Overview Since 1989, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) has had a statutory responsibility to monitor how well Child, Youth and Family (CYF) delivers services for children and young people. When New Zealand ratified the United Nations’ Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) in 2007, OCC gained a specific mandate to monitor CYF secure residences. These monitoring responsibilities carried over to the new Ministry, Oranga Tamariki, that replaced CYF on 1st April 2017. There are a total of nine secure Oranga Tamariki residences in New Zealand – five are care and protection residences, and four are youth justice residences.13 These designations are shared with the Ombudsman, however the Ombudsman and Children’s Commissioner have agreed the Children’s Commissioner will carry out the inspection of these facilities. The NPMs are working with the Ministry of Justice to have these designations amended. Introduction From July 2016 to March 2017, we found that CYF secure residences generally met the standards that are required by OPCAT. Our full 2016-17 findings are described in our publicly available report: State of Care 2017: A focus on Oranga Tamariki’s secure residences, available on our website.14 Below is a summary. Strengths As far as we could establish, residences appeared to be generally safe for children and young people. In this monitoring period, we found some incremental improvements in residential care at an operational level. Specific areas of improvement included: • An overall improvement in the way residential staff treat young people, including how they respond to challenging behaviour and a reduction in the use of restraints over the previous two-year period. • An improvement in material conditions across three residences. Areas for development However, there is still a long way to go. Secure residences still fall far short of the aspirations of the new agency, Oranga Tamariki. We remain concerned about the variable quality of practice and the fundamental system issues that underpin this variability. These systemic issues have included: • A lack of understanding of what child-centred practice or systems look like, and how they improve children’s experience. • No nationally consistent articulated vision or purpose for youth justice residences. There is continuing debate as to whether custody or rehabilitation is their primary role. • No standardised best practice approach to creating a therapeutic environment across residences, including care and protection residences. • A lack of therapeutic knowledge and skill amongst the staff providing day-to-day care for children and young people in residences, and a lack of training and supervision to build residential staff’s capability. • Insufficient responsiveness to our indigenous Mäori children, young people, and their families and whänau (extended families). • A lack of a suite of suitable community-based facilities to reduce pressure on secure residential placements, especially pressure from remand placements. • Inadequate transition processes from secure residential care to the community. • The three care and protection residences we monitored were moving to create more therapeutic environments for children and young people Oranga Tamariki response • There was a trend across more than half the residences for an increased level of training and supervision for residential (care) staff Encouragingly, in the last couple of years, we have seen evidence of our monitoring findings and recommendations beginning to influence some of 10 Human Rights Commission