Stand Tū Māia Sues Children’s Ministry For Breach Of Contract

Tuesday, 10 December 2024, 2:15 pm
Press Release: Stand Tu Maia

Stand Tū Māia charitable trust today confirmed that it is taking Oranga Tamariki to court for breaching a three-year integrated contract, worth $21 million a year (excluding pay equity).

Chief Executive Dr Fiona Inkpen said the Trust had been forced to bring court action to hold the Children’s Ministry to its contractual obligations and prevent the Ministry from acting as though the contract has been cancelled.

“We strongly believe Oranga Tamariki has committed an egregious breach of good faith in attempting to terminate our integrated contract at short notice, threatening our ability to provide specialist services to thousands of vulnerable children and their families.

“The integrated contract enables Stand Tū Māia to provide specialised trauma treatment, intensive family wraparound support and family therapy for approximately 4,000 vulnerable children from 1,000 families.

“Oranga Tamariki has told us the alleged cancellation is based on budget constraints, and it doesn’t have any questions about our performance or the outcomes we consistently deliver.

“Oranga Tamariki’s actions have been a shock to us. In July, officials told us they wanted to review our contract and create a new one. It was not until four months later that they confirmed which contract they wanted to review and only in late November that they wanted to cancel the contract on 31 December 2024, only six months into a three-year contract due to expire on 30 June 2026. A new contract would be negotiated to begin from 1 July 2025.”

Dr Inkpen said the Ministry had yet to respond to questions regarding what a new contract would look like.

She said the Stand Tū Māia Board did not take its decision to sue the Ministry lightly and spent considerable time exploring all its options.

“Oranga Tamariki’s suggested decision is contrary to repeated assurances that frontline services would be maintained. We are an essential frontline service for children who have already been failed by every other part of the system. We are effectively the ‘last resort’ for the most vulnerable children in our society and we are deeply concerned about how Oranga Tamariki plans to care for these children and their families. We have heard nothing to date.

“We work and live to our values, constantly delivering on our mission. The Government recently made a statement about the importance of investing in strong “fences” at the top of the cliff which we applaud, having spent 20-plus years building that capability on behalf of successive Governments.

“As a “strong fence on the top of the cliff”, Stand Tū Māia is an alternative to statutory care. Instead of police and Oranga Tamariki removing their children, hard-to-reach families trust us and engage deeply with us. The impact of removing the fence will be that these children and families are failed once again, trust will die, and I do not say this lightly, but potentially so will some of them.

“Despite working with the most complex and high-risk families, we have continually been able to demonstrate our value through our outcomes, the data we gather and through the reviews of our service.”

The independent advisory firm ImpactLab said “the additional social value metrics across all the programmes in this portfolio are comparatively very high and deserve to be highlighted. Your team should be encouraged that these metrics reflect truly significant impact for the whānau you support”.

“This is exactly the focus and social return that this Government has stated it wants to invest in. Nearly all our team are frontline workers, including our Regional Managers, who are deeply involved in casework and managing risk every day. Losing Stand Tū Māia capability and capacity at a time when Oranga Tamariki services are in crisis will have dire consequences in our communities. Our Regional Managers frequently hear from Oranga Tamariki social workers, “now Stand is involved, we can close the case” – as a service of last resort that is not duplicated by other providers.

Dr Inkpen said “Services delivered by Stand Tū Māia are unique and are not provided by any other provider. As and end of the road service, there is simply nowhere for these vulnerable children and their families to go to access the specialist support they desperately need.”

Stand Tū Māia continues to explore all options to try to keep the service operating but is expected to cease operations on 4 January 2025.

“As one of our kaumatua reminded us, we must look to the future – Titiro mai kia koutou katoa tūāuriuri whāioio kī tonu te rangi me te whenua. This means we are determined to explore all possible options and fight to preserve the fence at the top of the cliff, noting our contract with Oranga Tamariki ends in four weeks’ time, on 4 January 2025,” said Dr Inkpen.

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