Carolyn Moynihan
Carolyn Moynihan is Mercator’s Editor-at-Large and the former deputy editor of Mercator.
New Zealanders during my lifetime have regarded our country as ‘a great place to bring up kids’. It still is – if you know how to bring up kids. If you didn’t learn good parenting from your own upbringing, you could be struggling, especially if you are poor, have a child with special needs, or a partner who is abusive.
In the mid-20th century, if parents had a child who was deaf, disabled or mentally disturbed, and lacked other support, they were often advised to place them in institutional care. Children in homes where they were neglected and abused would be removed by a welfare officer and placed with foster parents or in a state or church ‘home’.
Delinquent youths and pregnant girls were also dispatched to institutions.
As we have heard from many “survivors” of this system in recent decades, these places were often anything but homes. At the hands of staff with little understanding of their needs, and even less sympathy, life could be hell. And, for a shocking number, it really was.
Last week an almost 3,000-page report, Whanaketia, from the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was tabled in Parliament, where it was received with universal expressions of shame and contrition from the assembled politicians.
The fruit of six years’ work, the report brings together six decades of evidence from a wide range of care institutions in a conscience-searing catalogue of misery inflicted on helpless children, young people and adults.
The commission, which claims to have had the widest mandate of any similar inquiry overseas, found that of about 655,000 children, young people and adults in state and faith-based care between 1950 and 2019, around 200,000 individuals were abused, and even more neglected.
Beatings, isolation and sexual abuse were common. A psychiatric institution used shock treatment as punishment on young people, a practice that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon acknowledged as “torture”. Institutions for boys “too difficult” to stay in the community were “cauldrons of violence” and a “pipeline to prison”.
A Catholic facility for boys with mental disabilities or behavioural problems harboured sexual predators, and even put one of them in charge of a community centre for street kids. The matron of an Anglican home underfed her pregnant charges so their babies would be small and births simpler.
The system was particularly hard on Māori children (“racist”), and those with disabilities, who suffered from segregation and social exclusion (“ableist”). The state was negligent, professionals arrogant, church officials defensive. “Thousands of unmarked graves” testify to a fundamental lack of respect for the person.
“This State-led model of care cannot be described as anything less than a dismal failure,” says the Royal Commission.
Proposed compensation to survivors – and their children – will cost billions – though not as many as the estimated NZ$200 billion that six decades of abuse and neglect has cost us already, according to the Commission.
What have we learned from all this?
One thing is abundantly clear: the state does not make a good parent. Neither does any other institution, including religious organisations.
A child belongs with its own loving mother and father. Every policy and every effort should be directed to keeping children with their own parents, and supporting parents by education and other means to love and raise their children well.
This is, in fact, the current policy of Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children, which provides support for struggling families through social workers and approved community agencies and services. For Māori, who appear to be the bulk of clients, this usually involves the extended family – the whānau, a flexible term which extends beyond near relations to the sub-tribe (hapū) and tribe (iwi).
However, this system is not working well; it is constantly under fire for bungling cases which too often end fatally for a child. Stories of babies or toddlers shaken or beaten to death appear regularly in the newspapers.
Going forward
In a bold move, the Royal Commission wants to get rid of Oranga Tamariki and turn the existing, government-controlled structure on its head. Guided by the experiences and “dreams” of survivors, it envisages a future where whānau actually call the shots. It is worth quoting them in full on this:
The Inquiry’s vision for the future includes one of the most fundamental changes to systems of care this country has ever seen. It would see the State handing over power, funding and control of supports and services to individuals, groups and organisations chosen by collectives and/or local communities. Current systems of care will never truly serve or meet people’s needs until people and communities are enabled and empowered to design, innovate, implement and control how the care systems operate.
The Inquiry sees collectives and local communities defining themselves and grouping together to design and deliver supports and services according to shared values, goals, experiences, needs, location, interests, ancestry, whakapapa [genealogy], ethnicity, religion and/or culture. This is consistent with international practice, which has seen a shift towards the use of community-based services where possible, and consideration being given to how to best address the needs of and improve outcomes for whānau and communities more broadly.
Whether the government will buy this model remains in question. It worked once upon a time, when churches and other community organisations as well as society at large agreed about basic values, such as marriage as the foundation for family life.
Yet New Zealand is one of the least-married countries in the developed world and, according to a Law Commission paper (PDF), Māori are the least-married of all. This matters, because abundant research shows that marriage is the best guarantee that a child will grow up with both a mother and father, and children – including black children – raised by two parents are more likely to thrive.
Whatever relationships may have worked when the majority of Māori lived in settled rural communities, today, when they are forced to move around for work and other reasons, family stability underwritten by marriage is even more important – especially for the children.
Every era has its blind spots. Institutional care took a functional, not relational view of the family and society. It was blind to the emotional needs of children. Our era no longer understands what a family is, what makes for its health and therefore the happiness and wellbeing of children and young people.
In this country we need to remove the blinkers, learn to be good parents, and make New Zealand a truly great place to bring up children. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in another 60 years’ time, apologising to another lot of victims.
This article was originally published by Mercator.
