The horror of Oranga Tamariki

TDB has been excruciatingly critical of the Critical Race Theory inspired reverse uplift purge within OT of pakeha step families and we have been very critical of their oversight in ensuring kids are placed in safe environments.

I believe a welfare department looking after our most damaged children requires enormous resourcing, kindness, compassion and healing.

We don’t have that, we have a bureaucracy that is under resourced, making knee jerk reactions with little faith placed in the frontline staff who are having to triage the situation.

The apology for abuse in state care was hollow and meaningless..

Aaron Smale: An apology both sincere and hollow

A leading investigative journalist reflects on a day that victims of state and church abuse have fought for their whole lives

…the State worked openly to undermine and damage victims ability to get justice…

Crown cover-up? When the state turned on its victims

…but it just gets so much worse.

There has been an incredibly powerful examination of the insane power of OT over at RNZ that demands attention…

The smack: How a family’s plea to Oranga Tamariki for help with their son unravelled

A family living in fear of their young son’s increasingly dangerous behaviour asked Oranga Tamariki for support. Instead, the ministry turned its focus on his mum.

…you have a family who has a child indulging in incredibly dangerous and violent stunts that are becoming increasingly more unstable…

The baby rabbits mysteriously start dying in spring. Their mutilated bodies are found inside the locked and escape-proof cage, leaving Claire* stumped.

She breeds the rabbits on their rural lifestyle block with her husband Paul* and their five children.

When 24 more rabbits die en masse a few months later, Claire rings the vet, who suggests they may have been poisoned.

To the couple’s horror, Claire’s second eldest son from a previous relationship, Noah*, calmly admits to putting rat poison in the rabbits’ water and food.

Noah is eight years old.

It’s not an isolated incident. Noah has been displaying increasingly strange and worrying behaviour over several months, including contaminating the family’s food stores with pig swill, tampering with his baby brother’s formula and bottle, and cutting electrical wires in the family’s car.

When he starts sneaking out at night to light fires, Claire and Paul are so scared they take turns staying up all night to watch him.

In April 2021, their GP refers Noah to the local child and youth mental health services for an assessment.

The same day, Noah’s counsellor is so concerned about the family’s safety that she sends – with Claire and Paul’s support – a report of concern to Oranga Tamariki for the four other children in the home, telling the Children’s Ministry that “urgent support” is needed given Noah’s “increased unsafe behaviours”.

While they are still waiting for a mental health service appointment, Claire lights a fire with wood collected by Noah and a foul smoke fills the house, causing them to retch and vomit, and their eyes and throats to burn.

When Claire asks Noah if he’s put something on the wood, he admits he did, but refuses to say what.

“I was begging him to tell us – but he wouldn’t say.”

So she smacks him.

“I was so sleep-deprived and so desperate. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

It’s an action she immediately regrets and she apologises to her son.

She will regret it for longer than she thought possible – because as she will find out, Oranga Tamariki believes the real danger to this family is not Noah, but Claire.

…that’s right. Some Children are programmed wrong, Noah is one such child. His situation requires immediate support, yet the friction of parenting that generates a smack in this situation become all that OT focus on.

It’s a tragedy of bureaucracy. You read the lengths the parents went to try and find safety in this situation, and all OT can do is focus on the smack and believe that is the problem…

Two reports of concern – and a wait for help

In the moments after the smack, Claire remembers Noah going from “hysterical to absolutely calm” in an instant..

Unnerved, Claire calls the crisis team immediately.

The hospital arranges for an urgent assessment for Noah, and he goes to stay with his biological father for a few days to give the family some respite.

The next day, the mental health team gives Noah a preliminary diagnosis of conduct disorder, a group of serious emotional and behavioural problems in children and adolescents that occurs in around four percent of the population.

The hospital is also worried about the family’s immediate safety, as Noah is due to return home the next day. So, again with Claire and Paul’s consent, a staff member files a separate urgent report of concern that evening.

A ‘report of concern’ is a formal notification made to Oranga Tamariki if someone believes a child is in danger. The ministry has a statutory responsibility to assess the situation within 24 hours to 10 days, depending on the urgency. By law, an ‘urgent’ notification must be responded to within 48 hours.

“[Noah] has intent and will find means to seriously harm his family and or animals,” the hospital says in its report to OT. “Children in the home are at risk of being seriously harmed by their brother. Parents are burnt out, sleep deprived and asking for urgent support to keep their family safe.”

The report incorrectly states that Claire smacks Noah regularly. The hospital will later apologise for this error and correct the information held on its file.

The original report of concern from Noah’s counsellor notes Claire and Paul are “normally very competent and capable parents who provide everything a family needs and are very reliable, responsible, caring caregivers”.

It’s Noah’s behaviour that concerns the counsellor. “There are safety concerns for the four other children, including 3 under the age of 5 years, as well as safety concerns for the parents,” the counsellor writes.

When the hospital fails to hear back from OT, a staff member calls the ministry the next morning.

“The report of concern is for his siblings, he is at risk of poisoning and killing them,” she tells the social worker on the phone at 9:02am.

The counsellor hasn’t heard back about her report of concern either, so her boss emails a team leader at OT.

“The child’s behaviour is escalating,” she writes, urging the ministry to create and implement a safety plan for the family.

Nothing happens.

OT and the hospital tell Claire and Paul that it’s too dangerous for Noah to return home until there are “supports and a safety plan” in place, so he remains with his father.

OT also tells Claire they can’t provide any support without a formal diagnosis for Noah, so the couple scrape together money to pay for a private psychiatrist, who formally diagnoses Noah with severe conduct disorder.

With a diagnosis and treatment plan in place, OT engages a community organisation to assess Claire and Paul’s parenting and identify risk and safety issues.

The assessment says it does not believe Claire and Paul are abusive.

“This family need help, but it’s actually in how to keep all the kids safe, not so much parenting,” the report sent to OT says.

It also suggests the couple make changes to make their home safer, including the possibility of installing cameras that would alert them if Noah wakes up at night.

Claire and Paul borrow money to make as many of the suggested changes as they can.

“We built him a new room, we installed locks on all the cupboards and pantry – we stretched ourselves to the financial limit, so we could not afford the cameras,” Paul says.

“We asked OT if they would pay for the cameras several times, but they wouldn’t respond and even disputed whether we had even asked them in the first place.”

There’s still no help or safety plan in place when Noah returns home in June.

He starts acting up again at night while everyone is sleeping, crushing dishwashing tablets into baby bottles, contaminating the family’s food again and slashing power cords on tools.

Claire and Paul are increasingly sleep-deprived trying to watch Noah each night. With no help offered from OT, they eventually decide to lock Noah in his room at night.

Noah’s psychiatrist supports the temporary move, telling OT it is “much more likely” Noah could seriously injure the family, compared to the “very small risk” of any harm being done to him by being locked in his room.

“It has been discussed with him and he is not distressed about it… It is in my mind the least restrictive option available to maintain everyone’s safety,” the doctor writes in a letter to the ministry.

Oranga Tamariki disagrees with his assessment, however – and Claire is about to discover why.

…Let me be clear.

I’m not supporting her right to smack her kid, or the action of smacking her kid, but you can clearly see the issue here is Noah’s mental state, not the parents…

What the documents revealed

In the background, OT has formed a different narrative, brought to light after Claire obtains part of her file from the ministry, as well as documents from other agencies.

She is shocked at what she reads.

Of the two urgent reports of concern, one is missing and the other is misfiled as a case note. Only a few pages of it are lodged in the ministry’s online case management system, called CYRAS.

The report of concern from the hospital was assessed by OT, but despite the concerns the hospital raised about the risks to the entire family, the ministry has concluded it is only Noah at “critical risk”, from Claire’s smacking.

The safety of Noah’s siblings is never assessed as required by law.

OT does not get in touch with the counsellor regarding her report of concern for four months.

Noah’s initial conduct disorder diagnosis is missing from the file, and warnings from health professionals about the risk he poses are either ignored, missing or watered down – often retrospectively.

Instead, OT appears to be solely focused on Claire’s behaviour. The ministry is worried about her smacking Noah after the fireplace incident, and that she locks him in his room.

“This can also impact [Noah’s] emotional wellbeing and self-esteem if he is caged every night,” an OT assessment notes.

It believes Noah and his siblings are at “critical” risk from “ongoing physical abuse” from Claire.

…oh FFS – how are the stressed out parents the problem here???

It just gets worse and worse…

Unbeknown to Claire, around the same time she receives her file, Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier finds a litany of errors, unverified information and poor social work led to OT wrongly removing another child from her grandmother’s care.

He criticises the ministry’s poor record-keeping and back-dating of case notes in that situation.

In Claire’s file, documents show social workers held a meeting to discuss the family’s situation, but the danger Noah presented to his other siblings is never mentioned.

A case consult in June 2021 shows the purpose of the meeting is to assess “how safe is [Noah] with mum?”, with social workers questioning Claire’s mental health.

The documents show OT suspects Claire of “medical abuse” towards Noah, claiming these concerns are first raised by medical professionals.

“[Regional youth forensics service] have told us that they’re concerned about some of the mother’s behaviours and indicated there may be an element of medical child abuse,” it notes.

But these concerns are not noted in any of the documents Claire later obtains from the hospital or the forensics service, and she says both agencies later tell her they never raised it with OT as an issue.

OT refuses to tell Claire where these allegations came from.

OT is so concerned about Claire smacking Noah, it even alerts the police, telling them it is not happy with the care being provided by her.

When a police officer visited Claire at home in May, she thought it was to discuss Noah’s behaviour. She says she told the officer about the smack, but he wasn’t concerned.

“Under the circumstances I think it’s unjust to mark the parents as ‘suspects’ for an offence,” he writes in his report.

This report, too, is never added to the family’s OT file. Claire only discovers its existence when she also asks the police for the document.

This leaves Claire distraught.

“Instead of actually looking for help for Noah, it’s a witch-hunt on me. All the concerns about the risks to our children were ignored and there was just the risk of smacking.”

Paul’s concerns about his younger children’s safety, and pleas for help for his step-son, are neither recorded nor considered by OT.

“It seems anybody who suggested Noah needed to get help in some way or form, it has disappeared,” he says.

“[OT] said all Noah’s behaviours were only described by my wife and no one else.”

OT also denies attending a group conference of health professionals where Noah’s diagnosis of severe conduct disorder is discussed and concerns for the safety of his siblings were raised.

“We had to get documents from the hospital showing they did attend, but they are missing from OT’s file,” Paul says.

Claire estimates there are at least 52 documents relating to the family that are potentially missing, incorrect, or have been altered.

The urgent email from the boss of the counsellor who made the first report of concern was also never noted on the family’s file by OT. The ministry only locates it after Claire and Paul lay a complaint about the missing documents and the way they have been treated, forcing it to do a deep dive into the records.

That search turns up dozens of documents the family has never seen, or even knew existed, that had not been added to the family’s file.

“They spent a year-and-a-half deep-diving to get the information. They told us they would work with us to correct any incorrect information, but so far they haven’t,” Claire says.

While all this is going on, Noah’s behaviour continues to escalate and he moves in with his father permanently, where his behaviour improves.

Eventually, Claire loses custody of her son after OT files inaccurate information about her with the Family Court – which it later apologises for.

The decision is devastating, yet Claire is too scared to let Noah come home. Soon after he moves out, Claire finds a note under his bed scrawled in his handwriting: “Plan: poison kids, kill rabbits, kill pigs.”

“We didn’t want him to leave us, but we just couldn’t keep him at home,” says Claire.

She and Paul believe things would be different if OT had not been so focused on Claire’s behaviour, and had been willing to provide the help they needed to keep Noah at home.

“OT has caused us more harm than good,” Paul says.

…and that’s the end reality isn’t it?

OT is such a monster, we changed laws to allow OT to over rule a parents right to look after their own kids, they don’t allow legal aid to support parents who challenge OT decisions and as this case highlights, even when you do everything right, OT ‘lose’ files and have the most pathetic view of any situation.

The State of New Zealand causes more human rights harms than any other organisation, and even when you out their abuse of 250 000 children, there is no justice!

I would never call OT on any situation the same way I would never call the cops to any situation.

You can’t trust OT.

You can’t.

 

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