Chief Executive Appointment: Department Of Child, Youth And Family Services

The State Services Commissioner, Michael Wintringham, announced today the appointment of Jackie Brown as the chief executive of the new Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. The department will be established on 1 October.

Ms Brown is currently the general manager of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Agency, an agency within the Department of Social Welfare. The new department will be based largely on the Children Young Persons and Their Families Agency.

The new department will provide care and protection, youth justice, and adoption services, through direct service provision and through contracts with community providers.

Mr Wintringham said Ms Brown was experienced in managing large service delivery operations in the social policy area.

"She also has management experience that will equip her to lead the new department as it is established," Mr Wintringham said.

Ms Brown has led the Children Young Persons and Their Families Agency and its predecessor -- the Children Young Persons and Their Families Service -- since December 1997.

She joined the Department of Social Welfare in 1972 and she has worked in the department since then, with the exception of five years during which she raised two daughters.

She was a senior manager with Income Support in Auckland between 1992 and 1995. In March 1995 she was appointed the national operational policy manager for Income Support, based in Wellington.

In December 1997 she was appointed the general manager of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Service. She was appointed the head of the new Children Young Persons and Their Families Agency when that agency came into existence in January 1999 following a merger with the Community Funding Agency. She is currently responsible for 2,200 staff and an annual budget of $270 million. The new department will have about the same number of staff and annual revenue of about $300 million.

Earlier this year Ms Brown attended Stanford University, California, and the Darden management school, University of Virginia, to study aspects of senior management and change management.

Ends

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>