Waatea News Column: Of course Oranga Tamariki failed. It will fail us again
The latest harrowing report into how so many state agencies failed to ensure Malachi Subecz’s well being is another report to add to the many, many others that expose child welfare failure.
Malachi was entrusted by his imprisoned mother to a friend who then killed him and it seems multiple welfare agencies simply stood around and monitored this abuse without intervening.
Oranga Tamariki like CYFs before it and like CYPFA before that and like CYPS before that and like the Department of Social Welfare before that and like the Child Welfare Division of the Department of Education before that, have all failed our young people.
And every version of a State Department charged with looking after the children society throws away will continue to fail us because we have relentlessly underfunded these services with the necessary checks and balances required for protecting vulnerable children.
We refuse point blank to raise taxes on the richest and wealthiest to properly fund child protection services.
Even when a liberal Government like Labour take power, Treasury still attacks the extra funding to Oranga Tamariki as loose and without clear justification for dollars spent.
For Treasury, ensuring desperate children are safe, warm, fed, loved and not abused is an unnecessary cost on the State that needs extra scrutiny.
We have a dreadful history of abuse while in State care, and that abuse occurs because of a deeply underfunded social welfare environment. Until we make funding them via higher taxes on the rich a priority, we will continue to get reports about children like Malachi Subecz.
First published on Waatea News.
After decades of undermining the nuclear family, marriage and the status of fathers you are suddenly surprised that the state is a poor parent.
There is an element of truth to what you say Bomber but the truth is that all the departments you mentioned have not been child centric. They have always been bureaucratic or self protective first.
Put the child first in every situation and see if it makes a difference. Cant complain about a Maori caregiver because you know, colonialism or cant do something because its not within policy, cant cause a ruction within a family by sending children off to live with other family members, cant do something because we might get criticised, cant do something because we dont want to expose our weaknesses to other agencies etc
Take all that and throw it out the window. Answer just one question – how do we ensure that this child is safe and thriving?? And then do whatever it takes – every single time.
As Merepeka Raukawa Tait said yesterday we have seen this same pattern of inquiries and recommendation and refusal to act in large part for many decades. Endless inquiries and no substantive change. She then said Just imagine an entire classroom of children who are no longer with us and that’s the number that have died from abuse over the last decade.
Social services in NZ has become a self serving, non practical and unattractive wokeplace, that increasingly does not protect children and I think studies show, the children are worse off in state care! WTF!
Even the basics like still arguing that kids whose parents go to prison are not automatically monitored by NZ social services to their wellbeing. Why are they against that??? Too busy responding to rubbish woke claims, critical race theory, instead of spending time to uncover the worst horrors of abuse in NZ, and stop it.
The culture of OT has become a lottery of management and hierarchy of people who should not be in that industry in charge of kids welfare. They don’t have the brains, compassion, professional training or ability. It is a tough job and it should start by getting the best and brightest to work for that organisation. But hard to see how that can happen in a cost cutting, woke, non sensical institution, managerial heavy, where the rules might not make sense.
I know a guy who had worked for many years as a social worker in Germany. He got a job as a social worker here but was appalled at how disjointed the services were here. In Germany one social worker looked after each client, here there is a pool of social workers looking after a pool of clients so bucks can be passed and there are plenty of cracks to slip through.
What killed his career though was running foul of a Maori woman in a more senior role, she was able to block his progress and eventually have him removed – then when he tried to get other jobs she was the reference point so she kept giving him bad references. That’s one reason why there is a lack of diversity in roles like this!
This is the tiniest fraction of the deaths. It is just direct killing by parents and close care-givers.
The toll of abuse in state care is far higher, and as with abuse of children within families, extends out in time, harming a myriad of aspects of the abused person’s life.
Proper funding would help.
But, tick box culture and agencies getting the bulk of their money from monitoring (as opposed to doing the right thing) have created a situation we are going to struggle to get out of.
Also, were are the men? Why is this being left to women alone?