The number of kids being taken from their parents has plummeted. History tells us the pendulum could swing back

Friday, 16 December 2022

Minister for Children Kelvin Davis says the Government will investigate actioning all recommendations of the review into the care and death of 5-year-old Malachi Subecz, who he says was failed by multiple agencies before his murder.

The number of kids being removed from their parents has plummeted, but history tells us the pendulum could swing back the other way. In the wake of another high-profile murder, Michelle Duff asks why child protection is so political - and if any of it makes kids safer.

The week the official report into the country’s latest child murder was due to be released, the Government’s public relations wheels were spinning.

At least three days out from the release of Dame Karen Poutasi’s report into the circumstances leading up to the death of 5-year-old Malachi Subecz, communications staff at key ministries were familiar with its contents. The office of Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis was across it.

The public release would feature a written press statement and a stand-up conference from Poutasi, then a joint press release from Davis, Health Minister Andrew Little and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti, followed by a Q&A at Parliament.

* Can Pākehā caregivers provide adequate cultural support for Māori children in care?

* Oranga Tamariki survey paints mostly rosy picture of those in its care

The state has been more or less likely to intervene in children's lives over time, depending on the government of the day, whether there is a spotlight on child protection, or whether a child has just been murdered.

Responses were drafted and ready.

Malachi’s extended family were given the report into what might have prevented their nephew and cousin’s murder and the reviews from six government departments at the same time as the media, 2½ hours before the first article was allowed to be published at 1pm.

This Christmas will be their second without him.

“What do I miss? I miss his conversations – he loved dinosaurs and trucks and had opinions on things,” his uncle Peter Menzies told Stuff quietly that afternoon. “What do I miss? He was warm and cuddly and comforting and happy. I miss his being here.”

Malachi’s horrific torture and killing provoked nationwide media coverage, calls for the resignations of Davis and Oranga Tamariki head Chappie Te Kani, and an Ombudsman’s inquiry which found a “litany of failures” in OT’s dealings with the case. Child protection groups and MPs have called for reform.

Malachi Subecz, 5, was killed by his carer Michaela Barriball and died in Starship Hospital on November 12, 2021.

Poutasi’s report said the system had failed Malachi. She had reviewed 33 reports over three decades into the theme of child abuse, many of which had come to the same conclusions, she said.

Among other things, she recommended child abuse reporting be made mandatory for those who worked with children, and for the vetting of caregivers when a sole parent is being imprisoned.

“If we don’t get this right now, we have failed,” she said. (The Government accepted most of the recommendations and agencies pledged to change, but Davis said others – such as mandatory reporting – would need more consideration.)

Her statement held echoes of that from coroner Wallace Bain, who 15 years earlier said Rotorua toddler Nia Glassie’s death was a “final wakeup call” and hoped his recommendations would drastically reduce child abuse.

A decade later, that same coroner was delivering findings into Moko Rangitoheriri’s death.

The cycle of abuse

How do we measure success? There have been at least 253 children killed in New Zealand since 1992, an average of eight each year. The rate has stayed the same over this time, at about 1 in every 100,000 children, according to data from Stuff’s Homicide Report.

That’s a medium-sized primary school full of children, but not everyone on the roll is known to the public.

That’s because not every case is high profile, and not all of them prompt the full gamut of accountability: coroner’s inquest, ministerial inquiry, departmental review, external investigations and reports.

With every child’s death that leads to a public outcry, there are accusations that nothing has changed.

But an analysis by Stuff of two decades of data, dozens of official reports and conversations with iwi leaders, family lawyers and social work researchers has found the opposite.

There have been giant swings in child protection policy prompted by events – usually a child’s death, but more recently the uplifts of pēpi Māori – and the ideology of those in power that directly influences the likelihood of a child being taken by the state.

But does any of it make kids safer?

When Stuff began investigating child protection in late 2018, five children a day were being removed from their parents, an average of about 2000 a year.

There were more kids in state care than ever, a figure that had been rising, and 68% were Māori. Five newborn babies were being taken from their mothers every week, of whom three were Māori.

Then, in mid-2019, footage of OT staff attempting to uplift a newborn baby in Hastings hit the headlines.

This led to nationwide protests and five major reports, including an urgent Waitangi Tribunal inquiry into OT, an Ombudsman report, and a Māori-led inquiry.

“It showed the other side of child protection intervention at the hard end, which is that it can also be oppressive and racist and overreaching and unwarranted and unfair,” says Otago University social work researcher Emily Keddell. “It told a different story.”

Since then, data obtained under the Official Information Act shows entries to care have plummeted by almost half, to 1021 in the year to June, with the overall number of kids in care also dropping.

And urgent uplifts have drastically declined, particularly for pēpi Māori. In 2018, 184 babies were taken by this method at birth, or within a month, and two out of three were Māori. Last year, there were 34, just over half of whom were Māori.

The total number of kids in state care has dropped back to where it was about a decade ago.

It’s a cycle that has repeated – and with Poutasi’s recommendation of mandatory reporting of child abuse , some are worried the trend will tick upwards again.

“If the letter of the Poutasi report was followed, it would push us back to where we were in 2015,” former social worker and University of Auckland researcher Dr Ian Hyslop says. It can lead to over-reporting, and families being less likely to engage at all.

“If you make child protection more frightening and authoritarian and top down, you discourage people from seeking help, you create suspicion, you stop people from talking to you.”

There were specific child protection and system failings in Malachi’s case, but Hyslop doubts mandatory reporting would have helped.

“It’s a tragic situation that should have been handled much better, but it was notified to [OT]. It should have been picked up, it should have been investigated properly, the child himself should have been listened to, the family should have been involved, and he should have been removed. OT didn’t do that.”

Advocates of mandatory reporting say it would ensure professionals spoke up, and provide more certainty.

In evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal, former government statistician Leonard Cook said the impacts of “sentinel events” can be seen clearly in the period after publicity given to the deaths of the Kahui twins and Nia Glassie, during which prime minister Helen Clark called for more reporting of abuse.

About 1000 more tamariki were taken into care during 2008, before it returned over three years back to the previous level of about 5000 children. “This period highlights the rapidity and scale with which extreme events can influence entry to care,” Cook said.

They began to rise again in 2015, after another high-profile death which the system failed to prevent – that of Moko Rangitoheriri – and a National government-driven reform of child protective services, which saw Child, Youth and Family replaced by OT.

A “tough on child abuse” approach, a culture shift within OT and specific laws such as the subsequent child legislation drove more state intervention.

What caused the drop?

The Hastings case coincided with the enactment of another piece of legislation in 2019, section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, which obliged the Government to partner with Māori and be more accountable for outcomes for tamariki Māori in care.

As horror at the attempted removal of another Māori baby spread, iwi were being empowered by law to take matters into their own hands.

In an interview, OT deputy chief executive quality practice and experiences Nicolette Dickson said a combination of the Hawke’s Bay uplift and the law change had an impact, echoed in OT’s own analysis of the drop in entries to care.

“That really did cause us as a ministry to look in the mirror and question our practices and think ‘Are we working the right way for our vulnerable mums and our babies?’. We are recognising communities are the best people to respond for preventing harm, and working with iwi and Māori organisations.”

OT’s analysis found it was unlikely to be due to an increase in child wellbeing, as health and development indicators and poverty had stayed the same. (The latest Child Poverty monitor found a “small but steady” decline in avoidable hospitalisations for injury over the past twenty years, and parents who reported physically punishing their kids had halved since 2006.)

Is the current balance right?

“That’s one of the most important question we have to ask ourselves, it’s a careful balance to strike,” Dickson said.

“I don’t think we can say ‘The number of kids in care have come down, so we are doing the right thing.’ It’s more, ‘Are the same kids being referred? Are their needs being addressed?’

“There will always be a time when we need to take some children in care to keep them safe, but I think that has levelled out now.”

OT was committed to improving its responses to reports after its practice review into the Malachi case, she said. “It shouldn’t take a review to understand when a site is under pressure, and how that impacts decision-making.”

There is no evidence the change in OT policies post-Hawke’s Bay and the drop in uplifts influenced outcomes for Malachi. In his case, basic social work procedures were not followed in a “hellish” office, agencies didn’t share information or act on it, and he was rendered invisible in the wider system.

Whānau looking after their own

Are families being torn apart, or are kids being saved? That’s where the politics come in. Historically, the state has considered it knows best.

But “best” has often meant heavy-handed, rather than addressing the drivers of child abuse, which include poverty, marginalisation and social isolation.

As evidenced by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, the institutionalising of Māori kids is a legacy of colonisation that has been traumatising, unsafe, and alienating for many.

And it is not binary, advocates say. Kids can be safe within their own whānau if given the right support.

Systemic racism and the need for Māori to drive their own solutions in child welfare was raised as far back as 1988, in the Pūao-te-Ata-Tū report. The consensus was that a by-Māori, for-Māori, with-Māori response was needed, echoed by all Māori-driven inquiries since.

There is evidence of this working.

In Kaitaia, Katie Murray is chief executive of the Waitomo Papakāinga Trust, which has been working for 20 years to stop tamariki Māori from going into state care and help whānau struggling with methamphetamine use, lack of employment and housing.

In 2020, it signed a partnership agreement with OT in collaboration with three other iwi organisations, called Te Kahu Oranga Whānau.

Now, every morning at 11am, it has a hui with OT about reports of concern that have come in overnight.

A plan is made and, unless police need to be involved, Waitomo always engage with the family first, and after any investigation.

“We might notice the child is enrolled in kōhanga but hasn’t been going, and we will get whānau on board to enrol with a doctor, make a family plan, that kind of thing,” Murray says. “We say, ‘If you need a hand with anything we are there’, listening to what is happening in the lives of our families.”

If children need to be uplifted, it is to caregivers Waitomo finds and approves, with whānau and iwi links. Even then, parents are still supported through what is a traumatic experience.

“We don’t mince our words, we don’t play games, we are honest and upfront about ‘You shouldn’t have these children until you learn how to be a good parent.’ And hang on, there’s parenting programmes, there are drug and alcohol programmes you can attend.”

Since September 2018, Waitomo have stopped 200 Māori children going into state care.

Systems are still broken

The next frontier for Māori is the Family Court, with the Pou Tangata Iwi Leaders group beginning a push for all judges to be replaced by a three-person panel – including a convenor, and representatives from iwi and the community – for all cases involving OT.

Children’s Commissioner Judge Frances Eivers said the evidence did not support mandatory reporting, but she supported Poutasi’s other recommendations, such as mandatory training of all those working with children to recognise and report abuse, information sharing and more public awareness campaigns.

And most of all, prevention.

“Our systems are broken, they’re not connected, we’re not invested enough in our communities and helping them to work to find solutions. This isn’t just about Oranga Tamariki, it’s about health, it's about housing – these mokopuna come from a place of poverty, of not having enough food.

“Families are struggling, and that’s what hasn’t changed.”