Of course Oranga Tamariki Staff were sexually inappropriate to kids in state care

Second Oranga Tamariki sexual misconduct allegation discovered during surprise visit

Allegations of “inappropriate sexual behaviour” have surfaced against two staff members of Oranga Tamariki and former police commissioner Mike Bush will take over management of its youth residences.

The two staff members acted independently, Oranga Tamariki chief executive Chappie Te Kani said, and were alleged to have offended against five children.

The incidents occurred at two separate facilities. The first was reported to Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis on June 8, he said. The second was discovered when the Children’s Commission sent an inspector to another facility last week.

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.

Shaun Brown, an associate deputy chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, said the ministry was struggling with the number of children currently in its justice residences. He said over crowding in the facilities had led to children connecting with each other, and orchestrating crime to commit after their release.

Don’t.You. Fucking. DARE. Be. Surprised. At. Staff. Abusing. Children. In. State. Care!

Don’t you fucking dare!

No!

You can’t pretend to be this ignorant any longer!

As TDB has spent half a decade pointing out,

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.

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