KEY POINTS:
Two families whose children have been taken into state care say the state has failed their youngsters, despite spending as much as $750,000 a year on one of them.
One 11-year-old boy has been allowed to commit 38 offences since the age of 7, including many in the past two years while in the care of Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS).
The other youth, 16, was cared for round the clock in Auckland and given every possible help - including part-time enrolment at King's College - at a cost of $750,000 for a year under the "high and complex needs" policy.
But then he was sent back to his home district of Hawkes Bay and placed in foster homes where his grandmother says he was physically and sexually abused and was allowed to wander the streets at night.
The families cannot be named because it is illegal to name anyone in CYFS care or anyone else connected with them.
But their local MP, Napier National member Chris Tremain, said the two cases and others showed that "at that top end of offending, the current system is not working".
Child psychiatrist John Werry, who co-founded the Youth Horizons Trust for at-risk youngsters 12 years ago, said CYFS was "struggling with a problem that is beyond their financial and professional competence".
"The state is not caring adequately for kids that come into its care."
The parents of the 11-year-old boy, who are still together after 14 years, said CYFS was trying to make them split because the father was in the Mongrel Mob 20 years ago.
"They are telling me that if I didn't leave my kids' father and get a house out of Maraenui [in Napier], I couldn't get my kids back," the mother said.
The agency took the 11-year-old into care two years ago after he was expelled from his primary school, and took the other three children, who are aged 13, 8 and 7, last November.
The 11-year-old is being held at a CYFS secure residence in Weymouth, South Auckland, and the other three children have been placed with three separate relatives in various parts of Hawkes Bay.
The parents said the 11-year-old had repeatedly run away from foster homes when he was returned to Hawkes Bay.
In the other case, the 16-year-old's grandmother and legal guardian said her grandson had had a succession of foster homes since she and her husband had to hand him over to CYFS at age 4, because she had a breakdown.
She said he was sexually molested by other boys in two of his placements, lost 4kg due to maltreatment at another placement, was hit with the back of an axe by a farmer when he was 10, and was allowed to wander and have sex with a 26-year-old woman when he was 14.
CYFS head Ray Smith said he had reviewed the two files and did not find any "blemishes" on the agency's record. He said CYFS picked up children when they had developed difficult behaviour patterns which took time to change.
"The efforts are huge and quite a significant amount of money is spent on these young people to try to put together programmes that will turn their behaviours around."
He said programmes such as High and Complex Needs worked well with a lot of kids.
"For some, disappointingly, we still don't get the result we want."
