Suffer the children
The Government wants to cut the number of children in state care, but the opposite is happening. Michelle Duff reports.
Inplanningtheirtriptothe remote seaside community, social workers knew they had to act quickly. Fred* was known for doing runners.
All up, reports about his two young children had been made to child protection services at nine offices around the country. They were filthy. Dad drove erratically, without car seats. They were shivering. They looked hungry.
The small settlement where Fred washed up was a tight one. It didn’t take long for the former meth addict’s behaviour to raise alarm bells: he shouldn’t be leaving the preschooler alone on the beach; no-one should yell at their kids like that. Was he back on drugs?
According to social workers, locals tried to step in: police, teachers, a charity organisation Fred hit up for meals until a volunteer challenged him for assaulting one of the kids.
Oranga Tamariki was alerted, and social workers made the long trek to see Fred.
But he didn’t want to talk; he went bush, taking Gabriel* and Jesse* to live in an abandoned hut. They were seen occasionally, covered in scratches. Fred began talking about a conspiracy, that people were out to get him. He was willing to kill to stop his kids being taken away.
After interviewing Gabriel at school, a social worker was almost certain Fred was abusing the kids. Action was imperative.
It was early spring when the same social worker wrapped Gabriel’s skinny body in her jacket. Jesse’s hair was a tangle of knots; a single grubby layer fluttered between her skin and the wind.
In a police car, the other social worker gripped tightly as the cop thundered along the gravel road, towards the peak where Fred had fled. At a dilapidated cottage, she stood out of swinging range to tell Fred his children were now in state custody. He was angry. Minutes later he careened past the police car on the narrow road, stones pelting the windshield as his taillights disappeared.
Back in town, the kids were showered and shampooed. It was kind of exciting, an adventure. ‘‘Where are we going?’’ they asked. And: ‘‘Where’s Dad?’’
Shortly afterwards, they opened up. They told Oranga Tamariki their father had yanked them around by the hair, yelled at them, hit them. Kicked them on the ground.
Child abuse charges were laid. Foster caregivers were found for the siblings.
Does this seem like a happy ending?
By the time the girls were taken into state care, they had come to the notice of social services dozens of times. One intervention had seen them removed from their mother, an addict and a domestic violence victim, in favour of Fred, considered the safer parent.
Some might argue they should have been removed earlier. But to what?
By the age of 8, most children in foster care will have been moved an average of seven times. Some have had up to 60 placements.
About one in 10 kids in care will suffer further harm, from emotional distress to physical and sexual abuse.
The majority will leave school about 15, without NCEA level 2. A third will have their first conviction by this time. About 67 per cent of these kids are Ma¯ ori.
Even as the Government prepares for a royal commission into historical abuse in state care, it is continuing to remove a staggering number of children from their parents.
A Stuff analysis shows there have been almost 10,000 decisions to take kids into custody made in the past five years. That is, on average, more than five removals every day.
‘‘What is clear to Family Court judges is that state care can have disastrous implications on a child or young person’s development, and can greatly increase the risk of future offending,’’ Principal District Court Judge Jan-Marie Doogue said at a public lecture last month. ‘‘We see a cycle of alienation, hardship, disempowerment and tragedy . . . it is disturbing to observe, and the outcomes are too often frighteningly predictable.’’
Yet the rate of kids in care is at a 10-year high, and climbing. And children are still being hurt and killed.
When your baby is taken away, you must stay calm. Don’t panic, and definitely don’t yell. This will be hard. But if you want a chance to see that baby again, Rebecca* says, it’s important to keep cool.
‘‘You can’t cry too much, but you do have to cry because if you don’t, they think you don’t care,’’ she says. ‘‘But if you cry too much they think you’re overreacting, you’re unstable.’’
Living in poverty with inadequate housing can be enough to tip the scales against you, as will being the victim in an abusive relationship. The most recent Family Violence Death Review Committee report outlines how mothers are often penalised for having violent partners, with the assumption they could have ‘‘done more’’ for their children. This makes it easier for them to lose custody, and harder to get it back.
Rebecca’s baby was three months old when they were separated. Ever since his birth, she had been taking him into the doctor to ask about the bruises that kept appearing on his body. She thought maybe he had a blood disorder, or some kind of rare disease. It was her first baby, so she wasn’t sure what was normal and what wasn’t.
She asked her midwife and lactation consultant what they thought. A practice nurse made a notification to Oranga Tamariki about a bruise. A social worker came around, asked some questions, and left.
A couple of months later, her partner brought her son to her with a limp arm. Rebecca went to the doctor, who sent her to hospital. There, staff found multiple injuries they deemed could not be accidental. The arm was broken.
Rebecca had been to Women’s Refuge several times during the abusive relationship. But she never imagined her partner would inflict damage on their newborn. This was not good enough for authorities. ‘‘The social workers told me at the end of the day I was a mother who just didn’t care about her son. They said, he’ll be going home with us, and that was it.’’
Rebecca split with her partner, and has been trying to get her son back since. Initially, she argued the removal was unfair. Now, she does everything Oranga Tamariki says. Neither has worked.
‘‘I learned very quickly if I was going to advocate for his rights that was not going to go well – I just had to shut my mouth. I was labelled a troublemaker early on, and I think that’s worked against me . . . I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’m financially stable, but none of that matters.’’
Her visitation rights have fluctuated from 10 hours a week, to an hour, to four hours. She’s been in and out of court. After her most recent assessment, five months overdue, it was agreed she is fit to look after her son. He is now transitioning back into her care. He has just turned 2.
The high-profile cases – Moko Rangitoheriri, Nia Glassie – are often what we think about when we consider child abuse and neglect. In fact, those that hit the news are a tiny proportion of the thousands of children whom child protection services deal with each year.
‘‘You do get dangerous people who put kids in very risky situations and you can’t muck around,’’ says former social worker and University of Auckland researcher Ian Hyslop. ‘‘But most child protection work is not about protecting kids from monsters – it’s more about highly stressed families, it’s often young women parenting in poverty, sometimes in violent relationships and difficult situations, drugs and alcohol. It’s these high-needs families who need a lot of support looking after their kids.
‘‘It’s whether you want to develop those social services to look after them, or do the hard and fast ‘Let’s take their kids off them’.’’
But children who have been removed from abusive parents are often challenging for new caregivers. If, as preschoolers, their brains are wired for fear and uncertainty, it becomes difficult to change these learned responses to a hostile world.
‘‘Often, these children don’t acquire the ability to selfregulate, so their behaviour will become more extreme,’’ says child psychology expert and University of Otago associate professor Nicola Atwool.
Health problems aren’t only trauma-related: up to half of children in care have foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which can cause developmental problems and intellectual disability.
While kids are ‘‘incredibly resilient’’, recovery will not be miraculous, Atwool says. ‘‘I think people who are not familiar with this stuff often think the child has been rescued and it’s all wonderful from then on. It isn’t.
‘‘[Children] want people not to be violent, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want them punished. They want them to change, and they want them to love them. Very few children ever give up hope that that will happen.’’
It’s 10am in Grey Lynn, and the social workers in Lisa Burnett’s team have gathered around her desk. When a member of the public calls in to report a child, social workers at the national call centre are responsible for triaging the cases. They use a risk analysis tool to help decide the best path of action.
It’s an imperfect science. Studies have found social workers of different levels of experience – and across different parts of the country – make varying decisions on exactly the same case. Where one social worker sees a child at immediate risk, another codes the danger as more moderate. Ma¯ ori children are often considered more at risk, and are 20 per cent more likely to be taken into care after their first contact with a social worker than a Pa¯ keha¯ child.
‘‘The response you get from the state might be determined by an accident of where you were born,’’ University of Otago says senior lecturer in social work Emily Keddell, who investigates decision-making in child welfare. ‘‘Are we paying enough attention to the context of people’s lives? For Ma¯ ori, particularly, given our long history of colonisation, we’ve got to understand how they might be disproportionately affected.’’
On Burnett’s triage list, there’s a medical neglect case in which a girl, 4, has had to have four rotten teeth extracted. A 3-year-old who has said she doesn’t like the way Daddy touches her. A suicidal pre-teen, whose parents are suspected of abusing her.
‘‘Uplifting would be a last resort – almost always we would try and embed the child within a network of safety in their own home,’’ Burnett says. ‘‘It is a constant balancing act . . .’’
There are times when Burnett’s team must act immediately. Last year, they received a report at 4pm on a Friday of a child living in a filthy basement. Social workers found a 22-month-old who had spent the majority of his life living in a portacot in a windowless room. His legs were so bowed from a lifetime on a mattress that he couldn’t walk.
When they arrived, he was fossicking in bags of leaking rubbish for food scraps. They sought an urgent order to uplift the child.
His single mother, a sex worker with borderline personality disorder, was considered by the Family Court to be incapable of looking after him. He was placed with permanent caregivers, and now, at 3, has almost caught up developmentally.
Across all her social media accounts, which are set up in her son’s name, his mother posts a continuous stream of pictures and videos of him. ‘‘Help me get Derek* back!’’ she implores her small group of followers. My baby, she writes, under others.
She will never have custody of that child again, Burnett says.
In 2015, the biggest reforms in child protection services since the 1980s were ushered in by children’s minister Anne Tolley under a Nationalled government. The ensuing transformation of the beleaguered Child, Youth and Family into Oranga Tamariki began in April 2017 and is projected to take five years.
Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft likes to compare the task to doing repairs on a Boeing 747 while it’s in the air. He thinks it’s possible, as long as the Labour-led Government commits to the extra $524 million it was earmarked to cost.
‘‘The fundamental issue is how do we genuinely turn off the tap [to state care], and it’s got to start way earlier,’’ Becroft says.
‘‘The new team is committed to making the change but, as of yet, we have not seen significant changes at the coal face, and that’s where the battle is won or lost.’’
New laws due to take effect in July next year will place a ‘‘very clear and new emphasis on earlier intervention’’, he says. This means wrapping services around a family when it looks as if a child might be at risk of removal, rather than acting after the fact. Tikanga Ma¯ ori concepts of mana tamaiti, whakapapa and whanaungatanga will be enshrined in the laws.
Oranga Tamariki chief executive Grainne Moss says the agency has a renewed emphasis on keeping families together, and intervening much earlier to try and see this happen.
The organisation is working on an intensive support programme that will target up to 6000 children considered ‘‘on the edge’’ of care, providing social workers and therapists to work closely with families.
‘‘What children tell us, and what their behaviour tells us, is even when they come from the most distressed situation, they still love their parents and they want to be with their wha¯ nau,’’ Moss says.
‘‘What New Zealand does actually quite well, and has done for some time, is have very strong wha¯ nau care. We’re continuing to support this and looking at ways of taking a different approach.’’
Oranga Tamariki and its predecessors have been restructured 14 times in the past two decades. The current reform is a much bigger dream than that – but last year’s funding was about 10 per cent of what was needed in the next few years, Moss admits. ‘‘It’s definitely a journey. If something could have been changed overnight, people would have done it years ago. We’ve got great momentum, we need to really accelerate that. We need this to continue.’’
* Names have been changed.