Andrew Dickens: Children deserve better

Oranga Tamariki is getting rid of its target to place 58% of the kids in its care with wider Whanau.   And it's also ditching a target for investment with Māori organisations - 23% of funding was targeted for those organisations.  The Minister for Children Karen Chhour says this is part of OT's 'Safety First' approach. She says the targets were outdated and went against the ‘need not race’ directive.   And she was concerned whether the priority of Māori organisations were getting in the way of the quality and efficacy of the services being provided.   And it all makes sense.  The ingrained belief in our child social workers that kids are always better off rehomed with whanau always seemed counter factual. In many cases the abuse directed at the kids was at the hands of whanau themselves - people that had been raised by other people in their family but failed at their own parenting. So why would we give the kids to them? It often seemed that children were being thrown right back into the very cauldron we were trying to help them escape from.   There have been examples for generations - let us not forget Baby Ru. He was murdered in October 2023, and nobody has been charged for killing him.  There was anger then and anger now when the people who were there when he suffered did not co-operate with Police.   Those people were, and are, Rosie Morunga, her partner Dylan Ross, and Ru’s mother Storm Wall. Ru's whanau. What happened people?  The uplifting of kids is a very serious thing and they need to be housed in safe places with good people.  But the history of Oranga Tamariki suggests that too many of the supposed saviours are in fact predators hiding in plain sight.  There's no easy answer to this other than strong vigilance by our agencies and the need to find good people who can help. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.