POSITIVE NZ VOICES OF CHILDREN SURVEY
Last week’s blog post was a tough read. For those of you who didn’t get to read it, it was about the 215 children whose bodies were found last month in the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada (https://www.betteroutcomes.org.nz/better-outcomes-blog/indigenous-lives-matter). Thanks to those of you who emailed me with your thoughts afterwards. This week, I wanted to write about something that might lift the spirits – both yours and mine.
So, many years ago the child development theorist Urie Bronfenbrenner coined the expression “every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.” Bronfenbrenner, best known for his ecological system theory which stresses the importance of how the child interacts with his or her wider environment, was instrumental in the establishment of the Headstart early intervention program in the US back in the 1960s; 22 million or so children later, the program continues to this day. The importance of having someone who is “irrationally crazy” about, or loves, a child has gained increasing attention in out-of-home care over the last 10 years or so.
So I was very pleased to see that a new major survey of children in care in New Zealand published last month found that virtually all had people in their life who loved them no matter what as follows:
Yes definitively 77%
Yes I think so 20%
No not really 2%
No not at all 1%
Combining the two of the four responses that were ‘Yes’, 97% reported that felt unconditionally loved (the rest of this blog will for simplicity only report similar combined responses). This new Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children annual survey is a major investment; with 100 children and young people being interviewed as part of its development, much of it is excellent and in my view world-leading. Social workers offered the survey to 1,847 (79%) of 2,327 eligible children and young people in care aged 10-17 across New Zealand. Of those, 1,545 agreed to take part resulting in a response rate of 84% among those offered the survey and 66% among all of those who were eligible.
There were several other findings that were similarly positive: 97% also said that the adults that they lived with now looked after them well; 90% said they felt settled where they lived now; 95% said they felt accepted for who they were by the adults they lived with; 88% said that had somewhere where they felt that they belonged; and 86% had friends that they could talk to about anything. Findings on relationships with family/whanau, having a say in important decisions, knowing ancestry, and learning about culture were perhaps unsurprisingly generally lower,
However, what did surprise me was on the views of Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children, and their relationships with social workers. Historically, the New Zealand evidence base on children in care, including my own 2015 doctoral research Climbing Up Snakes and Sliding Down Ladders, has sometimes been simplistically reduced down to state care helps some but hinders others. In contrast this survey, be it perhaps with comparatively younger children and young people, found that 84% of children and young people themselves said that Oranga Tamariki helped make things better for them, 88% said that their social worker does what they say that they will do, and 82% said that they could talk to their social work about their worries. Don’t get me wrong -that 17% said that Oranga Tamariki had not made things better for them, 12% said that social workers do not do what they say, and 18% said that they could not talk to their social worker about their worries, (two ‘No’ responses combined in relation to all three of these) is really important. Also as highlighted in the limitations section, as the questionnaire was administered by social workers, social desirability was possibly (in my view probably) a factor. Nonetheless, drawing on my experience with this organisation and some of its predecessors, to me this still suggests progress.
If I had any suggestions for future versions of this survey, this year not differentiating between those in kin foster care, non kin-foster care, residential care and secure care, feels like a lost opportunity. In my view there would also be value in publicly reporting regionally, as well as reporting separately on Oranga Tamariki and NGO provision. That 200 children and young people were excluded from this survey on the grounds that they were placed ‘out of region’, is also problematic for a number of reasons. A broader challenge for Oranga Tamariki is that in choosing not to take a conventional research report format (as they themselves describe), in discussing future organisational actions and progress, particular care will need to be taken around ensuring that such ‘commentary’ remains evidence-based and does not drift towards public relations and organisational reputational management.
However, whether you are in New Zealand, Australia, Canada or the UK, I’d definitely recommend that you read this short report https://www.orangatamariki.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/About-us/Research/Latest-research/Te-Matataki/Te-Matataki-Report-2021.pdf. It’s also beautifully presented and for the research and policy nerds amongst you there is an excellent and very detailed separate report on the survey methodology which includes a discussion on the national and international origins of the questions and how they were developed, cognitively tested, and refined. https://www.orangatamariki.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/About-us/Research/Latest-research/Te-Matataki/Te-Matataki-Methodology-Report-2021.pdf. Indeed, reflecting one of the themes from my current webinar series on leveraging global learning, why not consider the appropriateness of some of these questions for your organisation, whether large or small, and maybe incorporate into your own evidence-gathering? This could also provide a fast and low-cost opportunity for benchmarking your organisation.
Conflict of Interest Statement: Neither I nor Better Outcomes have ever been commercially engaged by the Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children team who produced these reports. However, I do regularly work with Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children, and in particular their (research and evaluation) Evidence Centre.