KEY POINTS:
Jan Hapeta says she always knew something was wrong with her second son. "Round the house he was picking on his brothers. He just couldn't sit still.
"He started playing up at school - snapping pencils, not listening to the teacher. We knew he had ADHD, but we could never prove it. No one believed us because of all the trouble he was getting into."
Tamati Hapeta* is still only 11. He has been in and out of the care of Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) since he was 9 and has been the focus of seven family group conferences.
His police record began at 7 and now includes 38 offences including 16 of theft, robbery and burglary, seven of intentional damage, six of assault, two of arson or wilfully setting fire and one of aggravated robbery.
"He's responsible for his own mini-crime wave," says Napier National MP Chris Tremain, whom the Hapetas approached for help. "When I think of my 11-year-old, I just cannot conceive how an 11-year-old can be that street-wise and be allowed to run riot around the country.
"I'm not saying that I have the answers. But quite clearly, at that top end of offending, the current system is not working."
Unfortunately, Tamati Hapeta is not unique. He is one of 5049 youngsters in CYFS "care and protection" in the year to last June, and one of 4002 (not all in state care) who were involved with CYFS social workers in that year because of their offending.
The numbers are growing. Five years ago there were only 4281 in care and 3012 involved with CYFS for their offending.
Police figures show the numbers of children and young people being caught for burglary and other non-violent offences have dropped over the past decade. But violent offending rates have risen by 5 per cent for 10-to-13 year olds and by 27 per cent for 14-to-16 year olds, although they have gone up even faster in the peak violent age group of 17 to 20.
Tamati, at 11, is still a "child", not yet a "young person", and therefore subject only to the Family Court. The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act of 1989 holds that child offenders are "in need of care rather than ... incarceration or punishment".
The Family Court may direct serious offenders and/or their parents to pay reparation to victims or to receive counselling, or it may take children away from their parents and place them in CYFS care.
CYFS holds some of the most difficult children for up to two years in its four secure care and protection residences at Weymouth (Manukau), Epuni (Lower Hutt), Christchurch and Dunedin.
In the most extreme cases, murder or manslaughter, even children go to adult courts and can be jailed in adult prisons. But in most other cases, child offenders are held in either CYFS homes, or with private foster families in the community where they are free to run away.
As Tremain sees it, CYFS is boxed into a system that leaves the public vulnerable.
"I think there needs to be debate about whether, at the top end, there needs to be the ability to provide much longer extended periods of secure care," he says.
From the Hapetas' point of view, CYFS is also failing to take good care of the children it takes in.
If Tamati could commit far more offences in CYFS care than he ever did in his parents' care, then how can the state justify taking him away from them?
The family has had its problems. Tamati's father, Bill, 49, was placed in state care himself at 13, spent his teenage years in institutions at Epuni and Levin, later joined the Mongrel Mob and was jailed for taking cars.
He and Jan, 32, now live on a sickness benefit after Bill was injured in a coolstore four years ago. CYFS took their other three children, aged 13 to 7, last November.
"We are 'literacies', me and [Bill]. We can't read and write and speak properly," Jan says.
Bill says he was "brought up hard" by his uncles, but he has been "more of a soft fellow" with his own kids.
"Too soft," says Jan.
Their house is sparsely furnished and still bears the marks of a recent scuffle at the door where Bill was arrested for trying to stop police taking Tamati away again.
But one wall is covered with family photos which the couple show off proudly, including one of Tamati in his primary school rugby team before CYFS took him.
Bill says he has not been in the Mongrel Mob for 20 years. But the Napier suburb of Maraenui, where they live, is Mob territory.
"I still know people in there," he says. "Every corner you look, you can't ignore them."
Jan says she let her children walk down to the Maraenui shops about 400 metres away.
"They just hang out with the wrong kids because there's nothing else for the kids to do round here," she says. "All they have is a skate bowl where the drunks sit and get wasted out all the time and the police don't do anything about it.
"We are the only parents that go there and pick up our kids. There's kids down there till 11 or 12 at night."
CYFS stepped in after Tamati was expelled from his third local school. It placed the boy first with Jan's parents and then in about six successive CYFS family homes, but he has run away six times.
"He was staying out with his friends, going uptown stealing," Jan says.
He is now in the CYFS residence at Weymouth, where he has finally been diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).
"The other day we got a phone call asking us for permission to put him on Ritalin," Jan says. "If they had listened to us at the start, we could have had him on medication. We do know what's wrong with our kids."
Sadly, however, the professionals believe the only way to rescue Tamati from a criminal future is to keep him out of his home environment.
"He needs to get out of this community he's in because he's looked upon as being a hero amongst the kids," says Maureen Mua, who manages Maraenui's Te Roopu A Iwi Trust.
"We all know when anything happens round here [Tamati] is back in town. That's terrible for a boy of 11 years old.
"I've seen him with his mother and he just walks all over the top of her. It's about ensuring boundaries are put around him."
CYFS head Ray Smith says his agency's priority is to help families put those boundaries in place themselves.
He sees a lot more money going into iwi and community agencies to work with families in the next few years under a new policy, announced by Prime Minister Helen Clark in February, of funding the full costs of "essential community-based services for families, children and young people".
He also plans to employ directly an extra 40 CYFS social workers in Auckland in the next year.
A key to getting the family on board, he says, is to bring the whole extended family into the family group conference which makes a plan for a young person.
"At one yesterday we had the parents, grandparents and a number of other extended family and associates. That young person had to front up to all those people and how they felt and hear what they thought should be done," he said on Thursday.
"Another one only had Mum in attendance."
But other professionals acknowledge that the system is failing youngsters like Tamati.
Veteran Otara youth worker Sully Paea says he has given up attending family group conferences because they don't impose meaningful "consequences".
"Some of the kids are professional criminals who are already way past family group conferences," he says. "They just laugh at the system."
Emeritus Professor John Werry, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who co-founded the Youth Horizons Trust for at-risk youngsters 12 years ago, says baldly: "The state is not caring adequately for kids that come into its care."
He recently saw a 13-year-old who was on his 90th placement since going into state care, indicating that CYFS was moving him from one short-term placement to another in the hope that he could eventually go back to his family.
He believes CYFS should "blow the whistle" sooner on families that can't cope and place youngsters permanently with good families, then support those families with full pay and backup - as it does for a select few placed through Youth Horizons.
"To me, a good foster parent is a taonga beyond belief and they should be valued and treasured. That is not what happens," he says.
"We need radically to change our attitude to foster care and no longer see it as some kind of Victorian charitable exercise but, in particular for the more difficult kids, as a profession in its own right requiring a high degree of expertise, support and remuneration."
That, he says, requires more support from taxpayers.
"The fact is that CYFS is struggling with a problem that is beyond their financial and professional competence, and it's not their fault. It's all of our fault," he says.
"We need to stand alongside CYFS and see that they get the resources that are required. That means money and much better programme support for the very difficult kids that they have."
Names of youngsters in CYFS care and their families have been changed to protect their identities.
Youth courses use culture to fight subculture
When Shayne Teddy started a two-week course on a marae in the last August holidays, he initially found it "boring".
"Then halfway through the [first] week I thought, 'Nah, yeah, this is pretty cool - the Maori art products we were making and the activities,' " he says.
He was hooked by his own culture. A culture he knew little about even though his dad had taken him to his home marae near East Cape.
Instead of the marae, his community in Napier's poorest suburb, Maraenui, was the Mongrel Mob.
"My uncle's in it. My older brother's in it," he says. "The crowd I was hanging out with at school was Mongrel Mob.
The kids were supporters really - Whanau Bloods, Dog Soldiers [junior Mongrel Mob], all affiliate to Red. I just wear red."
Last year, at 14, he was being reported as "wagging, violent and aggressive" at William Colenso College.
"My Mum was upset about it. She just talked to me and told me it's my choice. She couldn't do anything," he says. "My Dad was not living with us. He's back now."
The college referred him to Ka Hao Te Rangatahi (literally "The Young Ones Go Fishing"), a programme started by the Maraenui Urban Renewal Trust for 12 youngsters a year aged 12 to 17.
"It's a programme based around the principles of Maoridom - whakapapa [ancestry], te reo [language] and using mau rakau, the Maori art of weaponry," says co-founder Thomas Heremia.
It starts with two weeks on a rural marae, learning not just about heritage but also basic living skills such as cooking, cleaning, literacy, numeracy, anger management and "healthy challenges".
The youngsters are all referred by William Colenso College. After the marae experience, they return to school with the support of programme leader Caine Tawhai.
Tawhai leads mau rakau training once a week after school. He also helps out with their problems and helps them get their driver's licences and holiday jobs, and plan their careers.
The rules are: no gangs, no drugs, no violence. And they have to stay at school. Shayne Teddy is a convert.
"Now I go to classes more and stay completely away from drugs, gangs and violence. I just live much more happy," he says.
Tawhai says the use of mau rakau "doesn't mean giving them a stick and telling to go and beat someone up. It's a form of martial art and used for discipline," he says. "We teach the ethics behind it. They do spar, but it's all done in te reo Maori, giving them the language skills, and it ends with karakia [prayer]."
And it works. In the year before the first programme two years ago, the 12 youngsters on the course had run up 491 offences on police records. In the year after, that dropped to just nine.
A handful of similar courses have sprung up around the country. Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft names three to which he sends young offenders: Male Youth New Direction (MYND) in Manukau, Life Skills for Life in Rotorua, and Start, in the Taranaki farming district of Kaponga, which had to be rescued with a four-year grant from CYFS this week after being faced with closure next month.
"There's one, two, three of those around the country. We need five or six of them," says Becroft.
MYND, run by 35-year-old ex-soldier Steve Boxer, of Ngapuhi origins, starts with a 10-day adventure camp run on military lines to instill discipline and form intense bonds between the instructors and the youths aged 14 to 17.
Back in Auckland, the instructors become mentors and work alongside social workers for 20 weeks to help the youths achieve their goals for school, training, work, Maori language, or other aspects of their lives.
"The key is relationship building. After 10 days away we have a foot in the door. We are not trying to break down barriers any more because those have already gone," says Boxer.
He is now negotiating with Graeme Dingle's Foundation for Youth Development (Project K) and CYFS to extend the programme to the whole country, possibly with a purpose-built national centre and local operations.
Ka Hao Te Rangatahi, 06 843 2102; MYND, 09 262 2829.
CHANCE TAKEN AWAY
Eighteen months ago, 15-year-old Monty Robinson had his own staff round the clock costing $750,000 a year from the Government's "high and complex needs" unit, and attended King's College in Otahuhu part-time.
The Youth Horizons Trust, which had a contract with Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) to look after him, did a thorough assessment and organised help for every problem he faced.
"They said he had Asperger's syndrome, conduct disorder and ADHD," says his grandmother and legal guardian, Maria*.
"They were absolutely magic. They surrounded this kid. He made so much progress that he got the highest personal achievement award for the year. Professor Werry [psychiatrist] was absolutely amazing. He cleaned him up, took him off everything and started again. [Monty] just flourished."
But after a year, CYFS moved him back to his home district, Hawkes Bay. He was placed with a foster family where Maria believes he was allowed to wander the streets at night.
"I'd see my boy at 9 o'clock at night in the rain with the Dog Soldiers, young Mongrel Mob. He got dope. He got into fights ... He'd turn up here covered in blood, saturated, beaten, high as a kite."
Maria reported all this to CYFS, but they "did absolutely nothing". In the end she went to Napier MP Chris Tremain in frustration.
She believes Monty was born with foetal alcohol disorder or worse. Maria's daughter, was 16 when she had him and had a "colourful pregnancy" on drugs, probably drink, getting into fights and motorbike accidents. Maria and her husband Phil took the baby in.
When Monty was 4, Maria's youngest daughter, then 13, became a paraplegic, and the combination of caring for both children drove Maria into a breakdown, forcing the family to put Monty into CYFS care. Since then he has had a succession of placements and has suffered physical and sexual abuse. Except for that "magic" time in Auckland, Maria feels that CYFS has failed him.
"We had this boy in King's College, and within 18 months he's in lock-up. When [Monty] got his current social worker, she had 28 people on her caseload. Three years later she has 60. How the hell can they do their job?
"Now he's a lost cause. It's too late for him. I love him to pieces, but the system has absolutely failed him and nobody is accountable."
* Names of youngsters and their families have been changed to protect identities.
