Friday, February 14, 2020

Butt covering or sheer incompetence?

Regarding the Flaxmere tragedy, earlier this week we were told:

"Foster said no other government agencies, such as Oranga Tamariki, were involved with the family before the incident."

Today the story changes:

"A 4-year-old boy critically injured in a suspected case of child abuse had previously been admitted to hospital with broken bones and removed from his immediate family...Oranga Tamariki intervened and the boy was placed into the care of wider family. He was returned to his immediate family shortly before Christmas."

I generally hold off critcising OT because of the 'damned if they do and damned if they don't' nature of their after-the-fact work.

But what the heck? Is this butt covering or sheer incompetence?

As for the "Not one more baby" politicised movement screaming about the uplift of Maori babies, it is glaringly obvious to who and where they should be directing that message. And it's not OT.

4 comments:

The Slippery Slope said...

In the discussion around the legislation changes I listened to an interview with Katheryn Ryan and a couple of others including, then Minister, Tariana Turia who was arguing for the whanau first placement be included again into the policy despite the outcomes for children who had been uplifted by cyfs and placed with family being worse than for children placed with unrelated foster parents. I have tried a couple of times to find that interview, to no avail.
I realised then that child welfare was not actually a priority for these people who were using children as a tool for their power.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

You may be interested in this by a retired Canadian judge:

https://www.nzcpr.com/new-zealands-maori-child-welfare-problem/

The Slippery Slope said...

https://www.nzcpr.com/new-zealands-maori-child-welfare-problem/

Wow.

That should be compulsory reading for every NZer.

david said...

That Canadian piece is very well written. I am a little sceptical of the claim that he had no idea of the New Zealand situation - it reads more like an allegory. But on the other hand it probably applies equally to the situation in Australia.