Oranga Tamariki - The Awful Truth

We Cut Because We Care

In a bold reimagining of what it means to "care for kids," Oranga Tamariki has set a new benchmark in bureaucratic savagery by gutting its own lifelines to community care in a government-ordained budget sacrifice. Call it efficiency, call it reform - hell, call it Tuesday, but the Auditor-General’s report calls it what it actually is - an "unacceptable situation."

Faced with the Everest-like challenge of finding a 6.5% saving (because children are apparently our most costly resource), the Ministry for Children dutifully delivered $60 million worth of cuts by slashing contracts with roughly 30 community providers, organisations that had the gall to offer prevention services, safe homes and actual care.

In return, these organisations were given a masterclass in public sector loyalty. Funding pulled with no notice, invoices unpaid until compliance was guaranteed and demands for repayment of funds that had already been spent keeping vulnerable kids off the streets. One provider noted, “It felt less like a conversation and more like a mugging."

Meanwhile, OT’s internal logic, clearly drafted on the back of a Ministerial napkin, was to restructure itself in tandem. In an exquisite feat of self-harm, it axed half the staff responsible for managing its relationships with external partners. Why maintain bridges when you can burn them and call it progress?

Minister for Children Karen Chhour has since gone full Marie Antoinette, claiming she only asked OT to “focus on core outcomes.” Like asking your housemate to do the dishes and coming home to find the entire kitchen demolished.

This performance art in institutional collapse managed to save only half of the intended amount, once transition costs and unplanned re-funding were added back in. That’s right, Oranga Tamariki managed to hurt everyone and still missed the fiscal target. That’s not reform. That’s a Greek tragedy with spreadsheets.

The Auditor-General’s report reads less like a dry financial audit and more like a war crime tribunal. It chronicles not just the money trail, but the corrosive breakdown of trust between the government and the sector supposedly tasked with protecting our tamariki.

It would be laughable if it weren’t happening to real children. Vulnerable, often traumatised children, many Māori, many already failed by every layer of the system, now abandoned mid-care by an agency too busy implementing Excel-driven purges to remember what it exists for.

And with Nicola Willis poised to deliver another swinging axe in the 2025/26 Budget, we can expect more of this flavour of compassionate brutality. Because nothing says “social investment” like dismantling the social fabric one contract at a time.

📣 Government Press Release (Hypocritical & Jargon-Filled)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Strategic Budgetary Alignment Enhances Core Focus of Child Welfare

The Government today reaffirmed its commitment to outcome-oriented investment and agile public service delivery, as Oranga Tamariki successfully undertook a Strategic Contractual Realignment Initiative (SCRI) aligned with the Fiscal Responsibility Framework.

Minister Karen Chhour stated, “By ensuring a tighter alignment between funding channels and core deliverables, we are enabling Oranga Tamariki to prioritise high-impact interventions and recalibrate stakeholder engagement matrices.”

While some providers expressed transitional concerns, Treasury modelling anticipates long-term synergistic improvements in cost-benefit ratios. The Ministry remains committed to open, values-led communication with all ecosystem participants.

Chhour added, “Our tamariki deserve an evidence-based, value-optimised future. These changes enable precisely that.”

ENDS

📩 Letter to the Editor – From an Affected Organisation

To the Editor,

We are one of the community organisations unceremoniously defunded by Oranga Tamariki last year.

Let me be blunt - the children we supported are now homeless, unsafe, or back in situations we worked years to help them escape. We had no warning. No discussion. Just a terse email stating our contract was terminated and our remaining funds were to be returned.

We’ve laid off staff, closed two regional safe houses and had to turn away whānau in crisis. Children, real ones, not spreadsheet entries, are being harmed every day because of this and the Minister says this wasn’t what she intended?

Our team worked 70-hour weeks on the smell of an oily rag. We didn’t do this for profit. We did it because these kids mattered. They still matter. If the Government won’t back us, who will?

If New Zealanders believe in manaakitanga, in doing right by our most vulnerable, then now’s the time to demand accountability, not spin.

Ngā mihi,
Janet Mikaere
Director, Te Mauri Ora Youth Services

📬 Letter to the Editor – From an Affected Individual

Dear Editor,

My name is Carla. I’m 17. I was in one of the youth homes that got shut down last year after the funding cuts. They told us we’d get help somewhere else. I didn’t. I ended up couch surfing and then on the street.

One of the staff from my old home still checks in on me when she can. But she lost her job too.

I was starting to feel like I had a future. I was going to do a mechanics course. That’s gone now. I’m cold, I’m tired, and I don’t feel safe.

Why do politicians talk about "our children" like we’re some slogan on a billboard?

I just wanted a chance. I still do.

Carla T.
Wellington