Child safety review ignored stress of poverty

New Zealand government reforms aimed at improving child protection services have overlooked the role of parental stress caused by poverty, a University of Otago academic says.

Emily Keddell, a senior social work lecturer at Otago, has criticised the government’s “social investment approach” to dealing with child abuse and neglect.

She says this approach is based on reducing the future financial costs to the government by “reducing future [welfare] benefit system contact, criminal justice system contact, and notifications to the state child protection service”.