‘Change goes to our core’: Te Kani
More than 600 jobs will be axed at Oranga Tamariki with a proposal that will see a net reduction of 447 roles, the organisation has confirmed.
The cuts represent a 9% reduction in the ministry’s total staff.
The news was delivered in an all-staff meeting yesterday, led by chief executive Chappie Te Kani, who discussed how Oranga Tamariki will meet the Government’s cost-cutting directive.
It will disestablish 632 roles and create 185 new ones, Te Kani confirmed in a statement.
“The change I am proposing is not about tinkering around the edges. This change goes to our core as a ministry. It fundamentally moves us away from where we are, towards the kind of ministry we need to be.”
He said the proposal “puts children at the centre of all we do” and makes the ministry “a place where people are empowered to do their jobs”. “For some, this proposal will be a hard read. For the 632 people who may be affected by this proposal and whose role may change, it will be hardest.”
The 632 figure includes 70 roles that are vacant. Oranga Tamariki employed 5100 staff, both permanent and fixed term. It said 1900 roles were in the scope of restructures.
While the ministry said frontline staff were not in the scope of the proposal, Public
Service Association (PSA) assistant secretary Fleur Fitzsimons argued they would inevitably affect the front line.
“The Government promised no impact on social workers, but in a complex organisation like Oranga Tamariki with many moving parts, all workers play an important role in supporting rangatahi and tamariki.
“These ill-considered cuts will affect the ability of Oranga Tamariki to deliver services and partner with community agencies. Once again the fiction of no cuts to the frontline has been exposed,” Fitzsimons said.
Substantial job cuts were expected yesterday at the Ministry of Education.
understands affected staff have been briefed over the last two days, including those whose roles have been proposed to be disestablished. MoE confirmed to that the restructure proposal would be provided to staff yesterday.
MoE’s corporate leader Zoe Griffiths said they were ‘‘consulting with people who may be impacted or affected by the proposals, and their representatives’’.
Griffiths said it was “premature to speculate on the number” of confirmed jobs, as there were other parts of the ministry “yet to be engaged in this process because their change proposals are still being developed”.
“This is a complex process that has required time. Our proposed changes have been designed to avoid impacts on direct services to children, teachers, and principals/leaders.”
In March, revealed Te Kani was having to pay for work flights around the country out of his own pocket, in order to talk to staff in person about cost saving proposals and changes.
Oranga Tamariki is already facing frontline staffing issues – it was down 160 social workers earlier in March.
“It has been a priority to ensure we do as much as we can to connect with our kaimahi [workers], to keep them informed with regular updates, to share information around the process we are using, and be open about the fact that the document we will release on
Wednesday is a proposal and everyone will have a chance to provide feedback before a final decision is made,” Te Kani said on Tuesday.
He said that over the six-week consultation period he had signalled to staff Oranga Tamariki’s intention ‘‘to move to the next phase in our transformation journey towards a ministry that puts children at the centre of all we do”.
Both Oranga Tamariki and the Ministry of Education were explicitly excluded in National’s tax plan from delivering an efficiency dividend, instead expected to redirect savings “found in the back-office into front line services”, the plan says.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has said that any savings made by Oranga Tamariki will stay in the department to be used for frontline services.
Across the public service and crown entities the number of roles, staffed and vacant, proposed or confirmed to be disestablished or already ended, is more than 1000.
In late February, Ministry of Education staff were told that jobs would have to be cut in response to the Government’s target of 7.5% in savings for their department.
Secretary for Education Iona Holsted said in an email to staff at the time that the ministry would have to cut back work in some areas and remove duplication.
MoE’s Griffiths told this month some of the proposals were under way and they were already consulting with affected staff.