Tragically, just the first few hours of 2025 saw the loss of yet another New Zealand child’s life, allegedly at the hands of someone else.

Child Matters CEO, Jane Searle, says this latest incident in Hamilton has reinforced New Zealand needs to maintain a focus on identifying what opportunities are being missed to prevent harm to our children and young people – and to understand what we can learn to prevent the next needless fatality.

Ms Searle says all too often, by the time New Zealand Police or Oranga Tamariki are involved, a child or young person has already been seriously hurt or tragically killed.

“We urgently need to be building the fence with a lookout at the top of the cliff, not calling the ambulances at the bottom.

“Identifying our most at risk children and young people, and intervening early, is a challenge, but no government or community should be daunted by the task,” says Ms Searle.

“We have two options as a country, accept the status quo that results in far too many of our children being harmed through abuse or neglect; or we work to build stronger child protection systems in government and the community, that will save lives.”

Ms Searle says in order to succeed, New Zealand needs to focus on two things.

“The first is ensuring that Oranga Tamariki social workers are resourced and trained to do their jobs, so they are able to effectively and consistently deal with critical cases.

“Oranga Tamariki has struggled for many years to do what it was created to do, which is to protect our at risk children and young people.

“It will take time and good leadership to strengthen Oranga Tamariki’s professional knowledge and systems, and reset the internal culture that has suffered from years of swings in direction and leadership,” says Ms Searle.

“Secondly, we need to focus on the coordination and resourcing of the frontline organisations who work in local communities, and therefore are in the best possible position to identify risk and offer support early.

“Early intervention is key, and requires the ability to act when risk is identified. Prevention should always be the goal, but it takes resourcing and a robust structure of information sharing.

“None of this will happen overnight. It will take years of work and partisan commitment from successive governments and community leaders to achieve, but if we stick to the plan, over time we will save lives.

“May 2025 be the year we learn from our mistakes, commit to the challenge and save children’s lives.”

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