July 30, 2019
March call for lost children
The chair of the North Island Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency says today's Hands Off Our Tamariki march shows how the Oranga Tamariki model needs to change.
Merepeka Raukawa Tait says she turned down an opportunity to speak at the march because it's good to hear other perspectives and approaches than the Māori-led inquiry into child protection that her agency is driving alongside iwi.
She says the protest should not be seen as a attack on Children's Ministry staff.
"It is not their fault they are working in a system that has been entrenched over many years, that has not helped us in any way to make the necessary changes in our families. Their only solution has always been uplift the children. To hell with the mothers and to hell with the families. There are some families now struggling to find where their mokopuna are, where their children are," Mrs Raukawa Tait says.
Oranga Tamariki needs to pass the lead and the responsibility to whānau, rather than seeing the child in isolation.
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