Concerns raised over training of Oranga Tamariki staff seen tackling child in video
Thursday, 1 July 2021
None of the staff at a care and protection residence where youth workers allegedly used excessive force on a teen had received refresher training on techniques for physical interventions, a union says.
Oranga Tamariki chief executive Sir Wira Gardiner announced on Thursday that the agency would close care and protection residence in Christchurch, Te Oranga.
It comes after a video, published by Newsroom on Tuesday, showed three staff members at the facility twice tackling a boy aged about 13 to the ground once while he was restrained in a secure room.
All 60 Te Oranga staff will be asked to stay home on full pay from 12am on Monday. New staff are being brought into the residence.
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* Media outlet Newsroom facing criminal charge after story on 'reverse uplifts'
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The move came a day after Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis told a parliamentary select committee that Oranga Tamariki was “broken”.
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The National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) represents a bulk of the staff at the residence.
Secretary Janice Gemmell told Stuff what was seen in the footage was not okay, but she understood none of the staff were up to speed with refreshed approved training techniques for physical intervention called MAPA: Management of Actual or Potential Aggression at the time of the incident.
“They don’t get any supervision, they don’t have any of those support things in place that they should when dealing with such high and complex needs young people,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s good enough.”
Gemmell had spoken to the staff in the videos. She said it was an “incredibly stressful and upsetting” time for the staff.
“Nothing happens in isolation … this significant event where a staff member has probably gone outside what’s normally practised will have been a result of a combination of things including exhaustion and frustration.”
NUPE had raised concerns with Oranga Tamariki “on numerous occasions” about significant concerns for staff and the young people at Te Oranga with the residence struggling with a “highly volatile” group of young people who had worn staff down.
She said staff were exhausted and did not feel well-equipped to cope and needed more support to deal with young people who were “incredibly complex”.
“We’re not talking specialised, trained staff here. These are youth workers and really these people who are presenting such complex behaviours, aggressive, assaultive, abusive, self-harming behaviours are really at the top end and that needs some specialist intervention,” she said.
Gemmell said Te Oranga had recently accommodated a lot more “high needs” young people because there were no secure beds available in Auckland.
She said the union and its members who worked at Te Oranga were “shocked” to hear the announcement that it was closing.
“I genuinely felt at the time it was an overreaction to something that we needed to work through to try and learn from it and focus on the way forward,” she said.
“Staff haven’t felt heard so when this happened today it was like ‘bloody hell, we’ve been raising it forever and we’ve still not been heard and now this is happening’.”
She said the union would be supporting the staff involved.
Whistleblower ‘fuming’
The whistleblower who broke the story told Newsroom on Thursday that he was “fuming” at just another knee-jerk reaction from Oranga Tamariki that would not help the children.
“What the hell is going to happen to these kids now? What about the staff who work their backsides off to look after these kids? … This is just typical showboating from Wellington.”
He said he believed staff would likely lose their jobs, Newsroom reported.
“We need professionally-trained staff working in therapeutic lock-up environments. These kids need these facilities. We just don’t need leadership covering up abuse because it looks bad for the organisation. That’s what happened here.”
Gardiner said he believed closing the Christchurch facility while multiple investigations were under way was the “safest option” for the children involved.
“This decision comes after a number of serious issues involving staff and tamariki have come to light over the past week.
“Closing the facility is not a quick, instant or easy operation. We are already in the process of planning the safe transition of the all the tamariki currently staying at Te Oranga to other appropriate care arrangements.”
He did not give a timeframe for closing the facility, saying the agency would take the time it needed to move the 10 children, all aged about 14, safely.
Davis earlier said it was obvious Oranga Tamariki was “failing to live up to their new name”.
“I'm not here to defend the indefensible. Oranga Tamariki has made some serious mistakes, and there's no hiding away from them.”
Gardiner said Oranga Tamariki already planned to eventually close all four of its care and protection facilities around New Zealand and replace them with 10 new smaller homes.
“Oranga Tamariki is undergoing a period of extensive change. I am doing everything possible to right the wrong and fix the hurt.”
The staff at the centre of the video had been stood down while Oranga Tamariki and police investigated. He would not say how many staff were involved.
He commended the person who sent to the video to media for revealing the issues.
Gardiner earlier said staff pressures were not an issue at the care and protections facilities, as there were 60 staff to 10 children at the specific facility where the incidents happened, he said.
Restraint had been used against children more than 200 times in 2019, and in four years there had been 12 injuries from the use of restraint, most being “bruises” and “scrapes” but also one serious injury to a child.
In a joint statement, Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft and Assistant Māori Commissioner Glenis Philip-Barbara said they were relieved by Oranga Tamariki's decision to close the facilities.
“At long last this signals the ditching of an old-fashioned model that, along with orphanages and borstals has no place in the 21st century,” Becroft said.
The concerns raised in the video published by Newsroom were not new and were well known by Oranga Tamariki.
“As the statutory monitor of Oranga Tamariki we frequently hear from children about excessive force, including overzealous restraint that has led to cuts, scratches, carpet burns and bruising,” Becroft said.
“We have raised these concerns repeatedly in our reports to Oranga Tamariki.”
Philip-Barbara said it was not time to worry about cost, but was time to “spend everything necessary” to keep the affected young people safe.
The commissioners had requested more information on where the children at Te Oranga would be placed and would be closely monitoring what support they received, they said.
The facility first opened in 1902 as a school for girls who were neglected, needy or delinquent. It became the Kingslea Girls Training Centre in 1965, and was the sole site of Kingslea School until 2005, when the site was renovated and reopened as Te Oranga.