Photo: RNZ
The most serious alerts about abuse of children to the Ministry for Children/Oranga Tamariki have jumped by almost 40 percent.
Oranga Tamariki's latest performance update shows an even bigger rise of 60 percent across all types of notifications in the last six months of 2024.
The update said economic hardship was a driver, with 55,000 reports of concern from July to December 2024 - 20,000 more than in the same period the year before.
"Two underlying themes are likely to have had an impact: public awareness and reporting, and social and economic factors such as an increase in cost of living, increase in the number of children living in material hardship, increase in the unemployment rate," it said.
Social workers have been hitting the target of visiting 95 percent of children in care at least once every two months. The government said this was evidence of strong progress.
But the ministry had failed to reach its target of 95 percent of critical cases being responded to in 24 hours and 'very urgent' cases in 48 hours - only hitting 86 percent at the end of last year.
RNZ in March reported a jump in reports of concern about at-risk children last year compared to 2023.
The latest update reported more caregivers saying they were getting better support, and Oranga Tamariki was developing an action plan to push that further.
The ministry had also set up a child protection investigation unit to identify systemic failures by the state that cause children harm, give survivors of that abuse a voice and promote accountability.
The update recorded a fall of 12 percent by year-end in persistent serious youth offending (the target is a 15 percent reduction by 2030).
A new measure around auditing how complaints were handled found about 60 percent were okay, up from 50 percent, which was on track.
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