A Prime Minister once hailed it as a rare success. So why has this charity closed?

Monday, 13 July 2026

South Auckland charity Genesis Youth Trust has shut down after 25 years after missing out on government funding.

Championed by Former Prime Minister Sir Bill English, the trust cut reoffending by 30%, but Finance Minister Nicola Willis cited high, unsustainable costs.

The founder criticised the decision, highlighting that millions are being spent on boot camps while proven community models are defunded.

Former Prime Minister Bill English once hailed a charity as a rare success in reducing youth reoffending in South Auckland. That charity, Genesis Youth Trust, has now closed after failing to secure more Government funding.

A young Papakura woman had 42 criminal offences against her name by her mid-teens, including assault, dishonesty and family harm.

As a child, she had witnessed her parents fighting and chronic alcohol and drug abuse. Her daycare and then her school alerted authorities about signs of family harm.

After assaulting her mother and nana at age 14, she was referred by police in 2018 to the Genesis Youth Trust, a charity which uses early intervention programmes to reduce youth reoffending.

“She was angry at the world and wanted to fight everyone,” said Rob Woodley, a former police officer who founded the trust in Mangere. “She’d basically got to a point in life where she didn’t care anymore.”

The young woman - who cannot be named for privacy reasons - was provided a mentor as a positive role model; a social worker to tackle issues like housing and social factors; and a counsellor to unpack her mental health issues and problems within her family.

Two years into the programme, the young woman had not reoffended and had rebuilt her relationship with her mother (who was now clean). She had gained NZQA qualifications and was planning a future as a social worker or a teacher.

Woodley told the woman’s story in a presentation a few years ago, when the trust was celebrating a six-year programme for reducing reoffending among 600 young people in South Auckland.

On Friday, Woodley gave another speech: at the closure of the charity. Genesis Youth Trust has been told by the Government that it is unable to keep funding it. After 25 years, it has wound down, laid off its staff and is trying to find alternative placements for around 60 young participants.

“I’m heartbroken,” Woodley told Stuff. “I’m biased, you know. But I saw lives changed, I saw it with my own eyes. They become law-abiding citizens and they come back in their 20s and 30s and they say ‘I’ve got kids, I’ve got a job’.”

Government ministers and independent assessments tell another story: they say the trust’s model was expensive and unsustainable. They also say the trust had not taken up opportunities for more Crown funding and could have kept operating at a smaller scale with existing money.

“It has not been made lightly,” Finance and Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis said to the trust about the decision to end its funding. “This decision reflects the need to allocate public funds transparently, consistently, and based on robust evidence.”

Genesis Youth Trust’s demise comes just three years after it completed the first social bond in New Zealand - an initiative championed by former Prime Minister Sir Bill English in which private entities invested in a charity to tackle difficult social issues.

It was chosen out of 50 providers after an exhaustive process to lead a programme to reduce reoffending in South Auckland.

Over six years, it took on 600 referrals from police. Analysis found that the group’s reoffending rate was 30% lower than those who were in alternative, more traditional rehabilitation programmes. They were also more likely to go into study or jobs and were in better health.

The programme delivered $2.50 for every $1 spent in the first six years and $9 for every $1 spent over each participant’s lifetime. Those who invested, including the NZ Super Fund, earned returns of around 6-10%.

“It was successful by any measure,” Sir Bill English told Stuff. “It would be one of the most thoroughly evaluated programmes that government agencies have funded.

“It started out as a small, under-resourced NGO and developed into a well-run, gritty organisation that could show its impact to a higher standard than pretty much any other service around.”

After the social bond finished, the Labour-led Government decided not to continue with the programme or scale it up. The trust kept operating at reduced size with funding from Oranga Tamariki and police.

The police funding dried up a year ago. That is despite local officers describing it as an “invaluable” programme.

“Genesis staff are held in very high regard by the community and by local schools,” said Glen Innes Sergeant Rhys Smith in an email to the trust’s staff.

“They consistently go above and beyond for tamariki—whether that means transporting a child to and from school, picking them up after a family harm episode, or providing new experiences that broaden their world.”

The trust’s chief executive Henare Clarke said its Oranga Tamariki funding was due to run out in September and he appealed to ministers for help.

Ministers told the trust to apply for funding from the Social Investment Agency (SIA). But Clarke said the agency’s first funding round was not finalised until October - which was too late for his organisation and gave no certainty of ongoing money.

The agency provided $550,000 in transitional funding to allow it to continue while an independent assessment of its finances and effectiveness was carried out.

In a letter seen by Stuff, Willis said the review by KPMG found Genesis continued to achieve positive outcomes for young people.

“It also found, however, that the organisation’s current operating model is high cost, lacks sufficient scale, and is not financially sustainable without ongoing additional Crown support.”

Ministers received advice that Genesis had not published annual reports for the last two years, after reports in 2022 and 2023 showed deficits of $4.5m and $1.2m.

Willis noted Genesis had not applied for two rounds of SIA funding (Clarke said the timing for both rounds did not work because the trust would have run out of money before the deadlines).

She said the trust had the option of shrinking in size to fit existing Oranga Tamariki funding.

Clarke said scaling down would have prevented the trust from meeting demand for its services - between 250-300 referrals a year. Oranga Tamariki’s funding only covered the mentoring part of the programme, not the other key parts.

Clarke also said the KPMG review compared the trust’s costs to an adult reoffending programme, but young people required much more intensive support.

Woodley, who now manages the Blues Charitable Trust, said he was hesitant to criticise the Government because he was worried it would sound like sour grapes.

“I get really wound up about this, and I’ve got to be careful,” he said. “I look at the boot camps where 10 of the worst youth offenders went … and I think eight of them reoffended again, and yet they have poured $30 million into extending it. Boot camps do not work, and yet [the trust] had a model that did work.”

Of the 4000 people seen by the trust over its history, 61% did not reoffend. Clarke said the estimated cost per participant was around $17,000.

Genesis took on a broad range of referrals, usually medium to high-risk offenders - and could also choose to turn down a referral.

The Military Style Academy pilot focused on 10 very high risk young people and cost $5m, though that figure included establishment costs.

Oranga Tamariki could not immediately provide a breakdown of the boot camp’s costs, but warned against comparing the programme against the Genesis programme because of the differences between the two cohorts.

In a statement, Willis said: “The question for Ministers was not whether Genesis Youth Trust costs less than a Military Style Academy. The question was whether Genesis Youth Trust represented the best value for money compared with other available youth justice and social services interventions. Advice to Ministers was that the Trust had not shown a sufficiently clear point of difference to justify ongoing funding outside normal commissioning processes.”

She added: “I want to acknowledge the contribution Genesis Youth Trust has made to supporting vulnerable young people and their families since its establishment in 2000, including through the youth reoffending pilot programme that began in 2017.”

Deputy chief executive for commissioning and investment Benesia Smith said Oranga Tamariki was now working with Genesis to understand how its closure would affect the young people in its care. It was arranging alternative services for some of them, if required.

Oranga Tamariki was also trying to arrange for Genesis staff to transition to other charities in the community.