Among its findings, the report said New Zealand “has a woefully deficient number of mental health services that are aimed specifically at young people”.

“Furthermore, doctors, teachers, and parents are poorly trained to identify those young people who might be at risk,” the report said.

“Given that the opportunity for successful intervention is greatest when the intervention occurs early, it is economically sensible to increase the mental health work force in New Zealand, particularly those who are specifically trained to work with children and adolescents.”

It found there are capacity deficits for both mental health screening and treatment, although acknowledged in the current economic climate more cost effective ways need to be found to identify and treat adolescents who are at risk.

“Preliminary work, for example, has shown that therapy provided on-line, or e-therapy, holds some promise for treating adolescents with anxiety and depression. The other advantage of e-therapy is that the cost is low and there is little or no barrier to access.”

Better screening to detect those with mental health issues, and improved access to therapy are also recommended.

“Given the concerns about the possibility that antidepressants can increase the risk of self-harm, increasing access to psychological therapies for young people would be important.”

Read Article Paul HArper in NZ Herald

Image: new.stv.

Convening a night court to determine whether a health board’s decision not to do life-prolonging surgery on a terminally ill boy would amount to culpable homicide was important for transparency, a medico-legal expert says.

At the hearing on May 8, a judge ruled that the decision did not amount to culpable homicide, finding it was in accordance with “good medical practice”.

The seven-year-old boy died the next day.

Last October, he had a feeding tube inserted because he could no longer swallow food or medication. On May 4, the tube, which provided almost all of his nutrition and hydration, became dislodged. Surgery was required to reinsert it and doctors said that without it he would die within days or weeks.

Senior doctors, nurses and the boy’s mother were unanimous that the tube should not be reinserted

Otago University law professor and medico-legal expert Mark Henaghan said the court’s decision was consistent with past cases in New Zealand and Britain.

“The courts are looking for a very strong body of medical opinion. It’s got to strongly say that in this situation it would be just cruel and inhumane to perform this operation.

“It has to be a high standard because generally speaking the medical world is about saving lives, not letting lives go.”

It was a good decision to go through the court to get the decision vetted by the judiciary, not just the child’s parent and doctors, he said. “It gives it a public accountability which is quite important. You don’t want life-and-death decisions being made behind closed doors. ”

Read Article in DomPost

Read in CathNews

In the budget today, the government made good on this promise, allocating $942 million to the project, completing its funding (the balance was provided in last year’s budget; much of which remains unspent).

The UFB rollout is expected to cost at least three times the government’s contribution, with private partners providing the majority of funding.

The budget also provided a further $28 million to connect fibre to schools.

In other IT developments, the budget allocaated Statistics NZ $58 million upgrade its IT systems over the next four year, and $27.6 million was ear-marked for “igovt” services, which include log-ons to council websites, and agency sites such as the Companies Office (ironically, off-line this afternoon).

In the broader area of research and development, total portfolio funding was trimmed $10 million to $773 million.

The government’s six-year $300 million rural broadband initiative will be primarily funded through an annual levy on the telecommunications industry.

* Some of the original $1.5 billion was hived off to education-related spending

Source

• The National Business Review
• Image: UFB

An earlier newspaper report described the accused as acting defiantly in court and suggested that his associates gave him a gang salute when he left the dock

But the grandmother said that  he was not behaving defiantly  but was  ”trying to keep it together”. ”When we visited him in the cell afterwards, he was sobbing, crying. Poor thing, he loved her.”

She said that  when supporters raised heavily tattooed arms and gave him the thumbs up when he left the dock, “ it was their way of saying ‘We love you, bro, we love you, bro.’”

“All those young boys use that sign. Who doesn’t have tattoos now? It does not mean they are gang members,”

The man was charged with murder and illegal possession of a firearm and was remanded in custody to reappear later this month. He and the victim, 23, were given name suppression.
The shooting took place about 4pm on Sunday at a property in Ngaio St, Otaki Beach. The woman was flown to Wellington Hospital but died early the following morning.

The woman had a daughter with the accused and an older son to another father. Her son was present at the shooting.

The grandmother said her family was helping the victim’s family with funeral arrangements. “We are devastated the girl is gone; she has been part of the family. We are all one family.”

l TVNZ report
Read Article by Kay Blundell on Stuff.co.nz

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When Christine Yarzabek, a first-grade teacher in Hershey, Pa., heard that Osama bin Laden had been shot and killed, she was at a loss. ”9/11 happened before my students were even born,” she said. “It makes it hard to truly tell them in an appropriate way what is going on.”

Yarzabek teaches 22 six-year-olds from various backgrounds. Her class includes English language learners, including Spanish-speaker Alejandro, who told Yarzabek that bin Laden should have been imprisoned, rather than killed. It also included Adwaith, of India, who understood exactly what was going on. How was she supposed to handle the situation?

Last Monday, Yarzabek addressed those who were aware of the news individually. “It would be good if they went to jail for all of their lives instead of having to be killed,” Alejandro told her in one of these sessions. Another student, Ethan, recounted the events by saying he heard that the “bad man” died because he was “the one who planned exploding the twin towers.” Adwaith described a terrorist as “a really bad person who hates our country.”

Teachers of upper grades can assume a higher level of awareness among their students. Julie Caccamise, who teaches Model United Nations and social studies electives in Washington D.C.’s Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, said she felt the event presented “a really important opportunity to give my students a chance to be open about their feelings.” She also helped her class make sense of a seemingly infinite trove of sources of information.

Students in Caccamise’s class, including senior Nathan Kohrman, 18, grew up near the site of the September 11th attack on the Pentagon and witnessed the aftermath firsthand. “It was a Berlin Wall moment, a pivotal moment that people don’t see happen in their lifetimes,” Kohrman said. He sat as Caccamise offered a forum for mulling over the ramifications of bin Laden’s death. Caccamise contextualized the events that shaped the city her students grew up in. She then allowed her students to ask questions of their teacher and each other. Students pondered whether or not bin Laden should have been taken into custody, rather than killed, and discussed the value of life. Caccamise said she was surprised by her students’ “depth of awareness.”

Read article in Huffington Post
WATCH: Alejandro, a first-grade student share his thoughts on the killing
Image: Source Huffington Post

The foodbank had just two cans of tuna, three cans of beetroot, a can of corn, some spreads, baked beans and canned tomatoes earlier this week, director Stephanie McIntyre said. An appeal on Thursday had attracted donations, but those had quickly gone out the door.

The foodbank, which normally would have opened ahead of the long weekend, was forced to close on Thursday  -  though help was still available for those in dire need, with the agency having funds to buy food.

“The number of people asking for food has grown so rapidly that the quantity of food coming into the foodbank is going out the door straight away,” she said.

The foodbank gave out 903 food parcels in the first three months of this year, compared with 627 in the same period last year  -  a 44 per cent increase. ”What’s criminal is the increase in foodbank reliance we haven’t seen since the nineties.”

The increased demand was caused by rising living costs, less available part-time and casual work, less affordable housing, and Work and Income being more sparing with special needs grants for items such as food grants or high power bills, she said. ”There’s been a real tightening up of criteria.”

Wellington City Mission’s Father Des Britten said the centre was closed over the Easter break. There had been a recent increase in demand for food parcels but it was not “overwhelming”. For Easter, the mission added Easter eggs to food parcels, donated during a charity motorcycle run.

Source:
Tom Hunt Dom Post

Image: ISARC

His son is a convicted killer, but Whanganui man Maurice Bourke plans to welcome him home with open arms.

David Bourke  will be freed from prison next month after serving five months for the manslaughter of his brother Timothy whom he shot dead in October 2009. Timothy had pleaded with him to take his life after spiralling into depression when their mother died.

Bourke spent 411 days in custody before being sentenced to two years, 10 months’ imprisonment in December. He will return to his family home, where he shared a bedroom with Timothy for 47 years, and is likely go back to his job at a freezing works.

His father and sister Karyn Bryan were both delighted about his pending release, defence lawyer Steve Winter said.

“The family will need to heal and the only place that’s going to happen is when he’s back. We all know they’re really uncomplicated people and something really complicated has happened to them and they will struggle … I’ve got no doubt about that.”

While Bourke had “coped” with prison, it was not the right place for him, Mr Winter said. “You needed to be there to understand what was going on in that house.”

Read the article by BRONWYN TORRIE on Stuff

“It’s not like we were only together for a couple of years … we’ve known each other for 15 years,” she told 60 Minutes last night.

“I haven’t seen him yet, so I’m hoping that maybe when I see him I might be able to look into his eyes … I know him, I just know him so well.”

“He just cried and he said ‘I can’t stop thinking about you and the kids’,” she said.

“I really needed to know that he was worried about us. That’s one of the things I married him for, he was so good at looking after me and such a protector. I felt secure and safe with him and that was a big thing.”

The couple, who met at age 15 and married when Anna was 20, have four children – Finn, 7, Jack, 6, Lucy, 4, and Wade, 2.

Despite the arrest, Anna said she couldn’t stop loving Macdonald.

“I can’t just switch off. The day before I loved him and we were laughing. I can’t just switch off and say ‘I don’t love you any more’. We’ve just been through so much together in these last nine months. I don’t know how we could just write that off.”

Her situation was the worst anyone could ever be in, she said.

“I just feel like it’s someone else’s life and I’m looking in.”

“It just doesn’t feel like me. It’s not my life, it’s not happening to me.”

“I want the person to be caught that killed Scott but now all I can think about is my family and my kids and how they don’t have a dad either.”

Macdonald, 30, has indicated he would fight the charge of murder. He also faces six other charges, but the nature and details of those are suppressed.

Source

Stuff  National

Once again the livelihood of the Pacific’s indigenous people is under threat. Ulrich Delius, notes that many of them have already had to suffer from the many large-scale nuclear bomb tests the United States, Britain and France conducted there. “Many indigenous people still suffer from the radiation that has since made it into the eco-chain.”

Delius says claims by some Japanese scientists that the radioactivity found in fish will be concentrated in the bones, and thus not harmful to humans, didn’t make sense. because “each year, thousands of tons of fish and their bones are processed into fish meal, animal food and in part to fish sticks,”

Ulrich Delius, is an  Asia expert for the Society for Endangered People.

See update from Friends of the Earth

Scientists to test Water in Pacific Ocean

Read Article
UPI.com

He wants a “nationwide conversation” on how to reduce bullying. He also expects that Education Review Office audits of schools will reflect schools’ anti-bullying plans. ”I worry about bullying,”  Mr Key said . “I worry about youngsters going to school and being intimidated by others and it’s thuggish-type behaviour that needs to stop and we want to send a strong message about that…I have very high expectations that youngsters will be able to go to school and enjoy being at school in a safe environment and if they are subject to bullying, I expect that to be dealt with.”

Br Patrick Lynch, the CEO of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office thinks that “bullying behaviours in schools are always unacceptable given the law and more importantly the emphasis modern society gives to the human rights of individuals. He believes, however “that in schools where there is a strong culture of respect for others and respect for differences, along with high expectations for positive behaviour put before students,  bullying is less of an issue”

“Unfortunately, students see too much violence in the media, which does affect their perception of what is acceptable and what is not.” said Brother Pat ” Nevertheless, trustees, principals and teachers all have a duty of care responsibility when students are at school.”

He agrees that “there needs to be robust policies and practices in place to ensure students are safe, within the bounds of reasonableness.”

Read Audrey Young in New Zealand Herald
Advice about dealing with bullying
The Peace Foundation -Cool Schools