About the Action Plan

Oranga tamariki is the wellbeing of children and is everyone’s responsibility.

The Oranga Tamariki Action Plan (see files below) is a collective commitment from all the children’s agencies (as defined in the Children’s Act 2014) to work together to achieve the outcomes in the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy and promote the best interests and wellbeing of children and young people with the greatest needs.

The agencies are:

• New Zealand Police.
• Ministry of Education.
• Ministry of Social Development.
• Ministry of Health.
• Ministry of Justice.
• Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children.

The Action Plan will enable all the agencies to drive integration across the children’s system, moving from transactional and siloed services to a joined up, needs-based, outcomes-focused children’s system. These are significant changes to the way agencies work and will take investment and time to embed.

The children’s agencies are responsible for working together on these actions. The agencies are also responsible for action in their individual sectors. For example, in health, the Ministry of Health is the responsible children’s agency and will work in partnership with Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority to commission services and work with providers.

Other agencies have come alongside the children’s agencies and are responsible for parts of the Action Plan, such as the Department of Corrections and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. 

To start enabling change quickly, agencies have identified some key initiatives to focus on that require working together.

These initiatives will mean positive changes for children, young people, families, whānau and communities, but will also help agencies design and embed some of the practice and processes needed to keep improving how the agencies all work together. It will also help agencies to identify what else they can be doing. 

Working in phases also acknowledges the wider reforms happening in sectors like Health and Education and as a result of the implementation of the Future Direction Plan for Oranga Tamariki, as well as providing more flexibility to respond to the needs of communities.

The practical steps that agencies have committed to take over the short and medium term are grouped into: 

Short term actions

Short term practical actions will be taken by December 2022 demonstrating agencies’ commitment to the priority populations. A small number of these actions will require ongoing work in 2023. 

First steps

In-depth assessments of need for priority populations in housing, education and health. Agencies will then be required to report back on how and when they will respond to ensure the needs of these priority populations are being met.  

Significant and measurable results

Four significant and measurable results will be prioritised for children and young people in care, youth justice, or receiving transitions support from Oranga Tamariki throughout 2022 and 2023.

The Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy was launched in 2019. It provides a unifying framework of outcomes that the government – working alongside communities and partners – will work towards for all children. The Action Plan then sets out how the Government agencies involved will collaborate to achieve the outcomes of the Strategy.

On 4 April 2022, Cabinet endorsed the Oranga Tamariki Action Plan and noted that it would be published alongside an accompanying Implementation Plan. That Implementation Plan was endorsed by Cabinet on 4 July 2022.

If you want to know more about what the Action Plan means specifically for Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children, our New Ways of Working page will be updated soon. To understand what it means for other agencies, please contact them directly.

If you have questions or suggestions, contact our Programme Team on otap@ot.govt.nz