Oranga Tamariki closing care and protection residence

July 1, 2021 Stan

Taken By The State

BREAKING: All staff at the facility will be stood down and put under investigation as of midnight Sunday after a staff member blew the whistle on the mistreatment of vulnerable children

Oranga Tamariki has told staff at the care and protection residence featured in Newsroom’s whistleblower investigation that the facility will be closed.

Staff at the Te Oranga facility in Christchurch were told at 9.30am this morning the residence is shutting down, and according to insiders everyone was “devastated”. As of midnight Sunday, they will be removed from the residence on special leave and will be under investigation.

The move comes after a Newsroom investigation into the treatment of vulnerable children at the specialised facilities – prompted by video footage provided by a concerned whistleblower – showed workers tackling a boy and twisting his arms behind his back, and another time putting him in a headlock before throwing him to the ground.

Oranga Tamariki held a press conference at 11.30am, where Oranga Tamariki chief executive Sir Wira Gardiner said the decision to close Te Oranga was based on a number of issues, including the Newsroom video.

“I want to know what happened, why it happened, and why our processes didn’t work and a range of other questions, which is why I initiated the investigations, which is why I triggered the child protection protocol with police to involve them, and as the days have gone on, and I’ve reflected further, I’ve decided to take the decision that I’ve taken this morning, and I advised the minister last night.”

Asked if there had been other cases of assault at the Christchurch facility, he said he’d await the results of the police investigation and Oranga Tamariki’s internal investigations.

Gardiner responded to the whistleblower’s concerns about where the children would go: “That’s the fundamental premise of our actions are the children. And the children are comfortable where they are, their schooling arrangements are in that location, so in the safety and protection and care of the children, if we move them we’d be moving them to an unfamiliar environment so we will take our time with the children. Each of them has a care and protection plan, and we’ll take account of that as we move forward.”

Staff from outside Christchurch will arrive in the coming days to run Te Oranga. Asked if that will increase the load on other facilities in other parts of the country, Gardiner said: “If we put the children first in all cases, I don’t care what the load is. The priority is the children, and that’s what we’ll do.” The whistleblower who broke the story said he was “fuming” at just another knee-jerk reaction from Oranga Tamariki that would not help the children. “What the hell is going to happen to these kids now? What about the staff who work their backsides off to look after these kids? … This is just typical showboating from Wellington.” He said he believed staff would likely lose their jobs. “We need professionally-trained staff working in therapeutic lock-up environments. These kids need these facilities. We just don’t need leadership covering up abuse because it looks bad for the organisation. That’s what happened here.”

The whistleblower who broke the story said he was “fuming” at just another knee-jerk reaction from Oranga Tamariki that would not help the children.

“What the hell is going to happen to these kids now? What about the staff who work their backsides off to look after these kids? … This is just typical showboating from Wellington.”

He said he believed staff would likely lose their jobs.

“We need professionally-trained staff working in therapeutic lock-up environments. These kids need these facilities. We just don’t need leadership covering up abuse because it looks bad for the organisation. That’s what happened here.”

Oranga Tamariki closing care and protection residence — Oranga Tamariki chief executive Sir Wira Gardiner, left, and pou tikanga Doug Hauraki, announce the closure of Te Oranga at a press conference in Christchurch. Photo: David Williams

Te Oranga has 10 children aged up to 14 years of age, most of whom are teenagers.

How long it would take to move the children from Te Oranga would depend on the reviews sparked by Newsroom’s video, Gardiner said.

“We’re already in the process of transitioning from these kinds of facilities. We have four residences of this kind throughout the country, which hold 33 children. We have a joint venture with Barnado’s here in Christchurch which holds eight children, and we believe that these kinds of facilities, like Te Oranga, will need to be phased out and we’ll move to smaller accommodation which allows us to give greater care and attention on a one-on-one basis to the young people who are, by and large, requiring significant resources and effort to deal with the trauma that many of them face.”

The children in the Newsroom video are under Gardiner’s care, as head of Oranga Tamariki. The restraints used in the video appear to be excessive force, he said, and that’s why it was being investigated by police. “I expect a higher duty of care to look after them. If we’re not able to look after them then I will hold the folks accountable who are doing things that have put them at risk.”

Gardiner said he first knew about the case from Newsroom’s video. Oranga Tamariki has processes for reporting incidents of excessive force or violence.

There may have been a failure of management or leadership, Gardiner acknowledged, which will be considered by its investigation. “If it does happen that way then there’ll be consequences,” he said.

“One of the questions that I’ve asked the investigators to look at is exactly that: how is it that we didn’t know? Is it that our reporting system is inadequate, is it broken, does it need to be fixed, what needs to be done? It’s one of the key questions – how is it that we have to rely on somebody leaking CCTV footage to the public, via television?”

Ten Oranga Tamariki houses were being built now, from funds from the 2019 Budget. The soil will be turned on the first of those houses in the next week or so.

Asked about hard-working staff who might lose their jobs with the closure of Te Oranga because they spoke up, Gardiner said the whistleblower did a service by leaking the footage to Newsroom. “I’m not chasing anyone for speaking up. I would like people to speak up.”

Is it not a natural consequence, though, that people will lose their jobs because of the closure?

“That’s not necessarily so. We’ll work that through with the unions and with our HR processes. I think those staff who work well will always have a job. Those staff who as a consequence of investigations might have done things that they shouldn’t have done, we’ll deal with that as well.”

Gardiner had a mixed take on staff qualifications. Asked why many staff weren’t well qualified to look after some of society’s most vulnerable children, he initially said that’s why Oranga Tamariki was moving to smaller facilities with greater care.

The whistleblower, who risked his career to bring the footage to Newsroom, said the incidents were not a failure of the facilities, but of leadership and management.

“There are all these policies and procedures in place, the problem is they’re not being followed. It’s not the facility, nor is it the secure nature of the facility, it’s the people you surround these high-needs kids with that makes the difference.”

He was adamant tamariki and rangatahi needed to be in a secure facility, saying: “This is not just about keeping the community safe from them, this is about keeping them safe from the community.”

Oranga Tamariki needed to invest in qualified staff, not shut down an integral facility, he said.

“Kids with P addictions at age 14, major mental health problems. Kids needing 24-hour suicide watch, kids that have been prostitutes since age 10. They’ve all come from ‘non secure’ community homes, they run away, they self-harm, they need to be in a secure therapeutic environment, secure from the world that has caused them so much pain and so much trauma. Kids have told me they wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for secure facilities, would never have got off drugs.

“This is the end of the line. Surely we live in a country that can afford to pick up the pieces.

“Look at the big picture: the residences and the youth justice facilities have driven down the costs and the calibre of staff and indeed the management. The state did that, OT did that, they hired people with no qualifications, put them on a lower pay rate and this is the result. OT and former CYFS did that, they surrounded exceedingly high needs children with unqualified cheap labour.”

Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis said he supported “100 percent” Gardiner’s decision to close down Te Oranga, which had been based on a number of factors related to the facility.

“It is a child-focused decision and that’s what’s most important … Sir Wira did not have confidence that if we take the child-centred approach that all those children would be safe, and so he made that decision, and I totally support him.”

Davis said he would not be surprised if Newsroom had more videos of staff mistreating children at the residence, given what had been reported so far.

“The more we scratch away, the more that comes up, and that’s why there is an investigation going on, a police investigation, so I am limited in what can be said.”

However, he did not believe there was systemic child abuse within the facility, but there were some people not living up to the standards that New Zealanders would expect of those who looked after children.

“It’s difficult that the facility has been closed, and there are some really good people doing really good work who have also been affected by the decision, but it was the right one.”

Staff at the facility were being supported by union representatives and HR advisers, he said.

“Those people who have been doing a good job, I’m confident that they can be redeployed, those people who haven’t been doing a good job or haven’t met the standards that Oranga Tamariki, or myself as minister and Sir Wira Gardiner as the [chief executive] expected of these people, their futures are up in the air.”

The welfare of the children at the facility was at the top of mind, and “bespoke arrangements” would be made to find a new home for each one depending on their circumstances.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said she supported the swift action which had been taken by Oranga Tamariki in closing the facility, and wanted the remaining residences closed as quickly as possible while ensuring the children went to safe, connected care arrangements.

“The person who blew the whistle was really clear, those children have been removed from situations that are violent and then that violence is repeated in that same place – this is completely absurd.”

Davidson said the Greens were also concerned about the Government’s decision to place a new Oranga Tamariki watchdog within a government agency, as the party had “always been clear it needs to be truly independent to have a proper handle on what on earth is happening in those places”.

Appearing before Parliament’s social services and community committee on Wednesday, Gardiner said he had stood down a number of ministry staff as a result of the investigation, as well as initiating the ministry’s child protection protocol so police could come in and investigate the incident.

The whistleblower said he was upset it had taken going to the media to see any attention on the issue, but closing the facility was not the result the children involved needed.

“Judge Becroft’s staff went through the facility featured in the Newsroom story around two months ago and did an audit and numerous staff expressed concerns about management and some of the workers there – and nothing has been done.

“There are very limited mental health beds available for these kids so where are they to go? Again this is about getting the services and the staff these young people need and deserve.”

Becroft himself and Assistant Māori Commissioner Glenis Philip-Barbara said they were relieved at the decision of Oranga Tamariki to commit to the phased closure of Care and Protection institutional residences.

“This could not come quickly enough. At long last this signals the ditching of an old-fashioned model that, along with orphanages and borstals has no place in the 21st Century,” Becroft said.

“Our office, including skilled staff who regularly monitor these places and talk with mokopuna there, are overjoyed that their repeated calls for action have finally been heard.”

Becroft said the concerns raised in Newsroom’s video were not new to him or Philip-Barbara, saying they had frequently heard from children about the use of excessive force and overzealous restraint causing cuts, scratches, carpet burns and bruising.

“We have raised these concerns repeatedly in our reports to Oranga Tamariki, including our strong recommendation since 2017 that Care and Protection residences be closed.

“While we strongly welcome the actions announced today, we can’t help feel it is very sad for tamariki in the care of the state that it has taken this long to commit to change,” Becroft said.

Philip-Barbara said now was not the time to be worrying about cost, but to spend everything necessary to keep mokopuna safe and with whānau.