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The Royal Commission’s reports into the abuse of young people in state care are shocking and important but we must acknowledge that the most dangerous institution in New Zealand are families.
In fact, it’s a relatively small percentage of families.
More damage is done to children by these families than by the state.
Regarding the killing of children – and there is one every five weeks in New Zealand – the vast majority occur in the home and the perpetrators are family members.
And when these murders occur, too often there are examples of the family protecting the offender from prosecution, leaving justice for our most vulnerable horribly wanting.
And, of course, for each of the young kids brutalised to death in the home, there are scores who survive the horror of their environments and subsequently go on to endure highly dysfunctional and criminal lives.
Indeed, one of the great tragedies of state care is that it was very often protecting children who had already endured an abusive start to life, but on too many occasions the state just heaped more misery upon them. The cruelty of that is unforgivable.
Understanding, though, the role of highly dysfunctional families is consequential.
If, for example, we were to fix all the problems with, say, Oranga Tamariki uplifts and they were made to be the highest functioning organisation possible, we would still be left with horrors occurring to children in family homes.
Yet if we were to fix families and rid them of abuse, we would have no need for Oranga Tamariki uplifts.
Given that, fixing the actions and activities of the state are tremendously important, but the saviour of the country’s vulnerable children is more fundamentally situated in private homes.
Solve that and we solve the lot. Read more
Dr Jarrod Gilbert is the director of Independent Research Solutions and a sociologist at the University of Canterbury.
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