Care and protection – how we're doing
These tables show trends in reports of concern and data about children and young people in care, over the past two years.
The graphs below indicate how we are performing at finding placements for tamariki or children and rangatahi or young people.
Note: COVID-19 may have impacted the June, September and December 2020 quarters. This is due to the alert level restrictions first implemented at the end of March 2020.

Loving Placements

The number of children in longer term out of home care continues to decline. Family or whānau placements remain the main placement type for tamarikir or children in longer term placements. In the latest quarter, family or whānau placements were 57% of all longer term out of home placements.
Stable Placements

The majority of tamariki or children remained with the same family or whānau caregiver during the December 21 quarter. Change in caregivers has remained consistently low over the last two years.

Placement availability

Family/whānau placements availability on entry to care dropped this quarter (25% compared with 34% in the September 21 quarter). This share went to non-family/whānau placements which increased to 23% of placements on entry to care.
Quality of placement matching

Of children or tamariki living with a caregiver, 89% are living with family or whānau or with a caregiver of the same ethnicity. The proportion of children with a caregiver of the same ethnicity has remained stable over the past two years.

Needs assessment completed

The total number of assessments has continued to decrease in line with the reduction in the number of tamariki or children in care. However, the proportion of children who have a completed Gateway assessment has increased slowly over time to 80%.
Service referrals

Oranga Tamariki has consistently high rates of recommending vision, dental and hearing referrals. An average of 86% of those with identified needs were referred this quarter. A decision to not recommend a referral could be associated with service gaps or the need already being met at the time of assessment.

Support to return and remain home

Both entries and exits to out of home care increased by 11% this quarter in comparison to the previous quarter. Entries and exits to out of home care have been decreasing since December 20 which is in line with the overall care population decline.
Published: June 3, 2022