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Letter to the Editor, by Libby Robins
New Zealand Listener, 18-26 July 2009

Thank you for your timely and welltargeted editorial on child abuse (“Abuse of the system”, July 4). What has not been widely publicised on this issue, widely referred to as New Zealand’s greatest shame, is the long-term economic impact that child abuse has, blighting the whole community, not just the lives of the youngest and most vulnerable New Zealanders.

Within the first three years of life, children who live with constant violence and maltreatment are at particularly high risk of becoming so traumatised that their brain development is impaired. When this occurs, it creates lifelong difficulties for the individual and has a profound impact on society.

Estimates relating to New Zealand in a research paper prepared by Infometrics in 2008 suggest child abuse and neglect, such as that described in your editorial, impose an annual cost on New Zealand of about $2 billion, or over 1% of GDP.

That is the cost of policing, imprisonment, mental health, healthcare, drug addiction and other negative consequences and lost opportunities for young people and adults who have spent the early years of their lives subject to violence, neglect, maltreatment and abuse, and lead blighted adult lives as a consequence.

Effective early intervention designed to reach families at most profound risk of child maltreatment costs about $6000 per family per year. In mitigating the longer-term costs, this figure repays its investment 19 times over. There is, of course, a moral imperative to properly invest in early intervention programmes that will demonstrably address the causes of child abuse. The economic imperative simply reinforces that.

Those of us who work with families of young children at the most extreme risk of abuse fervently hope your editorial, and the wider debate around the issue, will finally persuade the Government to take action.

Libby Robins
Director, Family Help Trust
(Leeston, Christchurch)