Te Puna Wai is one of five youth justice facilities in New Zealand. Photo / George Heard
When *John signed up to serve at a youth justice residence his heart was in the right place - he wanted to make a difference.
He would be working with the top 5 per cent of the nation’s most hardened teenagers. These are teens facing charges of murder, rape, aggravated robbery and some with gang connections.
John knew the challenges, he wanted to build relationships with the rangatahi and be a positive influence.
When he started, John and his colleagues worked only with younger teenagers - 16 and below. But after a 2019 law change, the facilities now take in bigger, stronger 17- and 18-year-olds.
And an exodus of experienced staff after Covid lockdowns meant facilities are now being run by inexperienced workers who struggle to control the residents. The union has claimed the centres have become more about containment than rehabilitation.
Staff members have been stabbed, spat on, punched and kicked, the union said.
“I am forever amazed there’s not been worse injuries than what there has been,” John told the Herald.
“It’s absolute luck.”
John said staff had complained to Oranga Tamariki, which runs the centres, pleading for help. Staff want locks on doors, working radios and support for the split-second decisions that require physical intervention.
But the union has said Oranga Tamariki’s response was often to review the incident using CCTV footage and stand down staff for poor conduct if there is physical contact.
John and his colleagues felt exposed, second-guessing their actions and ignoring situations out of fear of losing their jobs.
Talk of an industry-wide strike is growing, the union has confirmed. John and his colleagues faced burnout and mental-health damage. John is close to quitting his role.
“Who would recommend this job to their mates?”
New Zealand has five youth justice residences. Auckland has two - Korowai Manaaki, the country’s largest, and Whakatakapokai. Another is based in Rotorua and another in Palmerston North.
The only South Island facility is Te Puna Wai o Tuhinapo based in Rolleston, 30km west of Christchurch.
Oranga Tamariki says the centres have a heavy focus on rehabilitation. Teenagers will be sent to the facilities whilst facing serious charges in the Youth Court or if sentenced by the court for three to six months in custody.
Teens living there follow routines depending on their needs and interests.
A typical day might include school lessons, sports and cultural activities, group outings, whānau visits, cooking, homework, and time to relax.
Many of the rangatahi earn NCEA credits during their time within the facilities and some complete vocational courses which connect them with jobs when they leave.
Staff are assigned duties, run programmes with the teens and take part in their leisure activities, much like a social worker.
The aim of the centres is to interrupt the pathway of an offender, shifting them away from crime before they turn 18 and can enter adult prison.
But workers say staff shortages have plagued the industry and the focus has now shifted to simply keeping control of the residents.
*Dave, a former worker, described the facilities as a “holding pen” - a revolving door that welcomes teens set to face court for serious charges and then dumps them back into society.
The workers’ union, the National Union of Public Employees (Nupe), said staffing numbers had played a role. Secretary and lead organiser Janice Gemmell said: “There isn’t always the time or effort they’d like to put into the young people.”
Until 2019, the facilities welcomed teenagers aged 16 and below. The procedures, infrastructure and safety measures were all designed around this.
On July 1 of that year, a legislation change allowed 17- and 18-year-olds into the facilities.
The change was a result of recommendations from an Expert Advisory Panel, which stressed that youth offenders should be seen as vulnerable young people who can be prevented from reoffending.
The panel recommended that the upper-age jurisdiction of the Youth Court be extended to age 18.
Nupe said the change coincided with the Covid-19 lockdown, resulting in a low number of teenage arrests and a lack of staff turnover.
“It gave Oranga Tamariki a false sense of, ‘Oh, it wasn’t so bad,’ but it was a different time,” said Gemmell.
Things began to change after New Zealand moved through its Covid lockdowns.
As of this year, Nupe believes that roughly half of the facilities’ workforce has spent fewer than 18 months in the job,
Oranga Tamariki’s general manager of youth justice residences, Parani Wiki, acknowledged staffing challenges, “like many workplaces nationally”.
However, she disagreed there was a struggle to retain experienced people at all sites.
“A national marketing and recruitment campaign for Oranga Tamariki is being developed and was launched in March,” she said.
“Recruitment for Oranga Tamariki residences is a specific focus.”
For John, his concern towards the safety of staff didn’t take long to become apparent.
No longer was he dealing with smaller, acquiescent 14-year-olds - the game had changed.
“You deal with big units, you have big and strong 18-year-olds and by that point, you’re dealing with a man,” he said.
“So I’m worried about my safety and the safety of other staff.”
Dave, who was stood down after an incident involving a physical confrontation, told the Herald that smaller staff members couldn’t physically match a large, agitated teenager.
“All of a sudden, you think about protecting the kid but you’re also protecting this [staff member], so it gets really messy.”
Managing agitated teenagers is not a new problem and neither is concern for staff safety.
In 2015, the Canterbury police youth services manager filed a report on Te Puna Wai - the Rolleston-based youth facility that houses up to 40 people.
The manager at the time, Julie Fifield, reported that police had observed a trend “over an extended period of time” at the facility that saw staff repeatedly assaulted.
She said the youth crime unit had been “inundated” with staff incident reports.
Fifield said there had been 104 offences and 54 files at the unit between 2014 and 2015, as well as 60 serious or grievous assaults.
Concluding her report, Fifield said the increased severity of the violent offences hadn’t escalated to staff losing their lives, but “it is possible that this situation will eventuate in the future”.
Eight years have passed and in the past 12 months, Te Puna Wai has registered 64 assaults on staff - the highest number of all the facilities.
Korowai Manaaki has had 46 in the past year, Te Maioha has 14, Te Au Rere and Whakatakapokai have 12 and 10 respectively.
The number of assaults will only be those reported. Most staff won’t record being punched, kicked, spat on or shoved - neither will stats likely include verbal abuse and threats against them and their families.
Dave said a young person’s temperament could change in the blink of an eye, so staff must always have their guard up.
“The staff are at risk all the time, every moment of the day,” he said.
“It depends how [the teens] get out of bed or if they’ve been taking their medication, but it’s like flicking a light switch. They go from passive to aggressive in an instant.”
The justice facilities have procedures for when an incident begins, starting with a colour-code system.
Code green tells staff to be prepared, something might be about to happen. Orange alerts them that an incident has occurred and could escalate. A code red will call all available staff to respond.
A red or orange code will trigger a response team, which is made up of one designated member from each unit, alerted through radio communications. Dave said the radios were not reliable.
“The radios are useless.
“We’ve been asking for new radios for four years. If you can’t communicate with a radio and a code red happens, that could be a 14-second delay and that could cause serious injury.”
Oranga Tamariki has claimed replacements for new radios are under way and staff are expected to be equipped with them in the coming months.
When the response team arrives, their first priority is to remove any troublemakers and attempt to de-escalate through verbal communication. Oranga Tamariki procedure is not to physically intervene unless absolutely necessary.
John says de-escalation can be successful but every situation is different.
“You can be like a guiding force where you try and move them away, and that can work,” he said.
“But you don’t know if they have a weapon, or if they’re a distraction to something happening elsewhere - they’re clever.”
The use of weapons is becoming an ever-present issue in facilities. Unlike a men’s prison, teens can meet their families without obstruction and visitors can’t be searched under most circumstances.
Staff have been threatened and injured by a range of objects, be it a sharpened toothbrush or parts from a vape pen.
“There’s some capable stuff going on in there,” said John.
When a situation turns hostile, workers will sometimes be required to intervene physically - in which case a strict procedure must be followed.
Staff only have one approved method of physical intervention, called Star - or Safe Tactical Approach and Response.
The system was introduced in 2019 after previous methods had resulted in teens or staff members being injured, as well as damaging the relationship between workers and residents.
It’s a method made up of various holds and moves that staff can use to minimise the damage caused by an aggressive youth. If a kid throws punches, a worker might grab an arm or go in for a bear hug.
John likes Star, which now has a 2.0 version, he thinks the method is effective for most age groups.
“But with the older people, I think you can really struggle with it.”
Staff are given Star training when they first join a facility. It’s enough to maintain a basic level of control if a situation threatens to escalate. But certain scenarios require quick thinking, and staff need to discern the most appropriate method of containment.
On February 8, a staff member in Te Puna Wai was stabbed in the neck with a makeshift weapon while five teens attempted to escape the facility and climb on to the roof.
Night staff at youth facilities have been assaulted en masse by teenagers, who during one attack pulled the metal from intercoms and stuffed them into a pillowcase to swing at workers.
On Wednesday last week, the Herald understands, a staff member at Te Puna Wai was threatened by a group of teens with a makeshift shank, before the group barricaded themselves in the lounge and attacked staff collectively.
Staff members had to use chairs as shields, bringing order to the room before a brawl broke out amongst youngsters and resulted in moderate injuries.
These complicated incidents require staff to respond without a lot of time to think through the approach.
Dave signed up to help out at a youth justice residence because he wanted to help kids from broken backgrounds.
He’s suffered a traumatic past and wanted to help rehabilitate kids who’d walked through a similar journey.
It was a job he loved. He’d listened to instructions around the Star procedure and did all the training modules, and the kids had taken a liking to him.
When an escalating incident unfolded in front of him, he physically intervened using Star and minimised the risk.
But one of the offenders threatened to assault him. Making a split-second decision, attempting to protect both himself and the kid, Dave physically engaged again but outside of Star protocol.
Dave was stood down from his role. An internal investigation into how he responded is ongoing.
When a staff member engages in a physical interaction outside of the Star protocol, footage from CCTV will be sent to Oranga Tamariki’s head office for review.
Gemmell said the process has more often than not resulted in workers being handed “the brown envelope”, asking them to attend a meeting where their decision-making is questioned from every angle.
It’s during this process, according to Gemmell, that frustration begins to build.
“It’s enormously frustrating when you go to meetings, and I’ve been to many, and you have people stopping footage frame, by frame, by frame, to see where your hand is on that young person,” she said.
“How you held them - ‘Did you intend to get them on the shoulder instead of on the arm, what was the purpose of that, what were you thinking?’ It’s completely nutty, it fails to understand the whole context of what’s going on, the relationship the staffer has with that young person and the risk they pose.”
John finds this tension challenging to navigate in his work.
He’s adamant most, if not all staff in youth justice facilities will put the safety of young people and staff above an HR process - but it’s afterwards the concern begins to grow.
“You’re doing your best to keep it under control, afterwards you think ‘gee, I hope that looked okay over the cameras’,” he said.
“It’s pretty common for the majority of staff to have that go through their mind.”
John admits there are many instances employees will choose to step back and let a situation continue to escalate out of fear of putting a foot wrong.
“If there’s no risk to other people, most staff will leave that young person alone. It’s better to have a broken window than an HR process.”
When asked to what degree the teens take advantage of staff hesitancy, John pauses to think.
“There are certain routines that should be followed, but they can push the boundaries way up,” he said.
“If staff are intimidated, the kids could get away with stuff they shouldn’t - like later bedtimes, longer phone calls - so lots of boundary-pushing. If there’s lots of new staff, they can really make it a hell of a time.”
John believes the workers have integrity, but have been known to question their decisions before intervening.
“They question [their judgment] way more than necessary and it creates longer, bigger incidents than it could have been.”
Dave spoke of trying to keep order within the ranks but felt limited by what he was capable of imposing.
“If I tell a kid you’re on dinner set-up and they go ‘nah f*** off’, well, you can’t do anything about that,” he said.
“They don’t get treats at the end of the week, but that’s pretty much it. So these guys walk around smacking people, they do what they like.”
Oranga Tamariki’s Parani Wiki told the Herald there is no formal policy in place regarding CCTV footage being sent to Oranga Tamariki’s head office, but she acknowledged situations past have required review from staff when necessary.
“But this is not a policy or standard practice,” she said.
Oranga Tamariki confirmed it has a rigorous reporting system that details every use of restraint and reviews every use of force.
“When reviewing the use of physical intervention, the wider context of the situation must always be considered. Any footage of the event must be treated as just one part of the picture.”
John was asked if he feels he receives adequate support from head office.
“No. No. You get the very strong impression they care more about their reputation and looking good in statistics and the media,” he said.
Between February this year and the previous 12 months, Oranga Tamariki has spent $1.1 million on repairing its youth justice facilities.
The costs include the sprinkler activations at the facilities, which staff have said happen on a regular basis at some buildings.
“To put it into perspective, with kids pulling the sprinklers and wrecking books, they replace the books and computers - but they won’t update the radios we’ve asked for four years,” said Dave.
John says some staff at youth justice residences face the prospect of burnout, mental health problems and injury,
He said the only reason a staff member is yet to be fatally injured was “absolute luck”, before responding to why a staffer hasn’t been killed yet.
“Some of the shank stuff you find - flipping heck man, if a young person got angry enough and really wanted to use that . . .”
It’s not too hard for Dave to reflect on his time in the facilities and draw a conclusion about the possibility of a workplace death.
“Quite easily there could be a fatality. If you put that into context - we’re not just talking shanks, but if you get a roundhouse kick to the temple, your likelihood of fatality is very high,” he said.
The claims from staff mirror Gemmell’s perspective, she knows up to 10 staff members suffering the long-term effects of head injuries from teens in the facilities.
As of February 28, there are 22 staff on ACC leave from youth justice residencies and protection homes who are unable to work due to injury.
Of the 22 injured, fourteen injuries are due to assault. Among the remaining eight, some are on leave due to injury during a restraint.
“People’s jobs are on the line, they have families to support,” said Gemmell.
“All the risk sits with these guys, the management doesn’t confront somebody smashing their head in and facing a head-injury long term.”
The grumbles don’t come without solutions and the staff have plenty to offer. A common message is that nobody cares more for the teenagers than the workers within the facilities - there’s a strong desire to invest in their lives.
John asks why his colleagues don’t have access to the same basic protection equipment as police and corrections officers.
“They’ve all got different tools given to them to help deal with what they face, whereas we’re all running around in shorts and T-shirts,” he said.
Staff want locks on the unit doors, which would keep the teens from co-ordinating overnight assaults on the night crew and provide a further containment measure for residents acting violently.
Oranga Tamariki’s Wiki said: “Many of these tools are being considered and legislative change may be required.”
Employees are currently offered a thematic analysis of reported health and safety incidents, as well as reviews with a critical incident support service.
Wiki said a well-being support framework for workers was being developed, which will “focus on frontline kaimahi [staff]”.
“Strengthening our practice is a priority for Oranga Tamariki,” she said.
“We continue to work towards ensuring consistent, quality practice that is collaborative and culturally responsive and meets the needs of tamariki and rangatahi.”
In the immediate term, Oranga Tamariki has made practical changes - such as extending staff training from four weeks to six, deploying “new staff members”, strengthening security and hosting discussions around better protective gear.
The buildings and facilities are undergoing improvement and the legal framework is being reviewed.
Labour’s Minister for Children, Kelvin Davis, told the Herald he’s asked Oranga Tamariki to “do better” and look at further ways to improve its facilities, noting a higher need for training and support in the youth justice space.
He said management, culture and policy all need to be looked at, as well as both the recruitment and retention of staff.
“Like many industries, there is no doubt the years of Covid were challenging for those working in youth justice,” said Davis.
“I am told committees for all youth justice residences have been formed to tackle these problems and I expect to see improvements quickly.”
But improvements might be too late for some.
Janice Gemmell said workers would likely strike if they continued to face the conditions they endure on a daily basis.
“I was looking back through all of this and I was like ‘ah, actually this is s***’. It’s gone on for years and nothing has changed.
“If people genuinely feel unsafe in their workplace, they have every right to continue not working in that environment.”
John said he would consider leaving “if I continue to see staff getting hurt”.
“I shouldn’t be working a job with this risk.”
Police and family are concerned for Jonelle's wellbeing.