We have just lost 9% of Oranga Tamariki staff in order to help reduce spending so that good Kiwis can get the tax cuts promised by the coalition Government. I am reminded of those pandemic casualty images where 5,000 people are standing in a field and then one in every ten is slowly faded out of view. This image is profoundly disturbing but it is the justification provided by the Minister – that this decimation of the physical and intellectual resouces of our state child protection and youth justice agency will make our ‘at risk’ kids safer – that is truly bizarre: “Hello … ? … is anybody home? … this doesn’t make any sense”, except perhaps in the alternate universe of hard-right ideology. The origin of the word ‘decimation’ lies in ancient times when every tenth soldier was put to death to punish and deter insurrection in rebellious Roman legions. There is an element of truth signalled in this analogy. Public servants are potentially powerful and rebellious.
Ironically, the struture of Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children, is a product of previous National-led Government policy. Long story short: the 2015 Expert Panel review process, flawed as it was, focused on the future social cost of harm to children – not so much in terms of social suffering as in terms of future cost to the state. The focus was largely on the care system and the need the prevent the downstream cost of trauma. Some elements of this grand planning exercise developed more traction than others. We haven’t seen a significant extension of the ‘front-end’ children’s workforce beyond social work but we did see an expansion of managerial planning, service design and specialist advisory roles within National Office and regional structures, most of which has just been knocked over with a wrecking ball, including the Office of the Chief Social Worker.
In the early years of the Ministry we did see some greater focus on the voice and needs of children in care but it was the simplistic panacea of permanent, stable and loving homes at the earliest opportunity which generated the greatest upheaval. This policy shift led directly to a significant escalation in the uplifting of babies from young Māori mothers. This, in turn, all came crashing down with the Hawkes Bay uplift scandal, backlash, enquiries and an associated crisis of legitimacy (Keddell, Fitzmaurice, Cleaver & Exeter, 2022).
Since then we have had an emphasis on keeping children out of care, with all the potential risk that this can, and does, entail – safety planning, the promotion (at least rhetorically) of communicative, relational social work skills and knowledge, and a focus on relationships with Iwi Māori and community. This has involved expanded Regional services – putting resource into developing new ways of partnering with organisations more likely to foster trust and work effectively to support whānau in need. Under a centre-left Government we saw a nibbling around the edges of service co-design and devolution of parts of the current ‘notify – investigate’ child protection system, particularly ‘for Māori – by Māori’ services. Much of this is ongoing and may be threatened.
This ‘practice shift’ is not necessarily the one envisaged in 2015 but child protection is always a moving feast and public servants, particularly social work public servants, are ‘dangerously creative’ of course. Devolutionary planning and development is not cheap. It involves the state giving away power and providing an equitable share of resources inherent in Te Tiriti (Wai 2915, 2021). It involves being guided by this commitment and not repeating the mistakes of the past. I fear that much of the infrastructure supporting this practice and policy direction has just been washed away.
I realise that Māori have at times found concessions from National governments less committed to state-centric development. However, much as I would like to be wrong, I can’t see a Government that is opposed to co-governance and has promoted the removal of all references to the recognition of the Rangatiratanga guaranteed by Te Tiriti from the law of the land, promoting a genuine decolonisation agenda. All I can see is limited responsibility and reduced resource commitment: this is the kaupapa of the Coalition. The gutting of OT needs to be understood within this political context; as purely ideological.
Will we see a shift in OT spending so that more social workers are appointed to front-end practice or to agencies engaged in preventative and community-building mahi? Is this the plan within the highly secretive halls of fortress OT? I am not holding my breath because I don’t think this is a government that makes plans, although I’d like to be surprised. What I am afraid of is more reactive practice; more of the risk of over or under intervention which always plagues these anxiety-ridden systems that are so poorly understood by politicians. And more than this I am concerned about the social damage that will flow from current policy settings.
We are seeing a return to the acceptance of social inequality as normal, natural and desirable; to legislation that removes social protections and obstacles to private profit, rewards the excessive accumulation of private property, sanctions beneficiaries, makes education less equitable, and generally punishes the poor. In other words, a further dismantling of the residual Welfare State. We haven’t seen this level of regressive policy acceleration since the 1990s. You can’t ‘disincentivise’ poverty when it is structurally generated. It is not a lifestyle choice and it has always been the children of the poor who come to the attention of the child welfare system (Hyslop, 2022). Lois Waquant (Janebová, 2022) has written about the socially minimalist right wing state as a ‘centaur state’, trampling rough-shod over the socially excluded and applying a lesser set of human rights to the structurally disadvantaged.
Across the globe we are seeing a worrying rise in neo-fascist politics where inequality is conflated with common sense; the common sense of a political constellation totally at odds with the values of social work. It is a ‘woke’ profession after all, right? I am hoping to hear from some OT workers in response to this post – anonymous comments not a problem. I feel very sad for those who lost their livelihoods in this decimation but battle on we must. As they say on the aspirational left, there is still a world to win.
Image credit: Suzie Cue
References
Hyslop, I. (2022). A Political History of Child Proection – Lessons for Reform from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Janebová, R. (2022). Loïc Wacquant, the concept of the ‘centaur state’ and social work: the case of the Czech Republic. European Journal of Social Work, 25(1), 4–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2020.1819206
Keddell, E., Fitzmaurice, L., Cleaver, K., & Exeter, D. (2022). A fight for legitimacy: reflections on child protection reform, the reduction of baby removals, and child protection decision-making in Aotearoa New Zealand. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 17(3), 378–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/1177083X.2021.2012490
Wai 2915 (2021) ‘Report of the Waitangi Tribunal – He Pāharakeke, He Rito Whahakīkanga Whāruarua’.
6 replies on “The wrecking ball swings”
Excellent post Ian, thank you. I’ve wanted change to occur in OT but not this kind… What is next, I wonder. I would also love to hear from OT workers here
Indeed – we can only speculate and perhaps those within the dome of silence have little idea themselves. It will be chaos for a long while with all the relocations / redeployments – let alone the enormous burden of business as usual – people will be reeling … Ian
Kia ora Ian – excellent post as always.
I’d be interested in hearing from OT social workers on this, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t. They’re likely too busy in their mahi to engage in ‘critical’ discussions and too ‘chilled’ to voice their opinions, even anonymously.
No fault of their own really nevertheless, I remain hopeful that I’m mistaken.
You posed two questions:
Will we see a shift in OT spending so that more social workers are appointed to front-end practice or to agencies engaged in preventative and community-building mahi? Is this the plan within the highly secretive halls of fortress OT?
In my view, the succinct answer is no to both questions – there isn’t sufficient funding available for additional social workers (certainly not in the numbers we truly need), nor to enable organizations like mine to undertake community-level work.
The government appears to have a singular agenda: to restore New Zealand’s bank to a ‘surplus’ at the expense of those least able to bear it – the impoverished, marginalized, and the environment, climate included.
But this is the outcome New Zealand chose, so our struggle isn’t solely with the current government or its ideology; it’s against the majority of the nation who, through their votes, endorse this direction for the country.
Indeed, there’s a ‘world to win,’ yet we’re losing battles on every front, and deep down, we acknowledge this reality. Unless we radically alter our path, unless we unite solidly – without any fractures – and advance together, there’s no light at the end of this tunnel.
The LEFT excels at self-sabotage, while the RIGHT, united by their deity of greed and finance, prevails. Their unity and singular focus are their strengths – they seldom turn on their own, except for those veering towards the centre-left.
What’s needed is a nationwide movement, orchestrated by the influential left, politicians, trade unions, and academia, but spearheaded by those most impacted, with outcomes that stem directly from these individuals. Everything must be on the table in terms of how this is all reversed.
We cannot continue the same practices of the past 40 years and anticipate a different result.
In my office, I have a quote that inspires me daily to strive for change – for all of us to be different. It reads:
“Social Work’s progressive roots only seem to flourish in the sunlight. When darkness overtakes the land, we hunker down and neither curse the darkness nor light a candle” – Newdom.
We must all unite in cursing the darkness and lighting that candle – and do it swiftly – or we may never emerge from this profound darkness.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend.
Kia ora Luis – I appreciate your contribution and agree with your sentiments. It is early days as we are only four months (?) into this government but this is what you get with a hard right shift and so there is a challenging road ahead defending the services we have and resisting the privatisation and redistribution of wealth and resources (upwards that is) agenda. And, yes, unity – understanding and mobilising the commonality of struggle across different interest groups – is challenging and critical!
Kia Ora Ian, I am a social worker – not with OT. I have been in social work for 20 years. This is a timely and insightful article. Thank you. I totally agree with the 8th paragraph and a return to acceptable social inequality and poverty being structurally generated which most of the population do not understand. I have a particular dislike of neo liberal and right-wing politics and find government both here and in the UK following neo liberal ideology come out with the same old austerity measures etc. and always target public sector services. This also demonstrates their lack of understanding of these service as you point out. In some way the welfare system is just an extension of the Poor laws in respect of punishing the poor and making poverty an individual problem and not a structural one. Ironically the government are likely increasing unemployment, this being a structural issue of policies they follow. If the government did more to address poverty, rather than blame the poor for their poverty there would be less social problems, and hopefully more compassion. I recall a quote. I can’t recall the author, along the lines of ‘people have not willingly removed themselves from society more they have been thrown out.’
Kia ora Nick – yep, thrown out / excluded is about right. This Government is generating unemployment to curb inflation and fund tax cuts at the same time as it is sanctioning beneficiaries. These hard right regimes like to concentrate power at the centre rather than support more devolved democracy and also reduce the power of liberal institutions outside of the executive – as in Shane Jones and his fast track approvals and the hellish return to three strikes which takes discretion away from Judges / I think the reluctance to adjust the rules to reappoint Boshier as Ombudsman is taken from the same play-book – he is too inclined to do his job and the gang of three don’t want any brakes on their power. Thanks for your thoughtful contribution. Ian