The Children’s Commissioner says he’s appalled by footage showing children in the care of Oranga Tamariki residences being subjected to excessive force.
Yesterday, footage was published on Newsroom which showed two incidences of children in the Care and Protection Residences being tackled, restrained and held in a headlock by staff.
Andrew Becroft told Breakfast he was sure it wasn’t an isolated incident.
“These are not new concerns. This has been the continuing refrain from children we have interviewed over many years. They talk about excessive force. They talk about unreasonable force,” he said.
Becroft had long called for care and protection residences to be phased out, saying the model had fundamental issues .
He said one young person had told the Children’s Commissioner that when they were restrained, it “brings back the flashbacks of when your parents were hitting you” which then “sets off more behaviour”.
While Becroft was “mightily relieved” Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis and Oranga Tamariki were taking the matter seriously , “and so they should”, change was too slow, he said.
“This isn’t an individual incident … there’s a much deeper issue about ‘are these residences, and they’re really places of secure detention, concrete institutions, are they fit for purpose?’”
Four years ago, Becroft said his office had called for the phasing out of the Care and Protection Residences.
Now, however, “the time has come to bring in the bulldozer” because young people were evidently not safe in them, he said.
There are four Care and Protection Residences in the country, which house young people with high needs in secure premises, meaning they can't leave. They are distinct from Youth Justice facilities, which hold young people who have been arrested, remanded or sentenced for criminal charges.
After years of reviews, the National Urban Māori Authority chair says it’s time for change.
Lady Tureiti Moxon, chair of the National Urban Māori Authority, echoed Becroft’s calls to end the use of the residences.
She said the residences were “way outdated” and that young people needed to be helped into places that were therapeutic and loving.
Lady Tureti said the behaviour of staff in the video was part of a wider culture in New Zealand that “has come from a place of huge violence” in the form of colonisation and systemic racism.
She said a Māori Transitional Authority needed to quickly be brought in to reform Oranga Tamariki for rangatahi.
Change is coming, Oranga Tamariki acting chief executive says
This morning, the acting chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, Sir Wira Gardiner, said “a number” of staff had been stood down and investigations by police and by the agency itself were underway.
The agency’s acting chief executive Sir Wira Gardiner says the use of excessive force isn’t acceptable in any circumstance.
Sir Wira wasn’t able to confirm which staff had been stood down, and whether it included staff in the video released yesterday. He also wasn’t able to say how many staff were stood down.
He acknowledged Care and Protection Residences were no longer fit for purpose because it meant 10 young people with complex needs were “cramped into one antiquated building” alongside 50 to 60 staff.
In the next three to four years, Oranga Tamariki would be building 10 smaller houses which would take in fewer children and staff, he said.
He said the new model would better replicate a loving environment.
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