Key Findings
The key findings in our last report were straightforward. We said and were still not receiving the minimum standard of care required by the Oranga Tamariki (National Care Standards and Related Matters) Regulations 2018 (). We also said we did not expect much improvement in our next report. This has proven correct.
This is because social workers are not always able to work effectively and other government agencies are not sufficiently prioritising access to help
In our 2023/24 report, we pointed to underlying causes of the minimum standard of care not being delivered. This included social workers not being supported to work effectively, and we listed a range of things getting in the way of social workers doing social work.
In 2024/25, social workers continued to tell us they are fatigued by changes and the struggle to deliver without the tools and resources they need to do their work. A shortage of care placements and of services to refer tamariki and rangatahi to, make social workers’ jobs even harder.
“We go with what we’ve got. We’re expected to put FGC [Family Group Conference] plans in place and the courts expect x amount to be seen in FGC plans. But we’re struggling to do that. We do it ourselves, the mentoring and the community work.” ORANGA TAMARIKI SOCIAL WORKER
We also pointed to the lack of priority given to tamariki and rangatahi in care by government services such as health and education. Funding available to Oranga Tamariki or other agencies does not follow the child, and social workers are still having to spend time negotiating for the services and support that tamariki need. This includes things like teacher aide support and access to mental health services. This also has not changed.
Areas of high and low compliance, although Oranga Tamariki developed regulations and should comply with them all
Oranga Tamariki has again assessed itself as partially compliant with the care standards. For around one-third (37 percent) of tamariki and rangatahi in Oranga Tamariki care, it determined a subset of its lead indicators were met.
Oranga Tamariki should strive to comply with all of the NCS Regulations. They were developed by Oranga Tamariki with input from care-experienced rangatahi and other organisations with expertise and experience in delivering care.
We have seen continued good practice and stability in Oranga Tamariki compliance in some areas such as establishing, maintaining and strengthening connection for tamariki and rangatahi in care. However, some measures continue to show low levels of compliance. Compliance continues to be poor with requirements for placing tamariki and rangatahi with approved caregivers, planning care transitions and assessing life skills for rangatahi getting ready to leave care.
We continue to hear about the struggle to access the support tamariki and rangatahi in care need such as health and education services. While we hear about few barriers to accessing primary health, accessing mental health services, in particular, remains a challenge.
“One of our workers still works with [connecting] families to ICAMHS, and it’s been months and months. Two years – it’s very long.” NGO LEADER
Not all tamariki and rangatahi in care are in education. Stand-offs continue between Oranga Tamariki and Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga | Ministry of Education and/or individual schools. Agencies dispute which of them will fund educational supports for tamariki and rangatahi in care, especially those with particular needs. Meanwhile the tamariki and rangatahi miss out, even though they’re legally required to be in education.
“Same with education, schools even look at us, if a kid’s disengaged, well it’s for [Oranga Tamariki] … There are issues about who’s going to fund, they always look towards [Oranga Tamariki].” ORANGA TAMARIKI KAIMAHI
We encourage Oranga Tamariki to continue with its National Care Standards Action Plan and to use it to lift performance. However, it must both sustain improvements and avoid a decline in performance in other areas.
Again, we emphasise that, to do this, Oranga Tamariki must address barriers to good social work practice and must continue to advocate for access to services across government. This requires it to focus on improving leadership and culture throughout the organisation. It must also focus on practical things to make it easier for social workers to do the fundamentals of their role: to be there for tamariki, understand their needs and help them to have those needs met.
New action plan is expected to improve performance
More positively, in 2025, Oranga Tamariki developed a National Care Standards Action Plan (see Appendix B), which is focused on improving its compliance in priority areas. It is using this plan to target action and track progress. Oranga Tamariki is confident this is improving performance and expects to be able to show some improvement in priority areas in 2025/26. The development of a specific action plan is positive, and we encourage Oranga Tamariki to maintain its focus on it.
Improved compliance may be easier with a more dedicated focus
Open Home Foundation show that improved compliance with the regulations is possible.
“Our policy in general is once a month [to visit tamariki] but that’s a minimum. So this young person is getting visited a bit more.” OPEN HOME FOUNDATION KAIMAHI
A key difference is that Open Home Foundation does not have responsibilities for managing the front door – assessing and responding to reports of concern, or for managing youth justice custody. Its ability to focus solely on the quality of care may be one reason it is able to visit tamariki in its care more often.
The challenge for Oranga Tamariki is to find a way to ringfence the resource and effort required to meet care standards. Alternatively, it could delegate and support more responsibility for the care of tamariki and rangatahi to /Māori and community providers.
Areas of focus for future improvement
Once compliance in its 10 priority areas has been achieved and Oranga Tamariki performance has improved, Oranga Tamariki could then focus on additional measures. We have identified the following key issues across five parts of the regulations that may assist Oranga Tamariki, and other government agencies, in considering future focus areas.
Part 1: Assessing needs and developing plans
- We continue to have concerns about the capacity of social workers to do quality work across assessing needs, developing plans and visiting tamariki and rangatahi to ensure their needs are being met and plans are up to date.
- Increasing the frequency of social worker visits to tamariki and rangatahi has been a priority for Oranga Tamariki for several years. We have not seen any change in compliance with the NCS Regulations for social work visits in 2024/25, with one-third of tamariki and rangatahi in care still not being visited as required. However, Oranga Tamariki was able to show an improvement in the proportion of tamariki and rangatahi who were at least being visited every eight weeks between May and June 2025.
- Just over one-third (38 percent) of All About Me plans are current. This is similar to last year, and we continue to hear from caregivers and professionals about the quality and availability of these plans to support the care of tamariki and rangatahi. Oranga Tamariki has made updating All About Me plans a priority in its National Care Standards Action Plan.
Part 2: Meeting health and education needs
- There continues to be a lack of assurance that the health and education needs of tamariki and rangatahi in care are being met. Oranga Tamariki data is questionable, both in terms of quality and what is being measured, and people continue to tell us health and education needs are not being met.
- The responsibility for securing health and education support sits with Oranga Tamariki. Other government agencies such as Manatū Hauora | Ministry of Health, Te Whatu Ora | Health NZ and the Ministry of Education are not required to comply with the NCS Regulations. Requiring other government agencies to comply could be one way of ensuring access to services and support for tamariki and rangatahi in care. In the meantime, funding stand-offs between agencies result in tamariki and rangatahi in the care of the State missing out.
- There appears to have been no progress in ensuring that tamariki and rangatahi have an annual health check as required by the NCS Regulations. No progress was made during the 2024/25 reporting period in identifying what an annual health check should include, although we understand work has since started on this.
- We continue to hear that access to mental health services is particularly challenging for tamariki and rangatahi in care.
- Access to education continues to be denied for a number of tamariki and rangatahi of compulsory school age in care. There is a continued failure to enrol some tamariki and rangatahi in education and a lack of urgency from kaimahi at both Oranga Tamariki and the Ministry of Education to secure the support needed for tamariki and rangatahi to access education.
Part 3: Supporting caregivers
- Compliance with the requirement to place tamariki and rangatahi with approved caregivers was worse this year, with 64 percent of caregivers being at least provisionally assessed before tamariki and rangatahi enter their care. However, Oranga Tamariki is actively focusing on improving this.
- A shortage of caregivers and a complex and lengthy approval process are contributing to non-compliance.
- Caregivers are more likely to have a support plan, and support plans are more likely to be being actioned by Oranga Tamariki than in previous years. This reflects work by Oranga Tamariki to prioritise support for caregivers following our 2022/23 Experiences of Care in report.
- Caregivers continue to ask for better information about tamariki and rangatahi when they are placed with them and to have regular visits from their social worker. Caregivers also need adequate financial support and training that fits with their availability and that addresses the needs of the tamariki and rangatahi in their care.
Part 4: Keeping tamariki and rangatahi safe and ensuring they have a say in their lives
- More tamariki and rangatahi were found to have been abused or neglected in care in 2024/25, with 10 percent of all tamariki and rangatahi in care being abused or neglected – that’s 530 tamariki and rangatahi. This is an increase from 507 tamariki and rangatahi abused or neglected in 2023/24 and continues the trend seen since we started monitoring the NCS Regulations.
- Fewer tamariki and rangatahi were informed of the outcome of the investigation following an allegation of abuse. Only one-third were informed, where it was appropriate to do so. Not being informed can result in a loss in trust of those who are there to protect them and can make them reluctant to raise future concerns.
- Despite being well-known areas of risk, residences continue to have disproportionally high rates of findings of abuse for tamariki and rangatahi. Although less than 10 percent of tamariki and rangatahi in care spent time in residences, they account for 20 percent of tamariki and rangatahi who were harmed in care.
- Oranga Tamariki has a focus on reducing peer-topeer fighting in residences. In our visits, we found the underlying culture, including poorly trained staff and unstructured programmes, contributes to an environment where harm occurs.
- Most tamariki and rangatahi in residences, and their whānau who we heard from in our 2024/25 engagements, know how to make a complaint or raise a grievance. This is an improvement on previous years.
Part 5: Care transitions between placements and towards adulthood
- Better planning is needed across all types of care transition and would make a real difference to the experiences of tamariki and rangatahi in care.
- More than one-quarter of tamariki and rangatahi in Oranga Tamariki care transitioned between placements in 2024/25. More than one-third of those transitions were because the previous caregiver was unwilling or unable to continue caring for the child.
- There is limited planning for transitions in care, and many are urgent or unexpected. Tamariki, rangatahi and their whānau tell us they are often not included in planning and do not always know what is happening when they move between care placements.
- Harm has again increased for tamariki and rangatahi who return home. Despite repeated acknowledgements from Oranga Tamariki that it must improve in this area, planning for returns home, and the frequency of social worker visits following a return home, have not improved. Oranga Tamariki prioritised tamariki and rangatahi returning home in its National Care Standards Action Plan in 2025.
- While referral rates to transition support (TSS) are improving year on year, only 63 percent of rangatahi aged 16 in 2024/25 and 77 percent of rangatahi overall were offered a referral.
- Not all Oranga Tamariki social workers understand their responsibilities and do what policy requires to support rangatahi to successfully transition to adulthood. Only 11 percent of eligible rangatahi had a life skills assessment, a further decrease on 2023/24. TSS workers are left filling the gaps, sorting out birth certificates, IRD numbers and bank accounts. This takes them away from working towards bigger goals with rangatahi such as making a career plan, learning to drive, finding somewhere to live and learning how to be a good flatmate.