Documents reveal that as Operation Hark began, staff inside child protection agency Oranga Tamariki started to fear they had relied too much on police assessments of child-protection cases. The review has since produced 12 new reports of concern about children, and OT has not said whether they resulted from the over-reliance staff warned about. David Fisher reports.
As the police-led Operation Hark started investigating dozens of serious concerns about how Detective Inspector Kevan Verry had handled historical child protection and sexual assault files, a key email was sent within Oranga Tamariki (OT) by a senior figure.
In that July 6 email, chief social worker Nicolette Dickson warned her colleagues that over time they might have become too reliant on police assurances in cases involving the protection of children.
“We can be a bit over reliant on police’s view in the CPP [Child Protection Protocol] process,” Dickson wrote in an email released through the Official Information Act (OIA).
The CPP she referred to is a framework under which OT and police co-ordinate their joint response to complaints involving potential abuse, neglect, or offences against children and young people.
At the time of Dickson’s warning, OT was scrambling to establish the extent of its involvement under the CPP in the specific police child protection cases being assessed.
Dickson said the CPP was a joint process and therefore OT needed to satisfy itself that it had done its part of the job thoroughly, independently of police, in the cases under review.
As Operation Hark progressed, it identified 12 cases in which, according to OT, “further assessment of the original concerns was required, resulting in new reports of concern”.
A report of concern is a formal notification that gives OT a mandate to assess a child’s circumstances and determine whether intervention or support is required.
Operation Hark originated in Northland, where Verry held senior investigative roles, including within police child protection. Concerns raised in May about one historical case eventually prompted police to rapidly review almost 1000 files under Verry’s oversight.
Fifty-four were identified as needing further investigation. Now, police have told the Herald that has expanded to 57 cases.
Further, Herald inquiries have established that some cases worked on by Verry are being forwarded to detectives from the police’s integrity unit, which is tasked with investigating corruption and serious criminal behaviour within the police force.
Why did existing supervision and quality-assurance systems fail to identify problems earlier?
Oranga Tamariki chief social worker Nicolette Dickson warned her colleagues, "We can be a bit over-reliant on police’s view".
We’ve been here before. The CPP was overhauled in 2010 while the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) was investigating failures in child-abuse investigations nationwide.
The wider reforms strengthened supervision, auditing and file management, while the revamped CPP clarified the separate roles of police and what is now Oranga Tamariki, and introduced stronger joint planning and monitoring.
More than 15 years later, the OT correspondence released through the OIA shows senior staff at the child protection agency starting to ask if Operation Hark was revealing weaknesses that extended beyond police handling of the cases – and into the entire jointly handled child protection system.
OT chief adviser Simon Harding went further, as he worked with colleagues on the agency’s parallel review.
He said reviewers should examine whether there had been cases where police had effectively said “things are fine” and OT had accepted that assessment at face value.
Harding also questioned whether OT may have treated a police prosecution decision as a reason to close its own involvement – without separately considering the child’s safety and wellbeing.
Detective Senior Sergeant Kevan Verry is facing an employment investigation. His work triggered Operation Hark.
“Perhaps that was about prosecution – and we used it as the reason to close without considering safety and wellbeing more broadly?”
On July 8, police provided OT with the details of the 40 Operation Hark cases involving victims aged under 18 which, on initial review, it said required “reactivation”.
Harding then circulated the list internally, and OT began its case-by-case review.
OT deputy chief executive Thomas Ronan has said the review is now complete.
“In most cases the response from Oranga Tamariki had been adequate and did not require further actions to be taken. There were no cases where we identified unmet child safety concerns.
“In several cases the review found that Oranga Tamariki continued to work with the family to address wellbeing concerns after police had concluded their investigation process. In some of these cases this included substantiating that abuse had occurred.”
In 12 cases, it was found “further assessment of the original concerns would be required”, and a report of concern would be made.
“We did not identify any cases requiring urgent intervention to keep children safe.”
Ronan said the comment about over-reliance on police “relates to the importance of Oranga Tamariki social workers remaining clear about their own decisions and actions regarding the safety and wellbeing of the child while working alongside police colleagues”.
Oranga Tamariki has told the Herald that since July 20, about 10 staff a week have been assigned to work through OT records, reviewing decisions, and whether safety risks had been properly considered.
The agency has not directly said whether it has found the over-reliance on police that its chief social worker had warned about.
Through a spokesperson, it said OT had statutory responsibilities separate from police and its decisions about the safety and well-being of children were made independently.
It said a police decision not to investigate, continue an investigation or prosecute did not remove OT’s responsibility to consider whether a child needed protection.
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether any charges had been laid as a result of Operation Hark.
Law Association of NZ family law committee co-convener Stuart Cummings of Surrey Chambers told the Herald that if reports of concern had emerged from newly reviewed cases, it meant triage had not been done by OT at the time.
He said that suggested there could have been periods when it was not known if children were in danger.
Cummings said there were signs of OT “deferring to police” on cases where it should have asserted its separate role.
“It’s an over-stretched system. It’s no excuse, but that’s where it comes from. It’s not a deliberate dereliction of duty.”
Operation Hark has expanded to include 57 cases – largely focused on Northland. Photo / Tania Whyte
Cummings said OT’s role was a critical part of the system as it brought a different perspective from that brought by police.
“A social worker doesn’t look for a prosecution – a social worker looks at the care and protection of a child.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He first joined the Herald in 2004.
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