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Heather du Plessis-Allan: Oranga Tamariki is finally doing something right

Author
Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date
Mon, 1 Jul 2019, 4:42PM
Oranga Tamariki is going to trial intensive intervention. (Photo / Getty)
Oranga Tamariki is going to trial intensive intervention. (Photo / Getty)

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Oranga Tamariki is finally doing something right

Author
Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date
Mon, 1 Jul 2019, 4:42PM

I’ve got some good news for you out of Oranga Tamariki. It’s not often you get that. 

For a long time I’ve argued that what Oranga Tamariki needs to do is what’s called intensive intervention, and it finally looks like they’re giving it a go.

Now, intensive intervention is basically where the agency puts a social worker into a family and then the social worker spends as close to 24/7 as possible a day with that family for as long as it takes to help them out.

I’ve heard of it done overseas where the social worker will turn up at the family’s house first thing in the morning. They get the kids out of bed, get them to make their beds, gets them some breakfast, gets them showered, gets them a packed lunch, and then gets them off to school.

Now, you might wonder well why doesn’t the mum do that? Because the mum, often, doesn’t know how. We often take this stuff for granted.

Our parents taught us to get ready and get to school on time and that you need to have breakfast and a shower, but imagine if no one ever taught you. Where would you learn it?

So that’s the point of the social worker, to act like a kind of granny nanny, who shows the mum how to be a mum.

For some mums, it’ll be teaching them the basics like I just mentioned. For others, it’ll be teaching them how to discipline. For others, it’ll be teaching them how to kick the boyfriend out of the house.

That seems to me a much better solution than taking newborns off their mums. Because when you take a baby, you basically ruin two generations The one you’re taking the baby off, her life’s ruined, and the one you’re taking, the baby, growing up without a mum. That’s tough. 

Intensive intervention, torn out, Oranga Tamariki is trying this out… we found out form the minister today

There’s a trial underway. We’ll find out in time how it’s going, but the minster sounds positive. It’ll cost a lot - a dedicated social worker or a team of social workers is not cheap, but it’ll pay off in the long term.

This is exactly what Bill English was trying to do when he tried to roll out his social investment idea: expensive up front targeting to break bad cycles.

So good luck to Oranga Tamariki on this. I hope it works. It’s certainly better than a story about taking a newborn baby off a mum while she’s in hospital

 

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