A Women’s Refuge worker assisted in forcibly removing a 3 year old boy from his father in Christchurch, and driving him several hundred kilometers to a hidden location, where his mother was waiting for him.

The worker assisted in executing a Custody Warrant with the police, issued only two days after the father failed to return the boy.

He was supposed to return the boy not to the mother, who is understood to hide at a South Island Women’s Refuge from a violent ex-partner, to whose child she had recently given birth, but to a go-between.

The father had approached the Father & Child Trust with concerns for his child’s safety, if returned to the mother.

Father & Child worker Kori Bragg, who had been in personal contact with father and son several times over the week preceding the uplift, has observed the boy to be settled in his present environment, and well bonded to his father, who also reported that the boy’s health had improved after he had taken over care of him.

The father reported that the worker involved in uplifting the boy had told him he had now ‘lost all rights to his child’.

Father & Child Trust coordinator Harald Breiding-Buss says he is “greatly disturbed by the unprofessionality of the Women’s Refuge worker’s actions and words.

“Removing a child of that age from his primary caregiver at the time in this fashion by people basically unknown to him is not something any professional would do unless there were grave concerns for the child’s safety”, says Breiding-Buss.

“And the claim that the father has lost rights to his child is ignorant at best. A child’s right to meaningful contact with both parents is a human right enshrined in international law”.

Breiding-Buss also expressed ‘surprise’ at the issue of a custody warrant without prior consultation with the father to find out whether there are valid reasons for keeping the child with him.

The boy, whose name cannot be disclosed under current law, is now out of reach of any contact by his father, and the Trust has asked Child Youth and Family to keep an eye on the boy’s safety.

The Ministry of Youth Development (MYD) will roll out some initiative for teenage fathers in the upcoming financial year, although it has not yet been further specified what it will look like.

Teenage fathers made it on to the political agenda after a study conducted by the Father & Child Trust showed that teenage fathers are highly motivated but poorly supported.

Many papers and magazines, including the NZ Herald, The Press and The Listener have run large features on teenage fathers in the last 8-12 months, often quoting the Trust study in detail.

The Trust hopes to be able to start a mentoring programme for teenage fathers in Christchurch next year, and also providing social back-up support to facilitate long-term involvement of the young father with his child.

A new overhaul of Australia’s Family Law aims to crack down on false allegations of violence or abuse and on obstruction of access to a child. The proposed amendments to the Family Law Act will also require compulsory mediation for the parents and strengthen the concept of joint decision-making.

The law change comes less than 10 years after the Act had last been reformed, then abolishing the concept of custody and encouraging shared parenting after separation – changes that have only last year been adopted in New Zealand with the Care of Children Act.

However both Australian fathers’ rights groups and law experts say virtually nothing had changed, and parents still have a variety of tools to prevent the other parent from having any influence over the child’s life.

The Australian government plans to back up the law with a nationwide network of Family Relationship Centres which will help parents draw up an agreement about a child’s parenting after separation.

Together with compulsory mediation this is hoped to discourage parents to go to Court over their children.

It is estimated that about 40% of relationships with a dependent child in Australia break up, and in about 12% of cases the children end up living mainly with the father (New Zealand: around 15%).

However, fathers’ groups warn that the new measures could still fail if the issue of radical feminist views is not addressed in those organisations picked to run the Family Relationship Centres.

Plans are afoot to produce a free special edition of Father & Child for fathers of newborns, to be distributed through hospitals.

This would be the second such edition: the first had been produced in the year 2000 and distributed through Christchurch and Canterbury hospitals only. The Father & Child editorial team is hoping to achieve wider coverage this time around.

The New Dads Edition will cover many of the topics of the 2000 publication, including breastfeeding, birth stories and postnatal depression. New features will include some special situations such as fathers not in a relationship with the mother of the child, and stories about the ‘homecoming’ with the baby.

A new survey of discipline in the home claims to have found physical punishment is used extensively on children. The study, commissioned by the Save the Children charity, interviewed 80 children aged five to 14 years.

It found that 92% of the children had experienced hitting or smacking and 40% of five to seven-year-olds reported being hit around the face, head or back.

Survey author Terry Dobbs says many of the children said they were hit out of anger. The majority said being smacked was often the first reaction of parents to something they did wrong. They also reported they were most often smacked for hurting others and were hit more often by men.

Dobbs says “many” of the children “voiced concern about the dangers of smacking” and thought “other types of punishment would be more effective”.

Save the Children says the research shows too many children are on the receiving end of physical punishment. Children’s advocates say the survey does accurately reflect what is happening in New Zealand.

Former children’s commissioner Dr Ian Hassall says New Zealanders do tend to hit children and surveys such as this one are useful as it makes people face the truth.

A new judicial complaints process became reality from August 1 2005, with “The Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act 2004” coming into effect.

According to the media statement issued by the government, the Act “establishes a transparent and accessible process for people to make complaints about the conduct of Judges, and allows for a full investigation of those complaints”.

Ian Haynes ONZM has been appointed to the role of Judicial Conduct Commissioner. Attorney General Michael Cullen described Mr. Haynes as a “long-standing and prominent member of the legal profession” and said he was “superbly qualified for the job”.

The Act aims to strengthen the link between complainants, parliament, and the courts. If a complaint is upheld, governments can now effectively remove a judge on the basis of that complaint.

This has big consequences for parents who have felt either powerless in court cases involving the custody of their children, or that they were treated unfairly by a judge or other official in the Family Court.

This down-to-earth book doesn’t pretend to know all the answers to every parenting question, which is why it is such a useful resource for first-time fathers.

Australians Tony White and Dr. Graeme Russell jointly have more than 30 years experience in the field of parenting, helping men fully experience the joys of fatherhood.

Useful tips are combined with fathers’ personal experiences of being a Dad. Lots of photo’s, cartoons, different fonts and graphics add to the visual appeal, and make this book both very informative and pleasurable to read.

Practical and straightforward, this book fully acknowledges the vital importance of fathers in families, and delivers the message in an educated non-patronising way.

by Hugh Joughin

Advertising for Father day threatened to be heavily boy orientated again this year. Following on from our news piece last year, we would love to take credit for what appeared to be a far more balanced approach in 2004.

While there were plenty of examples of only fathers and sons, publications tended to opt for pictures of “man alone”. Depictions of fathers and daughters were still hard to come by however ! Maybe next year.

A research review about successful approaches for working with young males issued by the Ministry of Youth Development calls for a strength-based approach to youth work centred around ‘anchoring points’.

“Young men need as many ‘anchoring points’ – contact with competent, caring and prosocial adults—as possible.” The review also found that “the more intense a programme is, and the longer it goes for, the more effective it is likely to be”.

The report is critical of ‘educational’ programmes for young men, performed in a group setting and focusing on only one ‘problem’.

“A ‘whole person’ approach works better than a problem focus. Even when addressing specific areas of risk, programmes will be more effective if they engage with young men’s other needs as well.” says the report.

Youth Development Minister John Tamihere had announced in August this year that young males will be one of the government’s top social priorities. He said he was ‘sick and tired’ that young men are being blamed for all and everything that goes wrong.

Men are lagging behind women in five of the six health indicators compiled for the government’s 2004 Social Report. The annual Social Report attempts to measure the social wellbeing of a Society with a wider range of indicators than just economic.

There is a nearly five year gap in life expectancy between males and females in New Zealand according to the latest available figures (2000-02).

A New Zealand male cannot expect to reach retirement age (65) without a disability that will require assistance by another person or a complex device: this “independent life expectancy” is 64.8 years for men and 67.5 for women. Overall the rate of disability has risen slightly for men between 1996 and 2001 to 10.2% and fallen for women to 9.3%

Men also lead the suicide statistics, with 77% of all suicides being males. Internationally New Zealand is different than most other countries as here it is younger men (up to 35) who kill themselves, whereas elsewhere men over 65 are most at risk. Within the OECD New Zealand has the worst male youth suicide rate.

The only health indicator where men fared better than women is obesity, although the latest figures in the Social Report were from 1997. 18% of adult non-Maori women were considered obese (28% for Maori), but only 13% of non-Maori males (27% for Maori).

Men were also lagging behind women in some other key indicators, such as satisfaction with work/life balance (women overall happier) and participation in tertiary education. Men are more than twice as likely than women to get injured during work.

Maori were also doing significantly worse than non-Maori in all of the health indicators in the Social Report. A Maori male’s independent life expectancy is a mere 58 years. In most health indicators the gap between males and females is bigger for non-Maori than for Maori.