May 06, 2024
Oranga Tamariki scrutiny overdone
The former chair of the Ministerial Advisory Board overseeing Oranga Tamariki says rather than continuing to attack the child protection agency, people need to ask the hard questions about how New Zealand treats its children and young people.
The New Zealand Herald is reporting a high level of absconding from youth residences, especially in Auckland.
Matthew Tukaki, who conduced a review of the residences while on the board, says they’re not prisons, and they need to be part of a wider programme of setting the young people on a positive track.
He says they can’t be shut down without finding somewhere else for the kids to go – and that means fixing the society they come from.
“We throw these kids against walls. We beat them. We kill them. We murder these kids and it’s not all about Oranga Tamariki. If it was just about Oranga Tamariki, easy, we just come up with a whizz-bang solution but the reality is it takes every government agency, every government department, it takes business and industry, community, but importantly it takes family,” Mr Tukaki says.
He says changes such as dropping the section 7AA Treaty of Waitangi requirements or setting up boot camps is just a distraction from the real work.