17 Jun 2019

Oranga Tamariki's failure to work with iwi must change - Children's Commissioner

From Morning Report, 7:43 am on 17 June 2019

The Children's Commissioner's office will conduct a review of Oranga Tamariki's care and protection of Māori babies from birth to three months old.

Last month, Hawke's Bay Hospital was put into lockdown when social workers tried to take a newborn baby from its 19-year-old mother.

It sparked widespread complaints about the organisation's practice of removing Māori babies from whānau.

The Minister for Children Tracey Martin told us nobody wants three Māori babies uplifted every week but it does not deserve the term "stolen generation".

The Children's Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft, is in the Wellington studio. He talks to Susie