FOSTERING REVIEW LOOKING IN WRONG PLACE FOR TROUBLE (Waatea News, 17 Nov 2009).
A veteran Maori social worker says a review of foster care needs to take a Maori way of seeing the world.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has asked whether children placed with extended family are better off than those fostered outside the family, in light of high re-abuse rates for children in whanau care.
But Malcolm Peri, who was involved in the maatua whangai programmes of the 1980s which championed whanau-based care, says Ms Bennett's department has squeezed the kaupapa Maori aspects out of its work with children.
“I can't remember any real effort in the last 20 years the system has put in place to to strengthen Maori families from te ao Maori and I don’t think they give us credit for things Maori have progressed, for the families have been placed with families and have been healed,” Mr Peri says.
He says abandoning Maori programmes would mean going back to failed assimilation policies.
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