Please attribute to: Nicolette Dickson, Acting DCE System Leadership.
"Oranga Tamariki–Ministry for Children acknowledges the second report from Aroturuki Tamariki–Independent Children’s Monitor (ICM) on progress to implement the recommendations of the Dame Karen Poutasi Review.
While we accept that faster progress is needed, our data indicates the safety nets across the children’s system envisaged by Dame Karen are becoming stronger. We cannot do this work alone and need to rely on our partners across the children’s system.
In the year ending June 2025, we received more than 108,000 Reports of Concern, an increase of 44 percent. This tells us more people are noticing and reporting their concerns about the safety and wellbeing of children.
The role we play in the lives of children and their families is significant, and our social workers are in their communities everyday making critical decisions that keep children safe. We also rely on our community partners to provide that support.
As the ICM acknowledges, important progress has been made by children’s system agencies since its last review.
The Government accepted all 14 recommendations of the review in October last year. While work to respond to the review began in 2022, the cross-agency programme announced by the Government last year is now moving at pace.
Building the system Dame Karen envisaged will take coordinated and deliberate action by children’s system agencies over time. Sharing information is fundamental to keeping children safe.
In January this year, we opened the new in-person multi-agency Hub in Auckland, which has representatives from Oranga Tamariki, Ministry of Social Development, NZ Police, Department of Corrections, Ministry of Education, and Health New Zealand.
The Hub will identify and address risks about the safety and wellbeing for around 2,000 children whose sole parent (or sole carer) is remanded in custody or imprisoned each year.
In December 2025, The Office of the Privacy Commissioner provided guidance that there is no legislative barrier to information sharing to protect the wellbeing and safety of children.
This helps improve the Hub's ability to share relevant information between partner agencies about the safety and wellbeing of the young people we work with.
We are implementing tools that will strengthen child safety, including a new strategic workforce tool to provide greater visibility of our social workers’ capacity, which will ensure timely assessment of new critical and very urgent ROCs.
Also announced in 2025 was a $68.5m funding boost over five financial years to allow Oranga Tamariki to invest in frontline technology systems, increasing the amount of time social workers can spend with children and their families and supporting greater cross-agency work.
The children’s system is complex, something acknowledged in many reports in the context of Dame Karen’s recommendations, and child abuse is a problem that needs everyone’s attention.
Oranga Tamariki is committed to our role within the wider context of the children’s system and the collective need by agencies to empower communities, whānau, hapū and iwi to care for their tamariki safely."