'Considerable ongoing effort required to shift our own practice' - Oranga Tamariki lead social worker

Friday, 7 August 2020

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier releases his investigation into the policies, procedures and practices of the Oranga Tamariki-Ministry for Children for the removal of newborn pēpi under interim custody orders.

It could take 12-24 months to create a new practice framework for Oranga Tamariki, its lead social worker revealed during the Urgent Inquiry at the Waitangi Tribunal on Friday.

Chief social worker and deputy chief executive of professional practice, Grant Bennett, was a witness during the Crown’s response at the hearing in Wellington.

Bennett said Oranga Tamariki recognises considerable ongoing effort is required to shift its practices and acknowledged the legacy of colonisation, institutionalised racism and discrimination, which has led to the disproportionate number of Māori children entering and remaining in state care.

The Waitangi Tribunal hearing is specifically looking at why a disparity between the number of uplifts of Māori and non-Māori exists, whether legislative changes made in 2017 had helped, and what policy and practices were required to secure outcomes consistent with the Treaty and its principles.

The inquiry is one of five being held after a Newsroom investigation into the attempted uplift of a newborn baby at Hawke’s Bay Hospital last year.

* More routine than exceptions: Ombudsman rules on Oranga Tamariki baby uplifts

* A plea for help: President of the Hastings Mongrel Mob's appeal to the Waitangi Tribunal

A young mother holds her newborn baby in Hawke's Bay Hospital after Oranga Tamariki staff tried to uplift it in 2019.

Oranga Tamariki chief executive Gráinne Moss spoke as a witness, saying she believes Oranga Tamariki, “doesn’t have all the solutions on its own”.

“All of us are being stretched in our capability to manage wellbeing and outcomes, and we all need to do it together. It’s a really, really complex area. We need to all pull together to create outcomes,” she said.

It comes after Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier released a report on Thursday, ruling Oranga Tamariki had been removing babies from their parents more by routine than exception.

'Removing newborn pēpi from their parents is one of the strongest uses of state power. New Zealanders must have confidence in how the law is being applied,” Boshier said.

The emphasis for a need for genuine, effective partnership between Oranga Tamariki, iwi and other Maori parties was echoed by multiple witnesses throughout Friday’s hearing.

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier wrote a scathing, detailed report late last year on abuses and breaches of human rights within the prison system.

Bennett said the effort will not be a wrecking ball approach, but a “brick-by-brick effort” in order to dismantle “decades” of inherited institutional racism and discrimination.

“People talk about transformation, we can't transform things overnight - we are dismantling decades of levers and anchors, somewhere we don't want to be.”

Another witness for the Crown, general manager of Ngāpuhi Iwi Social Services, Elizabeth Marsden, who is on secondment for Oranga Tamariki, echoed Bennett’s comments about the institutionalised racism within the organisation.

“Whilst I am aware that there has been a lot of work done within Oranga Tamariki over the past 20 years to improve the cultural competence of staff, it is my view that legacies of institutional racism remains.

“There is deadwood in the department,” Marsden said.

In order to address the issue, Marsden suggested a better focus on cultural competency when recruiting social workers, as she stated there are some people working within the organisation who are, “unable to shift their thinking”.

“The workforce should reflect the make-up of the client and Oranga Tamariki should be thinking that way too,” Marsden said.

At last week's hearing, Lady Tureiti Moxon said Oranga Tamariki was broken and beyond repair

There was an emphasis by many witnesses for the need of genuine, effective partnership between Oranga Tamariki and iwi in order to build new practice framework.

Bennett said Oranga Tamariki is currently developing a new, Maori-centred, practice framework.

The framework will move away from current practices which are considered to be ‘mainstream and designed for general populations, with preference to Western sources of knowledge with some cultural elements added.

The hearing had an emotional start, with University of Otago senior lecturer in the Social and Community Work Programme, Shayne Walker, being called as the Crown’s first witness.

He began his evidence by sharing his experience as a child, when he was put into state care, after both of his parents died in a matter of weeks, making him an orphan at age 13.

“In my early life I had a number of social workers. I had a good look at my file from that time and in hindsight, my instinct was right about the social workers I trusted, the ones I didn’t,” he said.

Walker later went on, through Maatua Whangai, an approved iwi/Māori social service provider, to help foster 192 young people, predominantly Māori and Pacific young men, over a 12-year period.

With his wife Helen, Walker said the couple had a “journey with foster care” where they “looked after a whole load of other people’s kids”.

He became emotional talking about an experience dropping some boys off at Kohitere Boy's Training Centre in Levin, one of the main welfare institutions that was the subject of complaints about abuse in state care, and asking to see where the boys would be sleeping.

”It was just wrong.

“I can still remember the smell of that room.

“One of my colleagues, now in his 50s, who lived there as a boy, said to me ‘you know I wasn’t an animal when I went into that place, but I became one’,” Walker told Stuff.

As a Crown witness, Walker said he “felt in the middle of this”.

“I have utter respect for all the people who presented last week. I want to acknowledge the conversation and work that has already been done. My position is hopefully I have something useful going forward.

“The State will never abrogate its responsibility for tamariki and Māori. We are here today because we want to know what that will look like,” he said.

Walker made reference to the conversation and action around the removal of statues as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We as Māori shouldn't tear down statues. We know how it feels. We understand this. The better way to go is the people who put the statues up to take them down, in conversation with Māori.”

He called for a treaty-based partnership between the state, iwi and whanau, with a structured step-by-step approach.

“Give Oranga Tamariki the capacity to build a much larger system … that is fit for purpose.

”To build infrastructure, there needs to be a clearly articulated plan,” he said.