Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Children's Ministry has signalled it may run another boot camp for young offenders before a law change kicks in next year.
Legislation is before Parliament to give judges the sentencing option of a military-style academy for the first time for repeat serious offenders.
The first pilot boot camp last year was with volunteers.
Reviews have found it had some success, but could have been better.
The academies occupied a large part of Oranga Tamariki's appearance at a scrutiny week committee hearing at Parliament on Tuesday.
The ministry's national operations manager, Janet Mays, told MPs they were planning now so they could run the next one "as soon as practical" because the camps were an important therapeutic option.
"We are giving some thought to perhaps another programme in advance of the legislation next year, if that timing were to fall into place," Mays said.
Training was now going on with that in mind.
Earlier, when asked by Labour MP Willow-Jean Prime if March was when the next camp would run, Children's Minister Karen Chhour said no date had been set.
Chief social worker Nicolette Dickson said it was possible they would run another programme in a youth justice residence ahead of and to prepare for the legislative changes. That related not just to military-style academies, but allowed the likes of extended residential orders and extended supervision orders in the community.
"This is more than just testing the single order in the proposed legislation, it's testing our entire approach to some of the different orders in front of us as well."
Prime said she would use the word "experimenting" in place of "testing", and asked if the next one would need volunteers if the law had not been changed, and if this was the best use of $30 million in Budget 2025.
Dickson said the pilot review had led to wider changes such as more programmes in all residences, more therapeutic work and a current review of healthcare in them all.
"They haven't been in place and we have to build them," she said
Mays said they were learning from the pilot to make the next camp a "more tailored" response, and in addition a new whānau programme would run alongside the camp.
Earlier, Chhour said six young people from the first boot camp, some of whom reoffended, were now out in the community and had not reoffended.
It also made a difference to the boys' whānau.
"There were 29 siblings of these young people. And we've got in front of those 29 siblings, their whānau, their parents, and supported them in what they need so they don't go down that same pathway, because there is that risk," Chhour told the Social Services and Community committee.
Greens MP Kahurangi Carter asked if the ministry had analysed if boot camps had better outcomes than community initiatives, such as one that was cut at a marae that lost a million dollars of OT funding.
Earlier, she had questioned whether cuts in community funding by the ministry of $160m last year were linked to a 44 percent rise in 'reports of concern' to OT. Chhour rejected this, saying it reflected other government agencies making more reports than before to OT about children.
Chief executive Andrew Bridgman responded to Carter that there was a whole range of programmes and it was difficult to make comparisons.
Dickson said it was not a case of either/or but of "and and and". The military-style academies worked for "some" young people but were only a part of offerings.
Mays said she would not work in any programme that abused young people.
"The term boot camp is extremely emotive... the programme we are offering these young people could not be further removed from things that we read about in the Royal Commission into abuse in care."
Thebig rise in reports of concern to almost 100,000 in 2024-25 sparked questions from Labour MP Helen White about whether the goalposts had been moved, and concern that a target of intervening in urgent cases within 24 hours was not being met.
White said a constituent had told her about reporting on a girl hung out of a window by her mother that was not treated as urgent, and that there was way less transparency around less urgent case numbers.
Chhour said there was no evidence of reports being put into non-urgent categories when they should not be.
She added a trial was running for non-urgent cases to be sent to community partners for follow-up rather than by the ministry.
"It might not be high need now but if it's ignored it will be high need."
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