Oranga Tamariki put teen in motel for a year, bootcamp attendees reoffend - Editorial

A 15-year-old boy lived in a motel for a year with round-the-clock minders because Oranga Tamariki couldn't find anywhere suitable to put him. Image / AI generated illustration

Editorial

THE FACTS

• As of July 1, 18 youths in Oranga Tamariki care were staying in motels.
• Seven of 10 youths reoffended after attending the Government’s military-style bootcamp pilot programme.

A teen ward of the state living in a motel with a rotating cast of 24/7 minders.

Instead of attending school, he whiles away the hours sleeping in, gaming, eating, seeing his girlfriend and occasionally committing minor crimes. On the taxpayers’ dime.

It sounds like fiction, but The Suite Life of Zack and Cody - a Disney show about tween hotel residence hijinks - this is not.

More like Groundhog Day, with a pinch of The Catcher in the Rye.

As Open Justice reported on Sunday, it was the reality for a 15-year-old boy – pseudo name “Cody” – in Tauranga for about a year.

One Youth Court judge called it a “dire situation” and another said it was “not a way to live” and noted the “cost to the taxpayer must be horrendous”.

The agency would not comment on Cody’s situation, but from what it said generally about young people in motels, his case does not appear isolated.

“Occasionally” young people may stay longer than the usual one-to-three nights, including if they have needs or extreme behaviour that made finding an appropriate placement hard.

Cody is now living under the care of an iwi provider, said to be sticking by him despite some early challenges.

That doesn’t make the ludicrous length of his time in the motel – largely disconnected from family, school, community and society – any less concerning.

Did the Government’s military-style bootcamp achieve a better result for its first cohort of youth offenders?

Oranga Tamariki has confirmed seven of 10 participants reoffended after leaving the three-month initial in-house segment of the 12-month pilot, which wrapped last month.

Oranga Tamariki deputy chief executive Iain Chapman. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Minister for Children Karen Chhour and Oranga Tamariki’s Iain Chapman said some re-offending was always expected.

The death of a participant in an unrelated crash and public scrutiny of reoffending data were also challenges for the group.

Chapman said the programme was “never going to completely turn around 10 out of 10″ of the country’s “most serious” young offenders.

He said it achieved other goals, giving examples of “heartening changes” among the teens, including playing sports, shunning old peers, talk of removing tattoos and “looking for really real positives, opportunities around employment …”.

“For the majority of those that did offend, the offending was less serious and we saw longer periods of time without reoffending than we saw previously,” he said.

Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime called the initiative a “complete failure” that should be scrapped.

The Government is pushing ahead with enshrining the bootcamps in law, and there is talk of the second cohort having a longer in-house period.

The taxpayers funding this project understand troubled teens can’t be reformed overnight, but the first-year results are unlikely to have many popping the champagne.

Greater return on investment is expected from round two.

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