Anne Tolley
National Party Associate Welfare Spokeswoman

21 November 2005

CYF restructuring great for consultants

National’s Associate Welfare spokeswoman, Anne Tolley, is questioning Child, Youth and Family’s restructuring exercise, Structuring for Success, which saw more than $920,000 of the $2.6 million budget go to consultants.

“Consultants did very well out of Structuring for Success while social workers are still struggling with high case loads. This all too often leads to a failure to investigate serious cases of neglect,” says Mrs Tolley.

Structuring for Success was described as ‘an exercise in organisational alignment aimed at ensuring a whole organisation focus on service delivery’. Its purpose was to ensure that ‘the right people were in the right jobs’.

“While the management of this organisation navel-gazes so extravagantly, abused and neglected children continue to languish in the in-trays of over-loaded, poorly paid social workers on the frontline of New Zealand’s appalling violence record against children,” says Mrs Tolley.

“While some staff can now feel comforted that the Structuring for Success exercise confirmed they were the right person in the right job, not a single child was comforted by this $2.6 million exercise.”

ENDS

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