Earlier this week the right wing media and ZB Troll Farm responded to KCF used to cox down teenagers from a Oranga Tamariki youth detention as further evidence of the cuddle a crime mentality of the Left.
I’m not sure what the Right’s solution was?
SAS using helicopters?
Police dogs and Tear Gas?
Snipers?
That’s the level of intellect the NZ population use on crime and young people these days.
Now we find out sexual assault allegations and a fight club that staff oversaw.
12 OT staff have been stood down.
Oranga Tamariki is a Frankenstein monster, a neoliberal welfare experiment conjured up by Bill English and big data.
Luxon has already promised to revive this horror process if elected in 2023.
So what is the ‘social investment’ model?
Let’s look at Oranga Tamariki.
The argument is that children from backgrounds with specific features were the worst in terms of cost to the state, so if the state stepped in and removed the children quickly enough, that cost will fall.To do this they passed law reducing the legal rights of parents, streamlined their 0800 numbers and weaponised uplifts.
They also ensured that people with children taken from them are ineligible for legal aid so they couldn’t fight back legally.
Oranga Tamariki has always been about saving the State money and the welfare of the child is secondary to that!
Since the Royal Inquiry into Historic Abuse, Public Services Commission has done all it can to remove OT oversight and roll it into the ERO so that it saves the State money if children are abused in our care!
Public Services Commission Boss Peter Hughes was the chief executive at MSD in the 2000s that oversaw obscene tactics that included hiring private detectives to dig dirt on victims who were complaining about being abused in state care in a Test case that if MSD had lost would have cost the State untold in damages.
The elite Wellington Bureaucratic class want to remove the threat of costs and damages from poorly funded social services and the ‘social investment model’ is a means to spend money on the most costliest of those social problems without actually universally funding services.
For the State, amputating social responsibilities and the legal threat of damages frees them up from having to spend any money in the first place.
Rather than creating more taxes like a Capital Gains Tax or Financial Transaction Tax to properly funded the welfare of children in State care, it’s easier to amputate the responsibility altogether.
Social Investment is a bullshit term for ending universal provision of welfare under the guise of providing more resource for the most at risk target demographic.
Oranga Tamariki is that experiment in play.
One of the reasons OT was created was because National claimed CYFs, the old system, had a higher statistical risk of children being abused in state care than left in the community…
Children in state care are being abused and CYF is failing them – report
Children removed from their family home are being sexually and physically abused in foster homes – and the Social Development Minister says there’s no evidence they’re any better off in state care.
…you can’t pretend to be shocked that two OT staff were caught abusing vulnerable children in State Care BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT UNDERFUNDED STATE CHILD AGENCIES DO!
Remember this is the Government that removed the Children’s Commissioner who should have had oversight to look at systemic failures!
What is most outrageous here is that this pocket child prison seemed to have been flying under the radar…
Children’s Commissioner Judge Frances Eivers said her staff arrived to carry out an unannounced inspection of a facility, which she described as “prison like” and under resourced.
…how the fuck is it allowed to exist with barely any oversight and you only catch them out when you do a ‘surprise’ visit?
Oranga Tamariki is a brownwashed under resourced neoliberal experiment in welfare aimed at saving the State money down stream while minimising legal liability, it sure as fuck doesn’t have the interests of the child at heart.
Watching the Political Right, who would want way more Social Investment, decry the abuse it creates to demand more of that Social Investment is the very definition of sophistry.
But don’t pretend abuse of vulnerable children in State Care surprises you, don’t dare.
Don’t.
We refuse to tax the rich to fund this social infrastructure and look for neoliberal experiments to cut costs and protest the State from liability.
This is all on us.
This is why the Children’s Commissioner needs to be put back in an oversight role over OT.
Still complaining about using KFC to cox children off roofs being beaten at fight clubs in state care you fucking morons?
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Every parent and grandparent needs to be aware that in the event of an unforeseen tragedy, their children could end up in the hands of Oranga Tamariki, and reflect upon whether that’s good enough. The fight club violence should have all of us crying, and raging against the dumping of the Commissioner for Children, against the ineptitude of the government ministers involved, and querying the role of States Services Commissioner Hughes, and considering whether it is they who should all be incarcerated, in the best interests of our best investment in the future, all of our kids.
Whinging about KFC ? Whinging about KFC ? Bill English’s economic units being given paltry comfort food far far too late along the track is issue here.
“The fight club violence should have all of us crying, and raging against the dumping of the Commissioner for Children, against the ineptitude of the government ministers involved, and querying the role of States Services Commissioner Hughes, and considering whether it is they who should all be incarcerated,…………”
Ain’t that the truth!
And it seems the window dressing is continuing. ( https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/493262/oranga-tamariki-staff-organise-fights-between-youths-to-show-who-s-boss-ex-resident-says )
Arapuni Mana now sits on an advisory board for Oranga Tamariki, as does a relative of mine (also one of those yoof politicians) whose 3 siblings have also gone through the process – some of them severely damaged and only NOW slowly getting their shit together.
There’s a lot of hand wringing and faux concern from Munsters and public servants (and I blame the latter as much as the former).
I blame the public servants because they managed to change a good idea (the concept of Family Groups Conferences) into a complete and utter failure – merely a box ticking exercise that let them off the hook.
And yes, Peter Hughes should be at the head of the queue when it comes to hold people to account.
Snow White, I originally thought the dumping of the Commisioner for Children was a retrograde step, but now I’m not so sure. We need to be cognisant of the fact that these appalling things have been happening under thd CfC’s watch. The managers at these facilities are the ones that should be sacked and charged. Their lack of oversight, or thuggery, is beyond excuse; they have been getting paid under false pretences.
Peter Those fight-club boys are going to be damaged by what they’ve been subjected to. Some may never recover. Equally bad is their being taught that physical violence is an ok way to settle problems. This isn’t just kids scrapping among themselves, this is fights instigated and organised by the officials in charge of them, and Kelvin Davis shouldn’t be needing Mike Bush to tell him what to do. If, just for once, Davis had spoken out boldly and loudly stating that he was launching a police enquiry into the actions of the government employees involved in instigating violence, he’d be doing what a good Minister for Children should be doing.
Trevor Mallard’s indiscriminate torturing of the Parliamentary protestors with noise and water, shocked the police, who asked him to stop it right when it started. I know this to be true. There were young children there who shouldn’t have been there, and nobody in government cared, or spoke up on their behalf. They perpetuated bad parenting, and they rewarded Mallard with a cushy diplomatic posting. This was child abuse, with the Ministers of Children and Social Welfare hiding in the Beehive, police protected, along with the leaders of the Labour, National and Green Parties.
Numerous reputable organisations and NGO’s have made representations to government asking for the Commissioner for Children to be kept. They wouldn’t if they didn’t recognise the invaluable role of that Commissioner in protecting vulnerable children. Senior Oranga Tamariki staffers, as opposed to its variable consultants, want the Commissioner retained. Time and again Children’s Commissioners have spoken out publicly about issues impacting negatively upon children, and had the independence and the integrity to do so .The new group model looks designed to protect the government.
Yes Snow White. There is a total disconnect between ministers, commissioners, and departments. They all seem to have their own agendas, along with no common-sense or courage.
The inability of public servants to speak-out publicly is designed to protect ineffective/incompetent ministers and senior officials.
The grand old tradition of the Reformatory School, as developed by The Philanthropic Society of London, should continue to be supported, and social reformers should ensure that such working communities are properly provided within all Borstals — including cultural activities, such as the band and the football team.
The training ships of the Royal Navy and Marine Society should resume their vital role in providing high quality, full-time lodging, education and work experience for the boys — both those sentenced to the Borstal, and separately for those with insufficient care (orphans, children of convicts, children from the worst slums etc.)
The girls remaining on land must continue to be given the experience of running the Borstal community: agricultural work, tailoring, shoemaking & weaving, baking & cookery, laundry work, etc. There should be no excuse for not providing Borstal inmates the same quality of instruction and discipline as those in the cadet unit at a G.P.S. grammar school.
As long as it is considered normal for everyone to do what seems right to them we will have social problems. While increased taxes to improve social services is an answer it does not remove the source of the problem which is related to the inequality & lack of opportunity/ability for many to see a sustainable future in their current situation.
The correct response was to let them freeze up there and miss a couple of meals.
This comment for me sums up the glorious stupidity of the right. These organisations have a duty of care to these kids in the hope the State won’t abuse them. You can’t leave them out on the roof you fucking moron because that would open the state up to a claim of failing in their duty of care.
YOU WILL OF COURSE PAY THE BILL FOR THAT WILL YOU ANDREW?
He’s still trying to pay off his brain transplant Martyn
Andrew. They’re legally responsible for those children in lieu parentis, and would be criminally liable if they did this. The kids may be too immature to foresee any consequences or unwanted outcomes from their actions, but the adults in charge shouldn’t be. Right now, the gaolers who oversaw the brutal fighting are liable to face charges for that, but the dynamics appear far from simple.
KFC = National disaster ‘Obesity epedimic. Way bigger issue than climate change or fight club.
They should be lured from roof with broccoli and spinach.
Yes, OT needs nutritionists and chefs as well as mentors and employment trainers.
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