Abstracts – Session One

10:00 – 11:00 – 6EN – 414

Chair:  Farrah Jabeen

Eileen Joy: ’Hard to reach families’ and austerity politics in recent government policy: What does this say about Oranga Tamariki today?

Recently, Minister for Oranga Tamariki, Tracey Martin has countered concerns about Oranga Tamariki by stating that it is only two years into a five-year planned reform. In this presentation, it is suggested that to understand these current reforms we need to consider its genesis in the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children (2011).

Bacchi (2009) will be used to examine ‘what the problem was/is presented to be’ in the Green Paper and how that ultimately lead to and informed the reformation of Child Youth and Family into Oranga Tamariki. It is suggested that the context of the Green Paper, coming as a response to both the heavily publicised deaths of some Māori children and the fiscal constraints post GFC, has created a problematic foundation for these current reforms that is both racist and poverty blaming.

Julia Tod:  Collaborative Network Reform:  Community of Learning – Kāhui Ako Across School Leaders

The intention of this PhD study is to investigate the effectiveness of teacher and leader collective capacity through collaborative network reform and understand the extent to which these networks impact alternative career pathways for teacher leadership. The Community of Learning – Kāhui Ako policy has two driving intentions; to raise the achievement of students and provide alternative career pathways for educators. This project investigates the Across School Leader role and the conditions required within a collaborative network for this type of teacher leadership role to be effective. The career pathways for these fixed term appointed leaders will also be explored to identify the genuine alternative or traditional career pathways that eventuate as a result of their experience. This research project follows an exploratory sequential mixed methods design to gather data to explore a phenomenon. Participants will subsequently be surveyed and interviewed in order to further investigate relationships found in the original data set, at a deeper level.

Briar O’Connor: Normalising the Vulnerable Children Act in a school

One way to address Aotearoa New Zealand’s high rates of child abuse and neglect is to improve child safety in schools, as teachers have the most contact with children outside of the home (Beddoe, de Haan, & Joy, 2018; D. Wilson & Webber, 2014).  The Vulnerable Children Act 2014 (VCA) has legislated that child protection policies (CPPs) be implemented in all schools, in the place of mandatory reporting.  This includes staff being able to identify and respond to suspected and actual abuse.  Schools must now ensure CPPs are implemented, integrated and embedded – the facets that make up Normalization Process Theory (May & Finch, 2009).  Working with a school to discover how this might happen informs my PhD.  In this paper I will outline some of the challenges of the Act, of working within a school environment, and of dis/connections between social work and education.