Reimagining Social Work in AotearoaA twitter thread by @EmilyK100
I have read the Ombudsman’s opinion in relation to Malachi Subecz. Like Emily Keddell I think there are some critical implications about the need to better manage and better fund the transition of our state child protection service. Change in child protection needs to be made with care simply because people get hurt in this work; more specifically children sometimes lose their lives. This does not mean reform is not needed. It is.
People wonder all the time why it is that child protection workers fail to identify and act on risk. How do mistakes that are so obvious in retrospect occur? The answer is that the reasons for this are mostly systemic. Child protection systems are complex and do not always behave rationally, at least not in the sense of clearly and consistently adhering to legally mandated procedures. Such systems are always applied within a political context and the perverse imperatives within the system are not always fully apparent to those who act within it. The disturbing thing for me is that this scenario is so familiar. I have seen this avoidant, minimalist, defensive practice before – in the 1990s. And many of the contextual drivers are the same.
There is currently a movement within Oranga Tamariki to devolve power and resources to hapū and iwi, alongside and together with devolvement to local communities. The focus is on a new system that is ‘locally led, centrally enabled’
This direction is shaped by the multiple reviews, inquiries and reforms over the last 3 years, particularly the Waitangi Tribunal findings, which recommended the child welfare system apparatus move away from a ‘notify-investigate’ system to one that is radically different in terms of structure, aims, powerholders and resource distribution. Calls to create meaningful partnerships with iwi and hapū were reiterated as a method to achieve this (they were already required under the 2019 amendments to the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989). Returning to regional and community-based commissioning of services, focussed on earlier prevention and local decision-making, are at the forefront of the change. These directions are similar to those happening elsewhere in the globe, where the weight of the deep inequities reflected in child welfare systems are calling attention to the inherent problems of focussing only on children in societies highly structured by class, ethnicity and gender; where to do so creates artificial and often harmful distinctions between what children need and what the adults who care for them need; and where the power connected to statute distorts relationships and challenges participatory practice. (for example, see the US debate here, the Australian debate outlined here Tied up with this is recognition of the long reach of colonisation and its repercussions today.
We have protesters camped around Parliament. They say they want freedom. They are not the only ones. But freedom to please yourself regardless of the interests of others in a society structured by privilege and money isn’t any kind of freedom at all: it is merely a recipe for intolerance and injustice. Freedom for Māori to exercise their collective sovereignty and freedom for workers to organise and protect themselves from exploitation are the freedoms we should be focused on as a society. Sadly, I don’t expect to win any arguments with the freedom mob here. However, this post invites readers to think about progressive social change in Aotearoa through a wider lens.
We are often told that the confluence of poverty, inequality and entry into the child protection system is not something that child welfare services can address. Child protection focuses on the risk of harm to children and the circumstances of their families. Structural inequality, if it is acknowledged at all, is regarded as a problem of a different order. As social workers it is out of our hands and therefore it is invisible; class exploitation and racially configured oppression are one thing, and child protection is another: oh dear, how sad, never mind. I have trouble accepting this proposition.