Media Statement
For immediate release Monday, 24 May, 2004

Turner: Family teams sound suspiciously familiar

The Government's plan to pilot family safety teams to ensure collaboration between the police, CYFS and other agencies is a direct pick-up from the United Future policy paper released last month, United Future's Judy Turner said today.

"And that is tremendous. It shouldn't matter where the ideas come from, but as we pointed out last month, the only solutions that can work here are radical because the problems are so huge," Mrs Turner said.

"United Future has been advocating for closer links between the police and CYFS, particularly in light of stories of child prostitution in Christchurch this year where CYFS basically said they would only get involved when the police asked them, and the Jetson-Aplin case where the police were called out 18 times on domestic violence matters, but no referral made to CYFS.

"If these situations become a thing of the past, then wherever the Government gets its ideas is fine by us," she said.

Ends.

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