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Source: ONE News
A suggestion to take misbehaving children off their parents and put them into foster care has the Maori Party aghast.
The recommendation to the Social Development Ministry by an advisory group suggests the government could allow authorities to put badly-behaved children into the care of foster parents for up to a year.
Report co-author David Fergusson told the Dominion-Post there would have to be significant justification to remove a child from its family. He criticised the government's boot camp idea and said teachers needed better training in how to deal with problem students and greater investment should be put into courses for parents.
The report said studies showed putting children with specially trained foster parents for up to a year helped reduce further crime.
Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia, who is also the Associate Minister for Social Development, says it is a way of punishing children for the failure of their parents.
She says young people who have been taken off their parents and raised by others can be moved six or seven times by the state and that benefits no one.
Turia says it is also up to the wider family to help parents raise children.
