establish a mentoring programme whereby at-risk youth lacking in 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.
• Remove responsibility for Youth Justice from CYF and establish a separate organisation that recognises when youth need to be removed from dysfunctional family environments.
• Establish 'Brat Camps' run by the Army, in co-operation with the Ministries of Education and Health, where persistent youth offenders learn self-discipline, and receive education, training and counselling as a last resort before prison.
• Increase funding for Plunket to increase home visits to double the current levels as a specific strategy to identify families at risk
• Guarantee all pre-school children over the age of three years, the right to access up to 20 hours per week early childhood education at any teacher-led provider.
• Promote free family mediation services to offer support and guidance to family relationships in difficulty.
• Improve classroom discipline at school by developing 'responsible behaviour agreements', to be signed by disruptive students, their parents and the school principal, setting out expectations for improved behaviour, steps to be taken, and consequences for failure.
• 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.
• Ensure that education authorities fine the parents of chronic truants since they must attend school by law, and increase the fine for parents from $15 a day to $18 a day for primary and $27 a day for secondary students, since this is the per pupil cost to the taxpayer regardless of whether they attend or not.
• Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling.
• Make parents financially accountable for crimes committed by their children, through liability for damages and reparation as determined by the court.
• Ensure that schools implement anti-bullying strategies, safe classroom programmes and tough anti-drug policies in consultation with the police and other agencies.
• Prosecute parents who continually allow their children to roam the streets for leaving their children without reasonable supervision
• Increase funding for appropriate early intervention supervision and diversionary programmes for youth at risk.
• Reduce the age of criminal responsibility from the current age of fourteen years to ten years.
• 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 and incentives with the business community to mentor and support young people
• Amend the Privacy Act to 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.
• Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling
• 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 so that family members of those who may pose a risk to themselves or society and are under treatment orders may be fully informed of their care and release, with consequential rights of appeal in decisions that place the offender in community or home care.

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Email: Phone: (04) 471 9890