Urgent action needed to improve safety in justice facilities, union says

Oranga Tamariki needs to do a better job of protecting the safety of young people in justice facilities, as well as the staff working with them, a youth workers' union says.

Eleven staff have now been stood down at Korowai Manaaki facility, four of them in relation to a video filmed by a staff member of two young men kicking and punching each other.

Korowai Manaaki is the same Auckland facility where several young people spent the night on the roof over the weekend.

The video emerged on social media this week, but Oranga Tamariki said it was filmed in mid-June and police are investigating.

The Public Service Association's Joe McCroy said the incident was a wake-up call for better resourcing in the sector.

"The need to take action is urgent if we are going to provide a safe working environment that also properly supports young people.

"Oranga Tamariki needs to do better, and staff are ready to do better but they need the tools to do so."

McCroy said the union, which supported 200 youth workers, had been advocating for more training for a long time.

"Oranga Tamariki needs to make the investment needed to properly equip the staff in what is a very stressful and complicated environment. They [Oranga Tamariki] are sending workers into these environments not as prepared as they could be to respond to the pressure."

The work was mentally and physically demanding, he said.

"There is a training requirement when staff comes on board, it used to be for four weeks, and this is moving to six weeks now.

"But there is also a need for ongoing training and professional development that isn't cancelled or postponed, it needs to be ongoing, and it needs to be sustained."

Youth workers were being exposed in the role, McCroy said.

"Exposed in a way it won't happen if staff were receiving regular training that is available for other youth workers in a similar setting.

"These are vulnerable young people with high complex needs, and part of the ongoing commitment to address those needs it is to equip workers with the resources they need to support them, and that needs to happen as soon as possible."

Youth development body Ara Taiohi's chief executive Jane Zintl said the behaviour of the Oranga Tamariki staff did not align with its code of conduct.

"We advocated really strongly for systems to be put in place to enable the best possible youth work.

"That means having experienced and trained youth workers who are positioned in those spaces, it means having a good structure around job description and ongoing training. Just making sure that everything is set up for what we considered real youth work."

"System needs re-designing" - advocate

Youth advocate Aaron Hendry said youth justice facilities were not fit for purpose.

"If the environment in the system you created is not one that is focused on healing, that it is not one that is focused on youth development, it doesn't matter who you put in there, you will have poor results.

"Show me staff in those environments who are not performing well, and I will show you a system that is not working."

The justice system for rangatahi needed to be re-designed, Hendry said.

"[The youth justice system] needs to be looked through youth development lens, ensuring that whatever we are doing is mana enhancing, that is strengthening connections for that young people, that is focused on a therapeutic environment.

"We need to ensure that we have good, qualified youth development workers, social workers and councillors to support these young people."

More work needed to be done to avoid having young people behind bars in the first place, he said.

"There is a whole lot of interventions that we should be taking before young people end up needing to be put in a youth justice residence.

"There's a lot more community interventions that can happen if we adequately resource and support our communities to care for our young people before they get to that stage."

Justice sector chief science advisor Professor Ian Labie said the training of youth workers was key to the rehabilitation of young people.

"The young people that are there, they are there not only because they are offending, but due to mental health issues that haven't been looked at, neurodiversity, poor engagement with education and so on.

"They arrive with disregulated behaviour, which make it really hard for them to engage in rehabilitation programmes and that's why it's so important that facilities have highly skilled, well-trained and well-supervised staff, and we don't have that at the level that we require."

Review will 'flush out' problems within Oranga Tamariki

Children's Minister Kelvin Davis said the recently announced review would show how widespread the issue at justice facilities was.

He confirmed the initial review had been sparked by allegations of young people being shown pornography on smart devices.

Since the review was announced, two instances of fighting incidents being recorded had come to light.

Davis told Checkpoint the review would "flush out" any problems and get to the bottom of what was going on.

He did not answer whether or not he believed staff members should be allowed to have phones in the facilities but admitted he was not happy that staff, visitors or young people in the facilities could not be searched.

He said it was an easy way for contraband to be passed through to youth in the facility and wanted to look at what could be done to change that.

Oranga Tamariki said the training of staff working in youth justice facilities was under review.