Kids tell of hard life in state care

Mattresses wrapped in hard plastic, metal toilets, strict routines, and bullying that has a teenager eager for isolation in a dirty, stinky cell.

The locked and concrete care and protection residences, home to children deemed too difficult to deal with, are a ‘‘hard place to be happy in’’. ‘‘I think they are setting ourselves up to fail . . . We can’t cook, we can’t keep our fitness up,’’ says one girl.

‘‘[The secure unit] is dirty as – it is worse than the police cells . . . People p... all over the floor and stuff,’’ says a young man.

These are the words of some of the 52 children, aged between 9 and 17, who were interviewed by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner about their experiences of the state care residences.

Their voices have been compiled in a report, titled A Hard Place to be Happy, released by Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft today.

Becroft said there were perhaps a hundred children whose serious and perplexing needs, a result of their upbringing and wider environment, had them placed in these residences.

‘‘These are not for people who have broken the law, or come into contact with the law in any way.

‘‘These are people for whom it has been decided the only care and protection response is in a locked, secure, institutional-type residence.’’

The children interviewed for the report described becoming more violent in the residences, being scared of those around them, of being bullied, and of facing unwanted sexual behaviour. Many spoke of staff who helped them, who made them feel safe in a facility they couldn’t leave. ‘‘I swear at them all the time and they are still good to me,’’ a young Ma¯ ori woman said.

Many felt they were left to languish within the residences, in a ‘‘holding place’’ that prevented them from gaining independence.

Some said the residences saved them from themselves. Becroft said such sentiment reflected the lives these children had led.

‘‘These children and young people have done nothing wrong. In many ways, they represent the collective communal and government failings . . .

‘‘Some of these people would be better looked after in Ministry of Health-run homes.’’

Four of these facilities are run by Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children, and a fifth is contracted to Barnardos.

The median stay is two months in Oranga Tamariki residences, and a year and four months in the more therapeutically intensive Barnardos-run residence.

Becroft said Oranga Tamariki had inherited these institutions, and had committed to building smaller, community-based group homes. But the agency hasn’t explicitly said the residences will be closed. Becroft said it was broadly recognised the institutional model was failing children and young people, and needed to be dispensed with.

‘‘These children . . . have done nothing wrong.’’

Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft