OT pledges better stats on child homicide

Friday, 8 December 2023

Child welfare ministry Oranga Tamariki is working to improve its data as its own figures show just four children under its watch have died by homicide in seven years.

The numbers do not include Baby Ru, 2, whose October death in Lower Hutt is being treated as a homicide.

Figures released by Oranga Tamariki the Ministry for Children (OT) under the Official Information Act (OIA) show four children have died from abuse since 2017. Two were in OT care and two were out of its immediate care but OT was involved with the children. Three of them were still awaiting a coroner’s finding to confirm it was death by abuse.

It was previously revealed that a leaked internal OT document put the number of child homicides since 2017 at 57 and half of those had a record with it before they died.

A quick Google search brings up more than four New Zealand children killed since 2017: CJ White, 10 months; Malachi Subecz, 5; a 3-month-old boy in Porirua; a homicide investigation after two children under five were killed in Ruakākā, Northland; and the case of Lauren Dickason who in 2021 killed her three children: Maya and Karla, 2, and Liane, 6.

OT chief social worker Peter Whitcombe said OT was not the responsible agency for reporting death statistics and not all child homicides and deaths were reported to it. It relied on a coroner to decide on the cause of death of a child in its care.

“However, we recognise that quality data can help us learn and improve how we collectively care for and protect tamariki growing up in Aotearoa,” he said in the OIA response.

“We are currently working with other agencies to put agreements and processes in place that ensure Oranga Tamariki has a complete picture of child deaths data in the future.”

He previously confirmed there was a tentative figure of a further 19 deaths of children OT had some involvement with.

ACT MP Karen Chhour in early November bemoaned the struggle to get child homicide data from government departments.

Now the Minister for Children and Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, she this week said she planned to address data gaps.

“I will be talking to Oranga Tamariki about this work and how we can work with other agencies to put agreements and processes in place so the number can be accurately represented.”

Child Matters chief executive Jane Searle said OT existed to protect children and young people. The apparent lack of data showed a “complete lack of accountability”, she said.

“It is their job to keep track.”

It was positive that OT was now working to get better data and coordinate better with other agencies. “We have talked for years about better coordination,” she said.

Police data up to 2020 lists homicide victims in five-year groups and shows under-15 deaths range from one in 2008 to 16 in 2015.

Stuff’s Homicide Report, the country’s most comprehensive database of New Zealand murders, shows that Baby Ru was at least the 65th New Zealander aged 17 or younger killed since April 2017. Twenty-four of those were aged 12 months or younger.