Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis has asked Oranga Tamariki to “please explain” its actions after a Newsroom investigation into Māori children being taken away from Pākehā foster parents who had provided them with a permanent home.
Davis told Newsroom he had watched most of the video – a change from his predecessor Tracey Martin, who refused to watch a previous Newsroom investigation into a child uplift – and had already called Oranga Tamariki officials into his office on Thursday morning for a “please explain”.
“I was disturbed by what I saw – it was absolutely heartbreaking.”
Davis had subsequently requested an urgent briefing on the case and the ministry’s approach.
The video documentary by Newsroom’s investigations editor, Melanie Reid, reveals the case of four Māori siblings being taken from a Pākehā family after they were placed with them more than five years ago [timing updated}.
The ministry’s actions have been condemned in the documentary by iwi leaders, highly experienced social workers and child trauma experts.
Reid’s investigation shows Oranga Tamariki removing the children after promising them and their foster parents that this would be their ‘forever home’ and they would never be moved again.
The British couple, who have one other foster child, had purchased a lifestyle block to give the children more space to play and the wife had given up her job to concentrate on looking after the children.
Davis said: “The first thing that we should be thinking about is the wellbeing of those children, and … having children in a safe, loving family is the number one priority.”
Asked whether it was tenable for Oranga Tamariki CEO Grainne Moss to remain at the top of the organisation in light of the latest revelations, he said: “There are issues with the leadership, and I am handling them, but let’s be really clear that the changes in OT are bigger than just the leadership. There is a systemic problem here and one person isn’t necessarily the problem, we have to look at the whole system.”
Newsroom has heard of multiple examples of young children who were taken and placed in foster care with non-Māori being uprooted again and returned to wider whānau as the children’s ministry tries to clean up the mess it caused in the years up to 2019.
The Green Party’s Māori development spokeswoman Elizabeth Kerekere said Davis and Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes needed to look seriously at whether Moss held the confidence of the communities who relied on her to make good decisions for their lives.
“Everything that we’ve been told says that she does not … I have not seen in the three years that she’s had this position, the transformational change that I believe even that she hoped to achieve – that has not occurred.”
Kerekere said Oranga Tamariki “built trauma on top of trauma” when it uplifted Māori children and put them with Pākehā families, only to then uplift them again after they had established familial bonds and send them to extended whānau.
“Where’s the support then, for all of the adults in this situation…where’s the process that says, ‘You know what, we really shouldn’t let this happen again’, and then it happens again, and we go, ‘Hmm, maybe we should check those processes, maybe we should be looking at what we’re doing’, but again, I say that comes back to leadership.”
Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare, who was chastised by Davis after suggesting to media a leadership change within Oranga Tamariki appeared imminent, said it had not been his intention to overstep his role but said he had only been commenting on rumours regarding Moss’ role.
- Updated: Moss stood down as Oranga Tamariki’s chief executive in January 2021
What an absolutely disgusting way to treat people. The OT staff and executive involved should never work for the public sector again. They ought to be named.
Congratulations to Newsroom for your deft handling of a delicate subject and your determination to do the right thing. A bright light for journalism in such a dark time for your brothers-in-arms at Newshub and Sunday.