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Andrew Dickens: Children deserve better · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So Aranga Tamariki is getting rid of its target to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: place fifty eight percent of the kids in its care
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: with wider faro or family, and it's also ditching a
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: target for investment with Mali organizations. Twenty three percent of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: their funding was targeted for organizations with Maori and Ewe links.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: The Minister of Children Karantur says this is part of
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  Speaker 1: OT's safety first approach, and she said the targets were
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: outdated and went against the need not race directive, and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: she was concerned whether the priority of mari organizations were
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: getting in the way of the quality and efficacy of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the services being provided. And all of that makes sense
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: to me. The ingrained belief in our children's social workers
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: that kids are always better off if rehome with farno
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: or family always seemed counterfactual to me, because in many
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: cases the abuse directed at the kids was at the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: hand of farno or family themselves, people that have been
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: raised by other people in their family, but at their
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: own parenting. So why would we give the kids back
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: to the people that raise the people who can't raise
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  Speaker 1: the kids. It often seemed to me that children were
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: being thrown right back into the very cauldron we were
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: trying to help them escape from. And there have been
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: generations of examples, haven't there. Let's not forget baby Ru.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I haven't mentioned Ru's name for a while. He was
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: murdered in October twenty twenty three. Nobody has been charged
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: for killing him. There was anger then and anger now
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: when the police who were there when he suffered, or
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: sorry when the people who were there when he suffered
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: did not cooperate with the police. They were there, they
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: say nothing. Those people were and are Rosie Modonga, her partner,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Dylan Ross, and Ru's mother Storm Wall. They were, and
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: they are Ruse Farno. What happened people, It's being two
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: years and two Christmas is what happened two birthdays. The
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: uplifting of kids is a very serious thing, to be
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: housed in safe places with good people, but the history
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: of Oranga tamariki suggests that too many of the supposed
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: saviors are in fact predators hiding in plain sight. There
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: is no easy answer to this, which is why I've
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: spoken about this for decades. And the only thing we
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: can have is strong vigilance by our agencies, by Oranga tamariki.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And the only thing we can hope for is that
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  Speaker 1: good people come forward to help the kids that have
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: been abused. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.
• 2:34
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• 2:38
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