Children's Minister Karen Chhour won't say how many still in government's bootcamps

The Children's Minister won't confirm how many participants remain in the government's highly-scrutinised bootcamps.

Karen Chhour maintains the privacy of the children involved in the Military Style Academies (MSA) is "more important" than it being used as a political football.

Chhour appeared in the Social Services Committee Scrutiny Week hearing on Tuesday morning, along with officials from Oranga Tamariki.

Labour's Willow-Jean Prime asked how many young people were currently in the latest MSA, but Chhour said she wouldn't be answering questions about young people in the programme.

She referenced a Written Parliamentary Question (WPQ) sent to Prime last month that acknowledged 10 young people "commenced" the second MSA, which is currently underway.

The WPQ reiterated the position that it wasn't in the public interest to provide the information regarding how many had left since the programme began.

Prime asked during the hearing on Tuesday whether there were still 10 participants. Chhour responded again saying she wouldn't be answering.

Media attempted to question Chhour as she left the scrutiny hearing, but Chhour refused by walking away without stopping.

Back inside the committee, Prime also asked whether the bootcamps were the best use of taxpayer money. Chhour responded saying "we can't afford not to invest that money".

Speaking after the hearing, Oranga Tamariki officials said they were currently working on the future implementation of a permanent MSA policy, but waiting for the legislation to come through.

The bill to establish permanent bootcamps was introduced to Parliament at the end of 2024, and had a select committee report in May last year, but hasn't since had its second reading.

The legislation was to give judges the sentencing option and set up a category of youth offenders they could use it on.

Asked by RNZ how it would manage if the law, when passed, meant the young people would not be able to leave the programme voluntarily, Oranga Tamariki's Chief Executive Amanda Malu said that was "a piece of work that we're working through right now".

It's not clear when the legislation is going to have its second reading, but Chhour told RNZ in a statement "I fully expect this legislation to be passed before the end of the term."

Rooftop incidents

Oranga Tamariki said over the past few years the overall cost of rooftop incidents at youth justice facilities has been more than $2 million.

A group of young people had accessed the roof at the Korowai Manaaki residence in April.

Oranga Tamariki said at the time there'd been some damage to the residence.

Prime also put questions to the Minister about the incident, raising the issue of staff vacancies - including youth workers and a psychologist - and that secure care extensions were still occurring "illegally", and that a reset plan was done and completed last year, but it "obviously hasn't fixed the problems."

She asked whether Chhour was satisfied with the management of the facility.

Chhour said "absolutely."

"If that member wants to say that the previous government had this perfect little system of youth justice that never did anything wrong, then I'm sure she'd be the last one to be throwing the stones that she's throwing right now," Chhour said.

Chhour acknowledged things go wrong sometimes, like a rooftop incident, but said the number of those incidents had decreased from around 15 a year to two while she was the Minister.

"For you to throw that out like I'm harming and hurting these kids intentionally is actually offensive," she said.

Prime pushed back suggesting the minister hadn't answered fully, and was making "wild accusations."

Deputy Chief Executive Youth Justice Services and Residential Care Dean Winter then explained the overall use of secure care had reduced "considerably" over the last 12 months, and secure care extensions had reduced from 5 percent to 4 percent.

"None of those situations are ideal, but we're training our staff always, and they're responding to the training by reducing, reducing the need.

"It's a really good reflection of the training and work that the kaimahi have done.

When it comes to Korowai Manaaki itself, Winter said it's a challenging group of youths they'll dealing with.

"They do take on some very high risk young people."

He said the handling of the most recent rooftop incident was "one of the best I've seen," working closely with FENZ and police. He said he couldn't give a guarantee it would never happen again.

Prime asked whether the minister was aware that some Oranga Tamariki officials were warned of a possible rooftop event several weeks before the event happened in April. Chhour said she wasn't.

Speaking after the hearing, Malu told reporters she wasn't aware of any warning either.

"If we had had notice, we would have acted.

"We would have talked with the residents like we would in any situation where there might be a brewing incident."

Winter said they were working through the costs of the latest rooftop incident, but said over the previous three or four years, the costs had been "around two and a half million" dollars.

He said that included costs of improvements, "because we take advantage of the infrastructure works as it goes on when we're doing remediation."

On staff vacancies, Winter said there were always unfilled roles, "obviously".

"We have recruitment and retention, similar to many other organisations. That doesn't translate to a lack of staff on the floor or numbers that are unsafe."

Increase in uplifts?

The Greens Kahurangi Carter raised the issue of Section 78 uplifts, saying there had been an increase from 397 in the year 21/22 to 682 in 24/25.

She also noted uplifts without notice had increased and "now make up three quarters of the section 78 uplifts in 24/25 compared to half that in 21/22."

Chhour said it wasn't a "numbers game." She said there'd been celebration of a 75 percent drop of children coming into care for a while, "like it was a success, but they couldn't tell me if those children were safe."

She also said there seemed to be a misconception that when a child gets put into care, they're not with whānau.

"When a young person gets removed and put into care, a high percentage of those young people are with whānau."

Chief Executive Malu said she couldn't speak to the increase in uplifts, but in terms of children in Oranga Tamariki care overall, she said there was a "significant increase in complexity."

"More than half of young people in Oranga Tamariki care have some form of a disability, and young people in our care are eight times more likely to need mental health support.

"So, these are very complicated young people that we are trying to support here."

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