Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: 'Fix that fundamental problem at Oranga Tamariki'

Tell you what—I'm not feeling terribly hopeful about the situation for vulnerable kids in this country after reading the coroner’s recommendations following the death of Malachi Subecz.

You’ll remember the case of Malachi. I’m not going to go through the details again; sufficient to say it happened about four and a half, nearly five years ago, and it fired up public anger because of the number of times his wider family tried to warn authorities that something was going to happen—and yet he was not protected.

One of the recommendations the coroner has made today in her report is that Oranga Tamariki—OT, formerly CYFS—run a public awareness campaign to help people identify possible signs of abuse and understand how to take action.

To be fair to her, that idea isn’t new. It came from an earlier review. She’s simply pointing out that it still hasn’t happened, and is reiterating that the campaign should go ahead.

But really? Is that what we need in this country—a public campaign to tell us what child abuse looks like?

I think we all know what child abuse looks like. I struggle to believe that there are people who do not know that breaking a child’s bone is abuse. So isn’t this just the kind of thing well-meaning people suggest to make themselves feel like they’re doing something, when really it changes nothing—because maybe there’s very little you actually can do?

The problem in Malachi’s case wasn’t that people didn’t know what child abuse looked like. People did see the abuse. They absolutely recognised it as abuse. And they went to OT and said, “Hey, Malachi is being abused. Here’s the proof.” By my count, they did that about five times—if not more. And OT didn’t stop it.

That is the problem.

And it’s the problem in so many of these tragic cases. When a child dies, we often discover afterwards that OT already knew the family—and yet the child ended up dead anyway.

The problem isn’t that you and I don’t know what child abuse looks like. We do.

The problem is that the agency responsible for stopping it apparently doesn’t know what child abuse looks like—or at least doesn’t act when it sees it.

Never mind a public campaign. Fix that fundamental problem at Oranga Tamariki, and you might actually save a lot of lives.

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