Child Welfare: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice

12. A Bicultural Response to Children in Need of Care and Protection in New Zealand

12 A Bicultural Response to Children in Need of Care and Protection in New Zealand Jill Worrall New Zealand (Aotearoa) is a South Pacific island nation of 4.17 million people, whose population is 15% indigenous Maori, 68% European (Pakeha) descent, 6% Pacific Island, and 9% Asian (Statistics New Zealand, 2007). Ethnic diversity is increasing: immigration policies have resulted in communities being enriched by Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African peoples. The need for culturally sensitive foster care practice is therefore a constant challenge. New Zealand was a leader in international child welfare legislation reform with the passing of the Children, Young Persons, and their Families Act (1989). This Act mandated the extended family as the preferred placement for children in need of care and protection, respecting traditional Maori concepts of family responsibility and decision-making. It is questionable, however, whether the Maori model of collective responsibility translates to European families. This chapter examines traditional Maori child welfare practice, kinship care, and placement permanence, with reference to New Zealand research. It concludes with discussion of the implications for social work practice and policy of the dilemmas related to cross-cultural placements and the search for better outcomes for children in need of care and protection. The History of Child Protection Law in New Zealand In 1840, New Zealand’s colonizing forefathers signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the indigenous Maori tribes to prescribe equitable relationships between 187 Maori and Pakeha, and continuing respect for Maori values and customs.Within this Treaty, children are recognized as “taonga,” or treasures of Maori society. However, colonization has taken a terrible toll on the country’s Indigenous peoples, and Maori children are disproportionately represented in child welfare statistics. In early New Zealand both Maori and Pakeha children in need of care were most often consigned to institutional care, and, in later decades, to stranger foster care. The Maori people were never involved in the establishment of the child welfare system; their cultural values and social needs were ignored, and systems and institutions integral to the structure of Maori society went unrecognized . A critical report to the government had this to say: … the central State’s chosen administrators supplant traditional leaders; the State’s agents impose new structures; legal-judicial processes replace the traditional tribal law; and most significantly, permanent government forces enforce the new rules … Weaving a fine bureaucratic net about traditional society, they impose regulations , restrictions and obligations upon the people … For the Maori, political modernisation resulted in a systematic and unrelenting assault on their traditional society. (Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare, 1986, pp. 7–8) Traditional Maori society was based on the organic solidarity of kinship and tribal autonomy. The extended family (whanau) was the most basic of kinship levels, and was responsible for the support, education, and rearing of its members. A child was seen not as the child of his or her biological parents, but as a child of the whanau, which had communal responsibility for all of its members . Jackson (1988) described the strength of the whanau system: The kinship ties of the large family unit implied a sharing of support, discipline and comfort for all members of the whanau. Its structure provided young people with their feeling of well-being, their security and their sense of a group good greater than their own. It provided them with a sense of their place in the scheme of things and ensured rules of behaviour and cultural transmission were maintained . (Jackson, 1988, p. 76) When parents were under stress, children were cared for within the extended family, to the mutual advantage of all concerned. Contact with parents was usually assured, and placements seen as a temporary arrangement. The Ministerial Advisory Committee claimed that “Maori children knew many homes but still one whanau” (1986, p. 23). Walker (1990), in her historical review of kinship care in New Zealand, found no evidence of any policy to place Maori children in need of care and WORRALL 188 protection within their whanau. Early departmental letters illustrated racist practice and little understanding of whanau systems. Although she found evidence of policy that Maori children should be placed with Maori foster parents, it was rarely adhered to, and when it was, a lower board rate was paid. The evidence was that Maori children were taken into care and placed with Pakeha foster families from the beginning of...