‘Reports of concern' rose 60 percent after Govt cut child safety contracts
The 11th-hour withdrawal of contracts a year ago, with only hours of notice over Matariki weekend, left the agencies having to try to find other providers to care for children in trouble, and led to a damning report from the Auditor-General.
At a Scrutiny Week select committee hearing on Wednesday, Chhour faced questioning from opposition MPs over the impact of those cuts.
Green Party MP Kahurangi Carter highlighted Oranga Tamariki's own numbers from a report before the social services committee that showed 'reports of concern' about children to the ministry rose by 58.7 percent for the second half of 2024 against numbers for the same period a year earlier.
'This occurred after your government cut or 'reprioritised' $120m from frontline community providers and $41.2m from Oranga Tamariki's back office in 2023-24, involving 403 job losses at OT.'
Carter quizzed Chhour, from the Act Party, on further plans in the 2025-26 Budget to cut more in the back office and prevention.
'How can you justify continuing to hollow out a system in the face of such a dramatic surge in need under your watch,' she asked.
Carter said the 58.7 percent increase was from 34,719 reports of concern in the second half of 2023 to 55,171 in the same period last year.
Chhour's response? 'There are people within our communities and other government agencies that are concerned about our young people, making reports of concern – and I encourage that to continue because that's how we get oversight of our young people.
'Every report of concern is not necessarily something that Oranga Tamariki has to intervene in. We need to make sure that when that report of concern happens, if not by Oranga Tamariki it is addressed by other agencies.'
She said the goal was to have the 'right people in the right places' to help, but not necessarily OT.
Chhour hit out at Carter's questioning. 'To make the big assumption that reports of concern are caused by the Government – I find that quite concering. A report of concern means that a child has been put in a situation where someone believes that child is in a dangerous environment that needs support.'
The rushed changes in mid-2024 to which agencies would have OT contracts to provide services for tamariki and rangatahi were the subject of one of the Auditor-General's harshest reports in years.
It pointd to a cluster of poor practice, bad execution and near non-existent communication from the children's ministry in cutting around $60m in its contract spend, cancelling around 30 agencies' funding for 2024/25 and trying to strong arm others by not paying its bills on time.
The 64-page inquiry report says Oranga Tamariki decision makers did not adequately establish what the changes would mean for the children needing care.
Worse, the agency simultaneously moved last year to accentuate a policy of grabbing back from some providers all money it said they underspent and had instead put into their reserves.
'Previously, Oranga Tamariki had generally allowed providers to retain funding even if they had not achieved 100 percent of all contracted measures,' the Auditor-General's office said. 'For example, providers could move funding from under-utilised services to over-utilised services to meet demand.'
The select committee hearing on Wednesday saw Labour's Willow-Jean Prime press Chhour over further cuts to community service providers.
The minister told her the Auditor-General had a right to say what he said, but she believed the contracting process needed accountability.
'I do not accept what was happening previously and it could not continue … Contracts are not guaranteed. I do not apologise for making sure our contracts are meeting the needs of our young people … we need to make sure that money has been spent well.'
Chhour faced questioning over her commitment to Māori children's needs, with MPs pointing out rangatahi make up 70 percent of those in care but just 30 percent of funding goes to Māori providers.
'I accept I'm responsible for every child. It does not matter what ethnicity.'
Te Pāti Māori MP Mariemo Kapa-Kingi interjected: 'It has to matter.'
Chhour: 'I'm responsible for all children who need help in care, all children who need help wrapped around them, not by their ethnicity … I'm not going to box a child …'
Kapa-Kingi: 'Culture is a box minister?'
The committee chair Joseph Mooney intervened, stopping the questioning.
Kahurangi Carter told Chhour an Independent Children's Monitor report found Māori were over-represented and the system was still letting them down.
Chhour said she did accept that report and OT shared the concerns about over-representation not only in children's protection statistics but in education and health.
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