Editorial: Oranga Tamariki faces questions over cuts to children’s service providers

Children Minister Karen Chhour has previously said that as part of Oranga Tamariki's contract process it reviewed existing and future planned funding. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Editorial

As public servants return to their offices in the next few weeks, Oranga Tamariki managers will have even more questions to answer than usual.

Scathing public criticism is nothing new for the state provider of child protection services. Last year the Chief Ombudsman found OT staff had repeatedly failed to investigate reports of alleged violence towards children by their mother’s partner and had failed to take action, despite photographic evidence. It was merely the latest in an avalanche of damning reports on the agency’s widespread failings. One child protection advocate has counted 33 highly critical reports into OT and its predecessors over 30 years, with no signs of meaningful improvement.

But now the agency has entered new territory. It pays for many external services, including children’s counselling, school social workers, teen parent units, support for neurodivergent children, support for foster parents, and family and sexual violence programmes.

Last year, at the direction of Minister for Children Karen Chhour, it scrapped more than 330 contracts with service providers to claw back $22 million as part of the coalition’s savings drive.

Chhour was unapologetic in announcing the move, claiming OT had been a “cash cow for community service providers” for many years.

“There has been no reduction in frontline services,” she said. “Oranga Tamariki is simply funding those who do the work, and not those who don’t.”

One of its deputy chief executives, Darrin Haimona, said public funding had been “sitting idle in the individual bank accounts of providers” which led to “under-performance” and “under-utilisation”. He took the unusual step of naming one of those providers, Family Start Nelson, saying they had achieved only 80% of their expected workload, so their contracted hours would be cut accordingly.

Developments since the announcement suggest the thinking behind the cuts will be seriously tested in the year ahead.

In October the Office of the Auditor-General announced it would examine OT’s decision to reduce or scrap contracts with little warning as they came up for renewal.

The investigation seems likely to concentrate on whether OT followed the correct process but there is a hint in the terms of reference that it could tackle the key issue involved - whether children and young people have been left in the lurch, as many providers claim.

“The services being delivered under the contracts in question support some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable tamariki and rangatahi, and their whānau.

“It is vital that these contracts are managed well from beginning to end.”

OT then narrowly avoided a legal challenge from one of its providers, Stand Tū Māia, which replaced children’s health camps in 2000 and caters for about 4000 at-risk young people and their families.

Stand Tū Māia threatened a court injunction just before Christmas to stop the abrupt cancellation of its contract. It won a temporary extension until April but the future of its services remains uncertain. New Zealand Principals’ Federation president Leanne Otene described the potential closure of Stand Tū Māia as “an absolute tragedy”.

Governments should always ensure that taxpayers’ money is well spent and no social services organisation can assume permanent rights to use it. But Oranga Tamariki and its political masters need to come up with more convincing answers to prove no child will be left behind in the Government’s drive to cut spending.