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A new child safety initiative aims to offer help before trouble starts, rather than being an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff.
The Ngā Tini Whetū program was unveiled on Friday and is a multi-agency collaboration aimed at supporting North Island whānau.
It comes three months after the Oranga Tamariki children’s ministry was criticized by some Maori mothers complaining of institutional brutality, dishonesty and racism.
Rebekah Parsons-King / RNZ / Stuff.co.nz
Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft says the initiative seems like a step in the right direction.
The new initiative, which has been in development for a year, is expected to go live in January. Some details have yet to be refined, but the project has already garnered words of encouragement from the Commissioner for Children.
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Ngā Tini Whetū sponsors hope the program will help whānau get more intensive and earlier support.
KEVIN STENT / Stuff
Children’s Minister Tracey Martin said current support systems often came too late.
ACC Associate Minister Willie Jackson, Minister for Children Tracey Martin, and Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare announced the initiative in Papakura, south of Auckland.
“We want to reduce the number of damage incidents and improve access to services for Maori,” said Jackson.
He said the program would fit with ACC’s injury prevention approach. Ngā Tini Whetū involved an investment of $ 42.4 million over two years.
It would gather evidence of how Whānau Ora’s approach functioned as a decentralized early intervention model.
David White / Stuff
John Tamihere says the program is a good step towards returning services.
“Too often our current support systems see resources going to families after they are in trouble and an incident has occurred,” Martin said.
“It shows that agencies can come together and that we need multiple solutions if we want to reach families the right way: urban and rural, led by iwi and pan-Maori.”
Henare said the program would develop whānau’s ability and stamina.
John Tamihere, executive director of the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, said the program shows how the government and Maori organizations can work together to achieve beneficial results for Maori.
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Peeni Henare says the project will see how the Whānau Ora approach works as a decentralized early intervention model.
Tamihere said the current system was not working and the three ministries wanted better results for the Maori.
He called the program a positive first step towards the return of services to the Maori, by the Maori, for the Maori and “a small step towards the return.”
‘Cautiously optimistic’
Judge Andrew Becroft, Children’s Commissioner, said Stuff the initiative seemed like a step in the right direction.
Becroft said he had also made the case for the “by Maori, for Maori” approach.
He said that this decentralized approach was better than the decades of irregular and incremental change that New Zealand had revealed in an attempt to tackle Maori child safety and related issues.
“I am cautiously optimistic … I want to make sure that the resources get to the Maori.
Becroft said New Zealand had long been a statist society, where the state was expected to be everything to all people.
In reality, Maori parents had been saying for years that Maori community groups and approaches worked better for them than conventional or homogeneous models.
“Actually, the state cannot do it. Communities do it better. We have to genuinely transfer resources and power to good and competent community groups that can do better than the state. “
In June, a report from the Office of the Commissioner for Children found that unprofessional statutory social work practice was harming mothers, families and babies.
The report also found that some Maori mothers of newborns involved with Oranga Tamariki (OT) found the child welfare system dangerous, brutal, and racist.
Becroft said on Friday that Ngā Tini Whetū was a relatively small but significant incremental step towards the return of Maori services.
Devolution, broadly defined, contrasts with centralization or concentration of power in one place.
Becroft said colonial systems had long informed the state’s interactions with the Maori.
ACC, Te Puni Kōkiri (the Maori Development Ministry) and OT are investing in the project.
Work on the Many Stars prototype began in December 2019.
The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency co-designed the project with the three ministries.
