National associate welfare spokeswoman Anne Tolley says Child Youth and Family needs to lift its act after a report two social workers quit alleging "gross professional incompetence" in the organisation.

The Weekend Herald reported that two British social workers quit in protest.

The two men were recruited by CYF last year and resigned in protest at the "unethical practices".

Manurewa social worker Jonny Ward, 35, wrote to CYF Minister Ruth Dyson and has been invited to meet her and officials. The other social worker did not want to be named.

Mr Ward gave an example where he assisted another social worker, eight police and two dog handlers remove children from a family. He said the other social worker tried to stop the mother cuddling her son who was upset. The children were not told in advance they would be taken to their grandmother.

"We could have spoken to the grandmother beforehand and told the children, `It's okay, you know your grandmother'. Instead we had them in the back of the car, all three of them crying because they didn't know where I was taking them."

Social workers in Britain tried to get parental consent to removal and at least prepare the children to leave.

The Ministry of Social Development official in charge of CYF, Ray Smith, said local practice placed more emphasis than Britain on keeping children within the extended family, which could mean searching for family members if children had to be removed in an emergency.

Mrs Tolley said the story reflected other accounts she had heard and CYFS had failed to fulfil the Government's promise of a competent, safe service where poor social work would not be tolerated.

Figures to the end of October showed 30 percent of social workers were registered.

"This is clearly about more than just two social workers," she said.

"The minister should take what these British social workers have to say seriously."

In answer to Mrs Tolley's questions about registration Ms Dyson said by the end of October 383 of 1283 permanent CYFS social workers were registered.

During a select committee hearing last year Ms Dyson defended the low number of registrations.

"The Social Workers Registration Act came into effect in April 2003 and you couldn't apply to be registered until 1 October 2004 so having 411 staff registered as at 31 August, in less than two years, is in fact a major achievement for CYF," she said.

"Child, Youth and Family is committed to having its social work staff gain social work registration as part of its ongoing support for professionalisation of its workforce."

The British social workers' comments follow controversy over a website set up to name and shame CYFS workers people believed failed and bullied them.

A spokeswoman for Ms Dyson referred calls to Mr Smith.

Copyright: NZPA 2007