Opinion Pieces

OPINION: In May 2016, the then-government approved the creation of a new, stand-alone agency to provide a single point of accountability for services for vulnerable children and young people – Oranga Tamariki.

Seven years later, despite numerous reviews and previous election promises, we are still waiting for that accountability. As a result, we are still waiting for better outcomes for our vulnerable children.

For years, Child Matters has had to collate its own statistics about the number of children who have tragically lost their lives to abuse and neglect. We collate these figures from media reports and it takes hours and hours. But we do it because these figures are not officially available from the government agency responsible for them.

One would think these critical figures would be collated, published and debated by politicians not just prior to elections, but throughout an electoral term. However, that is far from the case.

In August, the question of child abuse death statistics was asked directly by investigative journalist Jehan Casinader. Oranga Tamariki “couldn’t” provide them. Last week, they were anonymously leaked to him.

During the global pandemic, health experts put the number of Covid cases and deaths front and centre every day. Waka Kotahi updates road death numbers on its website daily. A quick check of Water Safety New Zealand’s site indicates 69 people have drowned in New Zealand this year, while Worksafe openly report 62 fatalities in New Zealand workplaces in the year to July 2023.

But when it comes the loss of a child’s life due to abuse or neglect, the public had to rely on an anonymous leak to the media to inform them that 57 children have died since Oranga Tamariki’s establishment. Astoundingly, the agency also admitted they may not even know if a child in their system had died from abuse or neglect.

Statistics in isolation do not always tell the full story, but they are critical when it comes to increasing transparency and accountability – and in turn, making a genuine difference for our communities.

Clearly the numbers were there, but the desire for Oranga Tamariki to talk about them was not. It also begs the question, did successive responsible ministers know these figures? If not, why not? And if yes, why weren’t they talking about them?

Oranga Tamariki’s website shows they report many other statistics, including the diversity of their team, number of children in care, and how many community organisations they fund.

I am the first to say Oranga Tamariki frontline workers have a tough job and I do not wish to detract from their dedicated, hard work. But the system they work in is failing – not just failing the children who are at risk, but this frontline team as well.

The current response to a child at risk is a lottery depending on what site is involved, the workload, and the experience of the social worker. If we are going to make change, we need to understand the problem and that includes the numbers.

Since the death of Baby Ruthless-Empire, I have been asked numerous times if we will ever really be able to do anything about child abuse in New Zealand.

I do not believe we will ever eliminate child abuse or neglect. However, we can turn around the statistics so they are heading in the right direction, and this will save lives. But it will take leadership and an honest discussion in Wellington about how little progress has been made, and brave decisions about forging a better way forward.

As they say “the time for the truth is always now”.

This month marks a year since the tragic and preventable death of five-year-old Malachi Subecz from Te Puna. In the six months after his death, six more children died of suspected neglect and abuse, and a total of eight children have died so far this year. Behind that statistic are also the thousands of children who have been abused, many unknown to the police or Oranga Tamariki.

As the year continues, we will hear more of the same rhetoric from politicians over the last 20 years as successive political parties have tried to tackle this issue. The genuine intent of these politicians cannot be questioned, but it is the method that they choose to tackle the problem that is as predictable as it is repetitive.

For more than 30 years, the go-to tool of governments to address the issue of child abuse has been reviews and reports. There are literally thousands of pages of these reports, action plans, and strategy documents gathering dust in Wellington or currently being consulted and worked on, and yet we are still losing children at the same alarming rate. The finding of these reports, for the most part, have merit, but overall say the same things.

In 2015, the then National government appointed an independent expert panel to review Child Youth and Family. Fast forward six years, and the current government appointed the Ministerial Advisory Board to review the same agency but with a name change – Oranga Tamariki. The resulting reports and the many reports that have been completed in between are filled with condemning and repetitive findings. After all the money spent, there is little to show for it, as evidenced by the finding of the Office of the Ombudsman in October this year describing Oranga Tamariki’s actions as ‘a litany of failures’.

The core of how to fix the failings at Oranga Tamariki is stated repeatedly in the pages of these reports but is never implemented to any real degree. Addressing the issues within Oranga Tamariki needs to start with the basics. The team needs to be rebuilt so staff are well trained and resourced, have manageable caseloads and are enabled to deliver good social work practice. The issues with Oranga Tamariki are not with individual social workers or staff; it is the system that does not support them to get on with their jobs and allows substandard practice to be accepted. Hence why last month Oranga Tamariki staff voted to strike over low wages and unsafe workloads.

While there are areas of bad practice within the organisation, there are also committed and skilled social workers who need to fight the system they work in, just to be able to do their job. Meanwhile, successive governments continue to play with reviews, language, policy, and budgets in a misguided effort to put their stamp on the next new plan.

What is needed is leadership that recognises the need for urgent action and is willing to fight to ensure Oranga Tamariki gets the money and resourcing required to implement the change that a succession of reviews have told us is needed. We need that change now.