Tag: Family

  • Meetings to strengthen the Family

    April 14 – 20

    Meetings to strengthen the Family

    Talks specifically for Christian Dads

    A group of 15 Christian home educating fathers is coming from the USA to investigate New Zealand as a possible place to which to re-locate their families.

    They are eager to meet with other men living in New Zealand to learn about the country, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, financial institutions, health and welfare issues, how home education works here and what the home education community is like.

    Four public meetings are planned in order to facilitate this, and each meeting is also featuring a formal talk by either Geoff or son Isaac Botkin. These should be of particular interest and benefit to New Zealand Christian home educating fathers, as well as mums, to enhance and encourage their own vision for what home education can and will do for their families, the Church and society as a whole.

    The Botkin family lived near Snells Beach and then in Christchurch for six years, making it their business to meet and get to know as many leaders as they could in the Church, the media, economics, politics, home education, etc. Do strive to come to whichever of their meetings you are able.

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    AUCKLAND Public Meeting
    Date: 14 April Tuesday
    Venue: Ngaire Ave Bible Chapel
    3 Ngaire Ave, Epsom, Auckland 1003

    http://www.google.co.nz/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GZAZ_en-GBNZ315NZ315&q=map+of+ngaire+ave+newmarket+auckland&safe=active
    6:30pm Public meeting
    Speaker:: Geoffrey Botkin
    Topic: New Zealand’s Future Role in the History of Christianity

    Admission: Free, with voluntary offering

    For more information:

    Contact:: Chris and Erin OR Craig and Barbara Smith
    Email: cjanderin@maxnet.co.nz OR  barbara@hef.org.nz
    Phone:
    (09) 579-4877 OR (06) 357-4399

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    HAMILTON Public Meeting

    Date: April 16 Thursday, 12 noon

    Event: Bring and Share Lunch

    Speaker:  Isaac Botkin

    Venue: Trinity Reformed Baptist Church

    Cnr Miro and Matai Street, Maeroa, Hamilton

    Topic: The Importance of Second Generation Home Schooling: Isaac Botkin

    Admission: Free, with voluntary offering

    For more information:

    Phone: 07 843-7554

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    TAURANGA Public Meeting

    Date: April 16 Thursday

    Venue: Mt Baptist Church

    cnr Ranch Road and Tui Street, Mt Maunganui

    7:00pm  Public meeting

    Topic:The Three Greatest Issues Facing the Men of New Zealand: Geoffrey Botkin
    Question and Answer

    Admission: Free, with voluntary offering

    Phone:  07 575-5787

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    CHRISTCHURCH Public Meeting

    Date: April 20, Monday
    Venue: Middleton Grange School, 50 Acacia Avenue, Upper Riccarton, Christchurch 8041

    7:30 pm Public Meeting

    Speaker: Geoffrey Botkin

    Topic: How Men Can Strengthen Their Families in the 21st Century, And Why This is Important

    Admission: Free, with voluntary offering

    For more information:

    Contact:  Calvary Office OR Craig and Barbara Smith

    Phone: (03) 341-5223 OR (06) 357-4399

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    Geoffrey Botkin
    Writer, Director, & Producer
    Geoffrey Botkin

    Veteran producer and IT pioneer Geoffrey Botkin serves as an advisor to the Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences. He has written and directed some of the most controversial and widely watched public affairs films of the last twenty years, reaching viewers across the U.S., Russia, Europe, and Australasia. He has produced or executive-produced more than one-hundred documentary films, television productions, and other media projects.

    In addition to time spent as CEO of an experimental international print/broadcast/Internet media conglomerate, Mr. Botkin has invested many years into the training of young media professionals, primarily at Deerwood Studios in the U.S. and the Family Television Network of New Zealand.

    Mr. Botkin has lectured on philosophy and history at Hillsdale College, on politics at the Heritage Foundation, and on theology at worldview conferences in the U.S. and New Zealand. With his wife and seven children, he is currently researching the future of the feature motion picture.

    Family websites:

    http://westernconservatory.com/

    To hear some of Geoffrey’s talks:

    Geofreyf’s daughters (Authors of So Much More) blog:

    Return of the Daughters DVD
    http://hef.org.nz/2008/2720/

    Geoffrey’s oldest son’s blog – Isaac will be speaking in Hamilton

    http://hef.org.nz/2009/hamilton-meeting-the-importance-of-second-generation-home-schooling/

  • Research Shows Need for Renewed Debate on Abortion

    MEDIA RELEASE

    1 November 2008

    Research Shows Need for Renewed Debate on Abortion

    Family First NZ says that the building body of evidence about the potential harm of abortion to the mother means that the debate on the abortion should be reopened.

    The University of Otago study found that women who had an abortion faced a 30% increase in the risk of developing common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.

    “Yet this message is nothing new or controversial. It is consistent with research worldwide which is being done into the effects of abortion,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

    Last week, a study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research also found a link between abortion and psychiatric disorders and refuted a American Psychiatric Association report released in August claiming abortion causes no mental health issues for women. The research team found induced abortions resulted in increased risks for a myriad of mental health problems ranging from anxiety to depression to substance abuse disorders.

    In 2007, an Australian research team from the University of Queensland found a close connection between abortion and drug and alcohol abuse. And earlier this year, The Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK recommended updating abortion information leaflets to include details of the risks of depression. They said that consent could not be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information.

    “With 98% of abortions in NZ being performed on the basis of the mental health of the mother, it is time that the research on the post-abortion mental health outcomes was given equal weight with the pre-abortion claims.”

    “Along with protecting the rights of the unborn child, we need to protect the rights of women to know the medical facts in order that they can make fully informed decisions,” says Mr McCoskrie.

    Family First NZ is calling for a law which requires informed consent (including ultrasound) for all potential abortions, and counselling to be provided only by non-providers of abortion services. Parental notification of teenage pregnancy and abortion should happen automatically except in exceptional circumstances approved by the court.

    ENDS

    For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:

    Bob McCoskrie – National Director

    Mob. 027 55 555 42

  • Police ‘Taxi Service’ for Truant Sets Dangerous Precedent

    Original article:

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/4642055a11.html

    MEDIA RELEASE

    August 2008

    Police ‘Taxi Service’ for Truant Sets Dangerous Precedent

    Family First NZ says that a dangerous precedent is being set by the police by taxiing a truanting 14 year old to school every morning, and fails to deal with the underlying problems.

    “The causes of truancy are predominantly a lack of parental supervision or a breakdown in the functioning of the family to the point that the parent has no control over the actions of the child,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

    “In this case, reported from Christchurch and under a new scheme called Rock On, the police are simply fulfilling the role of the parent and are providing a short term solution to a potentially longer term problem.”

    “The problem, which is becoming more common, is that a student is being left to fend for themselves – in this case from 6.15 in the morning. Schools are already expressing concerns that children are being dropped off at schools earlier and earlier.”

    30,000 students are absent without leave every week in NZ, and the truancy rate has increased 41% since 2002.

    “Research is quite clear that parental supervision needs to be in place at key times of the day, including before and straight after school, to ensure that the child doesn’t become at-risk.”

    “Unfortunately, the expectation on both parents to work, economic pressures on families, and the hours that parents work, means that children and teenagers are more likely to be unsupervised at key times,” says Mr McCoskrie. “Shift work can also mean that mum and dad are at home at completely separate times for their kids.”

    “It is time we expected and enabled parents to fulfil their important and essential role of supervising their children rather than trying to put ‘rescue nets’ and programmes in place which simply mask the problem.”

    “But this will mean a huge ‘mind-shift’ in terms of respecting the role of parents and supporting that role.”

    ENDS

    For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:

    Bob McCoskrie – National Director

    Mob. 027 55 555 42

  • Why a smacking ban must be slapped down

    A great article from Wales:

    http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/columnists/2008/07/29/why-a-smacking-ban-must-be-slapped-down-91466-21420462/

    Why a smacking ban must be slapped down

    I’M TOLD there are moves in Parliament to bring in a Bill to outlaw smacking. If they succeed, I will again oppose it, which seems odd when I abhor smacking and long for a world in which every child is free from fear.

    The reason for my objection is “mission-creep”, that insidious disease which overtakes too many pieces of legislation that at first seem sensible. In other words, give an idiot a law a sane man or woman would use sensibly and the idiot will abuse it.

    Mission-creep has overtaken terrorism laws so that they are now used against ordinary citizens. Latest figures reveal that councils across Wales and England launched more than 10,000 spying missions last year to investigate possible petty offences.

    Rules to curb paedophile activity have led to inexcusable situations like a mother from Aberfan being banned from riding in a taxi with her disabled child until she has a criminal record check.

    If a smacking ban succeeds, forget assurances that it will be used with common sense. Before long some good mum or dad will be hauled into court because, in a moment of panic, they tapped little Johnny’s legs for running into the road. The case will probably be thrown out when the court sees the whole picture, but not before that family has been traumatised.

    We already have laws to prevent the abuse of children – laws which are not used often enough in my opinion – but my fear of mission-creep if there is a total ban on smacking is very real.

  • More Support for Referendum

    http://republicans.org.nz/2008/mt-albert-launch-wayne-hawkins/

    Remember Sue Bradford’s amendment to the Crimes Act, the anti smacking bill?

    Eighty per cent of you said you didn’t want it.

    So what did the parliamentarians do? They passed it against your wishes.

    That bill should have gone to a binding National Referendum.

    You should have a chance to have your say.

    If we had been in power we would have done that, and your decision would have been binding.

    We promise you this. As soon as we gain a position of influence we will press for a binding national referendum on Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking law.

    Dave Llewell believes in restoring the family in New Zealand and supporting real fathering.

  • Family justice: the secret state that steals our children

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    From
    July 6, 2008

    Family justice: the secret state that steals

    our children

    Every year thousands of children are taken from their parents,

    largely on the say-so of ‘experts’. It is a secret and sometimes

    unjust process and the system must change

    Learn more about family justice | Write to your MP | Share your experiences

    Two weeks ago I got a phone call from a woman I hadn’t seen for four years. She was calling to tell me that she was moving abroad, unable to bear the pain of living in the same country as the daughter she is no longer allowed to see. “I wanted to thank you,” she said, “for being the only person who ever gave me a fair hearing.” I was seized with guilt. This woman had asked for my help, and I had utterly failed her. Her story had been just so incredible. She described a world where courts need no criminal conviction to remove your child, only the word of a psychiatrist or doctor, and can deny you the chance to call any expert in your defence. A world that uses the “welfare of the child” to gag you from discussing your case. Where even if you prove yourself innocent on appeal, your children may already have been adopted: in which case you will never be allowed to contact them again. A world which had treated her so badly, this rather pretty and utterly normal young woman, that she was sincerely thanking me just for listening.

    It had taken three calls from this lady and her boyfriend, a clean-cut army bloke, before I had agreed to go down to their provincial semi. We sat in their front room with the curtains drawn while they got out box after box of papers. And I got my first inkling of what it is like to go through the door into the secret state.

    This particular case had started, as many do, with a custody battle. The mother had started to worry about her ex-partner’s behaviour during his visits to their daughter. She approached social services to ask if they could supervise his visits. When the child then told a teacher that her father had touched her in bad places, the police were called. They filmed the child repeating the allegations. The upshot? A psychologist who watched the film but never met the mother, father or daughter wrote a report alleging that the mother had coached the daughter to lie. He never appeared in court, and was never cross examined. Yet the court, encouraged by social workers, accepted his view. The judge ordered that the daughter should go to live with her father – a man the mother was convinced was an abuser.

    My bitter regret, now, is that I did so little about that case. At the time I couldn’t help wondering if there was not more to it than the mother had let on. And there may well have been. But today, I’m not so sure. Because so many elements of her story fit patterns that I have since heard again and again. The reliance on experts who have never met the accused. The stormtrooper behaviour of some social workers. The legal aid solicitors acting for parents who are always in a rush. This mother was plunged into a world of acronyms and organisations that she knew nothing about. She was always on the back foot. Having been the person who reached for help from the system, she became its victim.

    The tale niggled away at me. I started asking questions. Soon after this encounter I met Denise and Nigel Clarkson, who had lost both their daughters after one sustained an unexplained injury, and who fought like tigers to get them back. Through the Eaton Foundation, which they founded, I met American doctors and radiologists who were challenging many of the assumptions made by British doctors who were diagnosing abuse from so-called “shaken baby syndrome” and certain tiny bone fractures.

    I began to write about cases where judges were speaking out publicly about the failings of social services. In early 2006, Mr Justice Ryder denounced Oldham Council for taking a baby away from his parents because of a doctor who “strayed from the role of expert into the role of decision-maker” and a family court judge who “failed to detect that that was what had happened”. Two courts refused to let the parents seek a second medical opinion. It was a year, the most formative year of that child’s life, before the Court of Appeal allowed them to call a neurologist who proved that the injury was caused before birth. We know of that blunder only because the judge involved chose to make his judgment public. Few judges do.

    The stories began to pour in. People left messages on my answering machine saying that the system was rotten but that they dared not speak out, because they had managed to get their children back. Some had taken a sick child to hospital, only to be accused of physical abuse. Some had been accused of “emotional abuse”, a category that has no definition in British law but which has jumped 50 per cent in the past ten years as a reason for taking children into care. Quite a number had complained about their local authority, for letting them down over special-needs education, for example, only to find themselves in turn accused of neglect. One woman in Sheffield sobbed that her two autistic sons had been robbed of their mother, as well as the care they needed, because she was accused of making up their symptoms.

    Some parents complained about social workers and hospitals refusing to give them copies of any papers or X-rays in their cases, which they needed to mount appeals. Every single one felt that the system was set against them before they could even assemble a defence. Some had real problems: violent ex-partners or unreliable new ones, low IQ, brushes with drugs in the past. Many had never been known to social services or the police before. All were desperate to be given the chance to prove that they were good parents, some begging the local authority to install CCTV cameras in their homes.

    Many alleged that their children were treated far worse in care: unloved, not allowed to do homework, some with a new bruise almost every time they came for supervised contact, bruises that were never explained.

    Since local authorities generally would not talk to me, citing confidentiality, I still had only part of the picture. Was there really a problem, or were these people all lying? I looked for figures. Were particular local authorities taking above-average numbers of children into care, for example? How many of these proceedings were contested? How many mothers were being accused of having Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, a psychiatric disorder that is supposed to be rare but seemed to be cropping up too often in my conversations? I would call the Home Office, which would refer me to the Lord Chancellor’s Department, which would refer me to the various incarnations of the Education Department, which would usually refer me back to the Home Office. Many of my questions were met with the answer that the data was “not held centrally”. This whole area started to look more and more like a hole inside government that ministers were simply not interested in.

    Telling the stories was fiendishly difficult. First there was the legal requirement to avoid publishing anything that might even indirectly lead to the identification of the child involved. This is understandable, but it means that what journalists can write is sometimes so thin, so patchy that it is hard to ask anyone to believe us – because the most pertinent facts are often very distinctive. It also means that we can never humanise stories with photos, of the kind that helped to secure the freedom of Angela Cannings and Sally Clark. This is despite the fact that children can be pictured and named in adoption magazines, even while their frantic parents are trying to mount an appeal to get them back. Secondly, there were often additional reporting restrictions. Some of these were sought by local authorities as soon as I called them to try to get their sides of the stories. Some of these orders were so badly drafted that our lawyers simply could not tell what we could say. Some bore no relation to the draft that we had been sent before the hearing. It costs money to fight such orders, money that local media may not have and nationals are reluctant to commit.

    The more often my articles were spiked or denuded of interesting detail, the more incensed I became. I began to feel that we, the liberal press, were part of a conspiracy of silence against people who had no voice. Worse, their children had no voice.

    Some of these children were being told that they were in care because their parents no longer wanted them. As soon as a care order is made, the local authority controls all communications between parents and children. In many cases contact is gradually reduced, sometimes from a few hours a week to an hour or so a month, at which point social workers can return to court and claim that the child no longer has a strong bond with his family. Such tactics are unbearable. Clearly there must be some protection for authorities that work in extremely tough territory. Social workers are lambasted as often for failing to protect children from danger as for misjudging the innocent.

    The problem is when laws that are meant to protect professionals from malicious allegations become an armoury against truth. There are good reasons why it is illegal to name a child involved in family court proceedings. Family law cases are fraught enough, without publicity adding to children’s suffering. But it is quite wrong that laws framed to protect child privacy are being used to protect the professionals. Two years ago, when the children taken into care by Rochdale Council in the fabricated “satanic abuse” scandal left care and publicly attacked the council for removing them, the council argued that it would be wrong to name the social workers because that would breach the children’s privacy – even though the children were desperate to speak out the minute they were free.

    It does not have to be like this. The media cannot name the victim in rape cases. But we do report the evidence. Family courts, which operate in camera, have a lower standard of proof than criminal courts. They “convict” on a balance of probabilities, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt. A lower threshold is thought acceptable because civil courts cannot send people to jail. But to lose your children, and for them to lose you, because a court finds that abuse is a “probability”, is a life sentence of another kind. This makes it even more vital that the system is accountable. Yet I cannot think of another area of public life that operates with so little scrutiny.

    The main piece of legislation governing child protection is the 1989 Children Act. The Act was passed in the wake of the Cleveland scandal, in which allegations of sexual abuse by two consultant paediatricians at one hospital led to 121 children being removed from their homes. The Act clearly states that there should be “minimum intervention in family life” and that a court order should be made only if “it can be shown that this is better for the child than not making an order”.

    Yet some parts of the country seem to have strayed a long way from that. This year, the education watchdog Ofsted became the regulator for Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service that provides guardians ad litem for children in care cases. Ofsted’s first two reports so far have been devastating. “Inspectors could not find evidence,” Ofsted says, “about how service managers satisfy themselves that family court advisers are reaching sound conclusions in order to make the right recommendations to courts about children’s lives”. It found that “most reports contain recommendations to the court that fail to take account of a key principle of the Children Act that there should be minimum state intervention in family life”. There is much more in similar vein. The hapless state of Cafcass is failing both children of innocent parents and children who are genuinely at risk.

    Cafcass is one safeguard in the system that is manifestly failing. Another safeguard is that local authorities cannot remove children without a court order. But the manner in which these court orders are sought means that they are rarely refused (the Government has been unable to give me a single example of a refusal). Parents are not always informed that an order is even being sought, so are not able to defend themselves. Even if they are there, the momentum is unstoppable.

    Bill Bache, the indefatigable solicitor who acted for Sally Clark, explained it to me this way. “Court proceedings are initiated within a day or two. The local authority knows the ropes. Most parents, including the brightest and most articulate, are often too distressed and shocked to think straight. They may well turn up unrepresented. The local authority makes its case, often in lurid terms, stressing that the children are in acute danger and they are requesting an immediate interim care order. There is no time sensibly to evaluate the evidence, therefore, no doubt wishing to be safe rather than sorry, the court grants the order. Suddenly the children are gone.

    It is impossible to describe the shock, the isolation, that parents feel once their child is gone. Even educated people who can afford a good lawyer struggle to think straight. They feel alone against the system. Judges rely on reports by experts, social workers and guardians, many of whom are used to working together. This can produce a fatal lack of objectivity. I have spoken to some exemplary social workers and judges in the past few years. It is not my intention to demonise them all. But we must be able to spot whether the same individuals are reaching erroneous conclusions over and over again. At the moment any expert, social worker or judge who makes mistakes, goes beyond their brief or is on a crusade against parents is virtually immune from scrutiny. They do not expect that their evidence or their judgments will ever be made public. Remember that Professor Roy Meadow was only uncovered because he gave misleading evidence in the criminal courts, which are open. If family courts remain closed we will never be able to feel sure that justice is being done.

    Over the next few days I hope to paint a more detailed picture of the pieces of the secret state, offer some explanations as to why mistakes are made, and to outline some solutions. The Times’ interest is more than theoretical: we will continue to challenge various injunctions in the courts. But we also need your help by asking you to write to your MP. We will not give up. Because to sever a child from its family without due cause is licensed state oppression of the worst kind. It is, in fact, child abuse.

    Family justice

    Why the Government must act

    Privacy laws are designed to protect at-risk children. Yet these same laws are cited to prevent local authority childcare professionals, expert witnesses and guardians from being subjected to scrutiny for decisions that can tear families apart.

    The system claims that the welfare of children is paramount. But the only way to make the welfare of children paramount is to make childcare professionals properly accountable for their decisions.

    The press is allowed to report the workings of the criminal courts, even in rape cases, where victim identities are kept confidential. Yet it is denied access to the family courts that make decisions with far-reaching consequences. In 2005 the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee advised that more transparency was needed and that family courts should be opened to the press in all but exceptional circumstances.

    The Government consulted on the proposals, recognising that public confidence was plummeting. But it lost its nerve. The Ministry for Justice has yet to publish the results of a second consultation, which ended last October.

    Eight months later the Government cannot even say when it will respond to the consultation.