Oranga Tamariki doesn’t deserve its Māori name
Police and social workers raise alarm about ‘mayhem’ and government cuts hitting kids
Police officers, social workers and Oranga Tamariki’s own staff are raising red flags about how the Government is funding youth services, saying underfunding, and funding cuts, are letting families fall through the cracks – and into crime.
Aroturuki Tamariki, the Independent Children’s Monitor, has issued its second report into the care of tamariki Māori and disparities they face when needing the care of Oranga Tamariki. Social workers, police officers, iwi leaders and Oranga Tamariki staff spoke to the monitor as part of its review.
Key findings included:
- Oranga Tamariki responds faster to reports of concern about non-Māori children than it does to reports about tamariki Māori.
- Funding cuts to Oranga Tamariki in 2024 and 2025 directly reduced frontline services, delivering funding cuts for early intervention services. The cuts had a more drastic impact for tamariki Māori.
- The Government is putting more money into offender-level programmes, while underfunding prevention and early intervention that could reduce crime and help children before they go on to commit crime.
- 95% of rangatahi Māori in youth justice had a report of concern made about their safety when they were younger. Half of those rangatahi had more than 10 reports of concern before they ended up in youth justice.
Stuff
The deal between the self interested public service and the neoliberal political class is that when the underfunding for the welfare state is so frayed that the innocent are being slaughtered, the neoliberal political class NEVER hold the self interested public service to account.
Oranga Tamariki can’t do their job because they are so underfunded and have had budgets to visit these kids and assess them in their own environment revoked and cut.
7AA that this Government cut forced OT into uplifting Māori children directly to Iwi community groups rather than the State prisons.
ACT screamed that was race based and cut it.
Now we have the predictable.
So.
Why are Oranga Tamariki allowed a Māori name?
I am sick to death of Government programs brown washing themselves with a Māori name while implementing policies that are brutal to Māori!
I say take back these Māori names, demand them to be stripped because they have not earned the mana of the Māori language!
Kāinga Ora have shut down their public house building obligations while homelessness explodes – demand the name back!
Oranga Tamariki damage Māori children – demand the name back!
Oranga Tamriki can have their name back when they’ve earned it!
I’m a Paediatrician and Economist, and I’ve run large child protection services in Australia, but worked clinically in the area in NZ
The name of Child Protection agencies is fraught, as is the structure. NZ has gotten somewhat better with the introduction of the Children’s Monitor.
The work they do is complex. Staff are underappreciated and underpaid, and NZ already struggles with a relative undersupply of registered social workers. Many like to think it’s a job I’ve does through life experience: it really is so much more than that. Forensic and Mental Health trained SWs as well as generalist SWs are critical to the proper functioning of these agencies. Unfortunately their voice is marginalized in MCOT.
What is different in the current term, is the way in which children have been criticised. Although this often occurs, for instance JA’s passion for improving child poverty contrasted with the relative lack of delivery. We’ve had the “bootcamps”, which the coalition themselves couldn’t get their messaging consistent on, but s7AA which seemed unnecessary but to be fair was also bungled by Kelvin Davis.
You may not be following, but one thing I was surprised hasn’t been call out is Minister Chhour acknowledged that despite receiving no briefings on it, she made comments asserting the GnRHa (Puberty Blocker) Ban was a good thing, not clarifying whether it was as children’s minister or NZF Party member.
I try write from either a non-partisan or bipartisan perspective, because to be honest, almost all parties in NZ disappoint me. One area I find consistently disappointing is the lack of appreciation that much of the modern child protection infrastructure in NZ, has its origins in the 19/20th century eugenics movement: the idea that “brown people would probably be okay if their brownies, language and culture, could just be removed so that children would be better off”.
To be clear, that isn’t my view. I disagree with those who claimed getting rid of s7AA was decolonisation. I think it’s too gentle. Getting rid of s7AA was a bunch of Ministers communicating to the country that they are okay with a return to a time when “undesirable” traits were managed by breeding them out of people, removing children from their homes, sending parents away or “converting” their cultural practices and beliefs. And although it’s received virtually no attention, this was led by a Libertarian party whose ideology ostensibly opposes such drastic interference with personal and community autonomy.
SNS if that was a bit ranty. Long time listener, first time caller (except literally once when you were on Channel Z!).
While we are on the subject of our vulnerable Tamariki Bryan Bruce has written to the PM in vain.
“Try to imagine what 33,000 New Zealand children looks like.
Now think of the reality of a recent report that every one of those children – our nation’s children- are homeless.
You can find that report here:
https://www.coalitiontoendwomenshomelessness.org/waka-huia/research-release-children-and-young-people-experiencing-homelessness
Once you have read it could you explain to me how, as a nation ,we are “back on track” as you touted at the last election.
I also need you to explain to me again how allowing our country’s richest people to get away with paying an effective tax rate of just 8.9% tax on their economic income is making the lives of the many who are living on Struggle Street so much better.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/ird-report-shows-wealthy-nzers-pay-much-lower-tax-rates-other-earners
Because, as I look around me, I see foodbanks struggling to meet an ever-growing demand while Trading Banks (largely overseas owned) announce record profits, and charities having to find shoes ,clothing and even warm pyjamas for kids .
I see foreign mining companies given permission to tunnel for gold under native forests and your coalition government changing the law rather than let the courts decide who, among us, is responsible for polluting our planet and bringing them to account.
This is not the New Zealand I want for our children and their children.
I want us to leave future generations a legacy not a liability.
We are on the wrong track Prime Minister.