Oranga Tamariki ordered to pay costs of lawyers who wanted teen ram-raider put in care

Oranga Tamariki has been ordered to pay $6,800 to cover the costs of lawyers who fought for seven months to get a 14-year-old ram-raider under the Ministry’s care and protection.

The case involved the teen, who had been involved in a swathe of ram raids, burglaries and police pursuits but was not made subject to a full custody order despite police requests, because Oranga Tamariki didn’t think it was needed.

Police estimated the teen’s offending to have cost his victims about $100,000.

Oranga Tamariki’s chief legal officer/Kaihautū Ture Emily Hockly said the organisation hadn’t consented to custody orders because it wanted to “abide by obligations under section 7AA, of the Oranga Tamariki Act (1989), to protect mana tamaiti by recognising whakapapa and the whanaungatanga responsibilities of whānau, including by exploring alternatives so that tamariki do not need to come into care”.

“This can take some time and is not always successful, so sometimes a custody order is necessary for the wellbeing and best interests of te tamaiti,” Hockly said.

Eventually Oranga Tamariki agreed that an order was required and Judge Peter Callinicos granted an application at a hearing in Napier last month.

Callinicos said it should have been self-evident to the Ministry that the nature of the concerns raised about the teen meant an order should have been considered at an earlier stage, and noted that police had taken the “extremely rare step of actually stepping in to make the application because Oranga Tamariki had failed to do so seven months ago”.

During the hearing the issues of costs arose. These were the costs incurred by the court through the services of the teen’s lawyer, who had also been pushing for the order to be made, and an additional lawyer who had been appointed after the teen’s lawyer deemed she had a conflict between acting for the teen and a best interests approach.

In a recently released costs decision Judge Callinicos said the Ministry “failed for some seven months to accept the position of all other parties that a care and protection order was required”, and that its later acceptance that the order was required showed an “inability to accept the accuracy of the other parties was misplaced”.

“The reluctance of the Chief Executive [of Oranga Tamariki] to concede its position was the direct cause of considerable and unnecessary cost,” he said.

He noted that the making of the order would not have restricted social workers from continuing to engage with whānau to make changes to address concerns.

“The Chief Executive rejected reasonable by the Police, LFC (Lawyer for the Child), and CTA (Counsel to Assist) to consent to a care and protection order. Indeed, if the statutory duties and purposes had been better appraised, the Chief Executive ought to have made the applications,” the judge said.

The lawyer acting for the teen had incurred costs of $5,635. The other lawyer had incurred costs of $3,770.

The judge awarded costs against Oranga Tamariki of $3,600 and $3,200 respectively.