MOTELS, CARAVANS AND CABINS

Across countries, individual child welfare systems all have their own strengths and weaknesses. One thing I learnt early in my career is that in trying to make comparisons across jurisdictions, what may initially look like it is better or worse, may in fact simply be different.

However, in my 15 years working as a residential social worker and manager in Scotland, and two in England before that, I had never come across young people in care being ‘placed’ in the likes of motels as I did when I came to New Zealand in 2002. Then, as I recall, it was quite common. These young people were ‘looked after’ by individuals who were usually referred to as ‘trackers’, which was often a euphemism for contracted security guards. While usually youth justice cases, as I recall that was not always so. And I soon learned that similar arrangements were also a common occurrence in Australia.

 Fast forward almost 20 years. Last year the Guardian ran the headline 2,000 NSW children removed from their families were placed in motels. The story stated that of the children that it had taken into out-of-home care over the previous five years, Family and Community Services (FACS) had ‘placed’ 2,000 of them in motels, apartments and hotels. Furthermore, half the children ending up in this kind of accommodation were Aboriginal children.

 This year the stuff website ran with a similar headline in New Zealand: Judge slams Oranga Tamariki over vulnerable children living in hotels for a year. In this case, looked after by a nursing agency working around the clock, this was a group of four siblings who were all under the age of eleven. According to Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children figures as cited in the article, 246 children and young people in the custody of the state organisation were placed in motel accommodation during the first six months of 2020.

While my experience has taught me to be wary about child welfare media stories, the issue has in fact also been identified by various recent Inquiries, including the Victoria Commission for Children and Young People’s 2019 Systemic inquiry into the lived experience of children and young people in the Victorian out-of-home care system. Indeed while they need to do much more, some governments have applied focused efforts in this area and there have been some successes.

 However, I would also argue that all of the agencies that make up a jurisdiction’s child welfare system government, whether government, not-for-profit or private, have a collective moral duty to ensure that they have a sufficient number and range of residential and foster care placements to meet the current and future needs of all children and young people. There are also additional obligations, particularly but by no means exclusively, for governments in relation to domestic legislation, care standards, the 2009 UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children and indeed the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Taking children into care and routinely having to put some of them in motels, caravans or cabins simply because there is nowhere else for them to go, is a clear signal of system failure. Successes in other parts of the system cannot come at the expense of these children. What do you think?

I’d love to hear your thoughts! You can email me at: iain@betteroutcomes.co.nz

Kia kaha (Stay Strong).

Iain