“The way journalists are misrepresenting the repeal of s7AA does a disservice to New Zealanders who deserve to understand the facts”, says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“Journalists continue to report there is no evidence s7AA changed the way OT operated or that it’s harming children. That is simply false. Just because Oranga Tamariki hasn’t recorded the reasons for its decisions doesn’t mean the evidence doesn’t exist.

“We know OT’s practices changed after s7AA came into effect. The Independent Children’s Monitor reported that:

• …[staff] from Oranga Tamariki felt that, due to a practice shift within their agency, there was now a greater emphasis on keeping tamariki out of care and returning them to their parents where possible.’
• …we heard how the practice shift within Oranga Tamariki is to prioritise the return of tamariki and rangatahi back to their whānau rather than non-kin caregivers.’
• …there was pressure to avoid bringing tamariki into care and to “get them out of care” meaning that, in some cases, “we are placing children with whānau [including parents] that aren’t set up [to care for them]’.
• …tamariki and rangatahi in return and remain home care are “the highest risk group”, with “a higher area of proportional risk”, that “continues to be an area of risk”.’
• Unlike other care settings, tamariki are either remaining in or returning to a care arrangement where there have previously been substantiated care and protection concerns.’

“We know that after s7AA came into effect, OT requested an audit to find out where uplifted Māori children had been sent, looking specifically at non-kin carers.

“According to a social worker: ‘…they were finding out exactly where the Māori kids were, and we were asked to find out the ethnicity of their carers and the status of their placements. That’s why they’re on spreadsheets in OT offices up and down the country’.

“And we know that there are heartbreaking individual cases.

“We’ve seen the case of ‘Moana’ who was traumatised and neglected for years, before being removed and placed into a safe, loving home – what was meant to be a ‘forever home’. That is, until a social worker decided they needed to remove Moana from their care, because a Pākehā family could not provide for her cultural needs.

“We’ve seen four children uplifted in a similar way because the caregivers were the wrong ethnicity and could not provide for their cultural needs.

“Finally, caregivers have told ACT they’ve been forced to send the children to visit their previous abusers, just to keep the family connections, with the attitude of ‘a child needs to know where they came from’.

“Tragically, we know that just because a child is living at home doesn’t mean they are safe. There are far too many cases of children who are harmed or even killed by family who are meant to love and protect them.

“Journalists have a responsibility to accurately report the facts, not a version of the world they would prefer existed.”

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