Are we being fair on much-malignedOranga Tamariki?
Government departments don’t generally get a lot of media attention for the good things they do. This may seem unfair but news is not about things going right and not about people doingwhat is expected of them.
Over the more than 30 years I’ve been a journalist, the government agency which has attracted the most consistently negative attention from the media is the agency we entrust with ensuring children are safe in their families’ care.
For most of those 30 years, it was called Child, Youth and Family, or something similar, and the most common story about the agency went along the lines of failure to heed warnings and notifications of abuse, failure to provide ongoing monitoring and supervision, and giving families or caregivers who presented a danger too much leeway. The failures have usually been brought to light because of a tragedy – a death or serious mistreatment.
The service has not got much credit for the good outcomes for many of the children brought to its attention. There must have been many successes but the overall impression has been that the agency can’t get a thing right. Maybe it just goes with the territory.
Very quickly the narrative is changing. Now we hear the agency has a shocking record of removing Ma¯ori babies from their mothers and not exploring ways and means of helping the mothers keep their babies, or allowing the wider wha¯nau to provide the necessary care.
We hear this is due to a racism embedded in the processes and systems used to assess the risk to the children and decisions about what action should be taken. Even if some parents are lacking, it’s said Ma¯ori-led agencies should be given the responsibility and funding to ensure Ma¯ori babies born into difficult and unsafe homes can stay within the wha¯nau and hapu¯.
All thismust, of course, be right and perhaps we have no reason to doubt Oranga Tamariki boss Grainne Moss that structural racism ‘‘at all levels’’ in the child welfare agency has made life worse for Ma¯ori children. The chief executive was speaking on behalf of the Crown at the Waitangi Tribunal’s urgent inquiry into
Oranga Tamariki’s removal of Ma¯ori babies, sparked by the attempted uplift of a baby from its mother atHastings Hospital in 2019.
She said structural racism was a feature of the care and protection system, with adverse effects for tamariki Ma¯ori, wha¯nau, hapu¯ and iwi. ‘‘The structural racism that exists in the care and protection system reflects broader society, and has also meant more tamariki
Ma¯ori being reported to it.’’
There are a couple of things that strikeme as a little odd, however. The first is that Oranga Tamariki has a large proportion of Ma¯ori staff, about 26 per cent at last count.
I understand systemic racism is a condemnation of processes and rules rather than personnel, but most people can bend rules and apply discretions to get around them.
And Iwonder if 30 years of negative (mostly justified) faultfinding has created a climate where decision-makers are constantly thinking of how they will look if a child is harmed or killed if they fail to uplift. The fear of making a mistake could well be more powerful than racism.
The second issue is how a situation where a baby or child is at risk is allowed to develop to crisis proportions in the first place. If the wider wha¯nau are in fact capable and willing to take responsibility for babies or children at risk, why does it take a serious incident for them to intervene and assist?
Imay have missed something but Iwould also have expected Moss to give a better defence of her organisation. I realise that could look like a denial, or minimising of the problem, but surely the organisation has plenty of devoted, kind and competent people who deservemore of a plea of mitigation.
I’m also puzzled by another thing. We are told not to treat Ma¯ori as amonolithic grouping who all sing from the same song sheet. Ensuring the safety of children in troubled homes where parents can be violent drug users is an extremely difficult and controversial area. Surely the various approaches are contentious and attract different views.
Yet there appears to be hardly any argument, especially from the Ma¯ori corner. That seems to suggest there is widespread agreement that Oranga Tamariki is an outrageously bad organisation whose head, according to Wha¯nau Ora minister Peeni Henare anyway, should be looking for another job. But views on such issues are rarely unanimous. Does that mean people are scared to speak out for fear of being called racist, or worse, a traitor to the cause?
For instance, what to make of this incidentwhere Ma¯ori foster childrenwere removed from families they thought were permanent placements. It appears four Ma¯ori children removed from a violent home by Oranga Tamariki in 2018 and placed with a non-Ma¯ori foster family were again removed in September, back to their extended wha¯nau.
It looks to me as if ideological purity could easily createmore injustices.
Imay have missed something but I would have expected Moss to give a better defence of her organisation.