Kiro – I question her validity

WhaleOil has a great letter and response from Cindy Kiro.

This letter appears to be part of a campaign against my office by extremist religious political lobby group Family First as it quotes liberally from the most recent Family First newsletter. For this reason I question the letter’s originality and validity.

Fancy that. Well, let’s quote her own web site.

The Children’s Commissioner Role

The Children’s Commissioner speaks out on behalf of all children to ensure their rights are respected and upheld.

This position is established by statute; the Children’s Commissioner Act 2003, and previously the Children, Young Persons and Families Act 1989.

The Act allows the Commissioner to inquire into any matter affecting children and young people in any service or organisation and investigate the actions of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services.

The Children’s Commissioners Office is an independent Crown Entity and promotes children’s and young people’s wellbeing through advocacy, public awareness, consultation, research and investigations/monitoring.

Interesting that there’s nothing about calling those who criticise her inactions a “extremist religious political lobby group”. In fact, the only thing that we can say for certain that she is supposed to do (aside from “advocacy, consultation” etc)  is to investigate complaints regarding the actions of CYFS.

So I went searching for “complaint” on her site. 3 items were returned.

School students human rights
Children’s rights in youth justice
Complaints about the department of Child Youth and Family (PDF, 47KB)

Clicking on the “Complaints about the department of Child Youth and Family produces a single page, which has a brief and not very interesting flow chart.

So you’ve been wronged by CYFS, you are at your wits end. You believe you’ve been shabbily treated, and maybe even the law has been broken. You child has been taken from your arms and placed in an abusive situation. But you have one last hope, the Children’s commissioner!

I think most parents in this situation would get the definite impression that the commissioner was not going to be much help.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a complains service that didn’t list a phone number before…