Katrina and Sarah: ‘That doesn’t make sense, because the children need to go back to their parents, you know?’

Katrina is a mother of three who lives in the suburbs of a North Island city. Her two older children are aged 13 and 11, and her youngest is 1. She shares her story of overcoming drug addiction and abusive relationships with the support of her family, church and social worker Sarah, who works with a programme called Mana Whānau. Katrina is Rarotongan/Pākehā and Sarah is Māori.

“I was so scared that I was gonna lose them”

Katrina first had contact with Child, Youth and Family (now Oranga Tamariki) as a result of her older children’s father.  The school became aware that he was beating her up, and an incident that happened near the school was also reported to CYF by another parent. Police had been called to their home before, but they had never had interactions with CYF. When CYF were notified, Katrina’s son’s teacher told them before it happened.

Katrina had been in CYFS care as a kid. Her mum had passed away when she was a baby, and her dad raised her, but he went to prison when she was 12, so Katrina was made a ward of the state. Her experiences as a kid made her fear for her children, “that’s why I was so worried about where my kids would go.” She suspects that her history of being in care as a kid affected the way she was treated by CYF, and then by OT. She says that the social workers she spoke to always “seemed to know a lot about me.”

After the notification, Katrina ‘freaked out’ and decided to move to a distant city to get away from the children’s father: “I was so scared that I was gonna lose them… I rang my nana and finally opened up to her what was going on… my grandparents offered to fly us up here.” The move happened abruptly: “overnight, so I had the phone call from the teacher that day and then that night my nana made the flights and when he went to go to work, I went on a plane with just a bag and the kids and came up here to Women’s Refuge.”

Child, Youth and Family “kind of just stayed away” after Katrina moved. She said they didn’t remain involved at that time, because her and the kids were now safe in Women’s Refuge and she had the support of family members. At the time, Katrina was using drugs, but she didn’t tell her family that. She had been using since she was a kid as her dad was also a drug user, and had introduced her to hard drug use at age 12. She hoped she would be able to stay clean after moving to Auckland, but she wasn’t able to: “I kind of thought I could leave all that behind too, but it doesn’t work.”

“I didn’t have any friends anymore, it happened really fast”

A few years later, CYF became involved again after a police drug bust at Katrina’s friend’s house. Katrina was there with her kids at the time of the raid and attempted to cover for her friend by putting everything in her bag and trying to leave. CYF were informed of the incident, and Katrina eventually went to rehab. The rehab was a day programme which meant she was able to keep the kids with her, but she wasn’t able to stay clean.

She had begun a new relationship, which quickly turned abusive. “He wasn’t beating me up but he was real manipulative… I ended up isolating, not speaking to my family.” Katrina quickly became isolated from her family and support people. “Eventually just everybody, I just didn’t have any friends anymore, it happened really fast.” Her addictions got worse. “Everything started getting really bad, addiction wise, and I think a lot of people started to notice.”

Katrina’s kids were removed at short notice. She received a call from Oranga Tamariki to say they were concerned about the children and wanted to have a family group conference. The FGC was scheduled for the following day, despite lots of personal things happening for her at that time. Earlier that week she had just lost her cousin, who was living with her, to suicide, and the day Oranga Tamariki called was the day of the funeral. Katrina was required to arrange somewhere for her kids to live for the weekend. OT only gave her half an hour to make a phone call to arrange for her kids to go somewhere else. It was supposed to be for the weekend, but she ended up not seeing them for weeks.

The FGC was scheduled for Monday, but over the weekend Katrina was involved in a bad car accident and ended up in hospital, so she couldn’t attend, but OT would not re-arrange it. Things snowballed quickly. Her relationship had also got to the point where her partner wasn’t letting her answer her phone calls. OT told her she wouldn’t be getting her kids back due to her abusive relationship and her ongoing drug use.

Oranga Tamariki told Katrina she was neglecting her children. She didn’t agree with their allegations of physical neglect, but concedes that “I think the neglect was in the way of, I wasn’t protecting them enough from the people I had in my life…and, I wasn’t actually there” (emotionally) due to drug use.  Despite these disagreements, Katrina went along with OT’s version of events, as that’s what she thought she had to do. Katrina says she just did whatever OT wanted and didn’t question anything: “I just thought I had to follow all their rules to get my kids back. Now I kind of know that I’m allowed, I’m still their mum and I still have rights as well, you know. I didn’t feel like that before.”

“I don’t want this life anymore”

This time Katrina went into a more intensive rehab programme, a five month residential programme where she was there 24/7. This was something she found by researching it herself, rather than being something that the social worker assisted her to access, despite return of the children relying on her getting clean. “I just googled it myself”, Katrina explained.

While in that rehab programme Katrina was only able to see her kids once a fortnight, for half an hour, which was really difficult both for her and for them. She was confused, because other parents there were allowed to see their children much more. She says she would do it all again to get her kids back, but at the time it was pretty rough. “I can’t even explain it and not just me but my kids, yeah.  My daughter especially took it really bad, like she would be screaming and crying, holding onto me and the social worker will have to drag her off when they left and it was awful” Katrina’s two kids (her third still hadn’t been born at this stage) were split up. This upset her, but she was reassured that they were at least still with family.

Coming out of rehab was tough. Katrina didn’t have a lot of family support at that time as she felt she’d burnt a lot of her bridges. She made a lot of decisions on her own, including deciding to go to rehab. Katrina thought that if she and her partner both went to rehab, Oranga Tamariki would let her have her children back. While she completed her rehab programme, her partner didn’t, and he didn’t seem to really want to change:

“As the months went on, I started noticing, like he had spent all my money in my account, he would come and visit me, like off his face and everyone could see it. I was getting cleaner and cleaner thinking I don’t want this life anymore; I don’t want to be with you anymore, you’re not actually very nice. You’re not nice to me, you’re not supporting me, and I want my kids back.”

Katrina was pregnant at this point but wasn’t sure if Oranga Tamariki would let her keep the baby. “That was Oranga Tamariki’s big thing, they were questioning whether I could keep baby because I was still in a violent or abusive relationship. I was determined to leave but I just didn’t know how.” She said that it was hard to end the relationship when she was still adjusting to life after rehab. “When you’re in rehab you’re in this bubble of safetyness and then I went home to him and [had] no support. It was really hard.”

Katrina’s partner became violent, but she assumed a certain level of violence was normal, and this one was “not as bad as the first one.” The emotional abuse and manipulation was even more difficult, though. On top of that, she had agreed with WINZ to go to a specified address when she left rehab. There were very few other places which would be able to cater for her and her baby, and those that were available had a long waitlist. There were all these practical circumstances that made leaving her partner really difficult.

Nevertheless, Katrina made the decision to leave her partner. She had to get the locks changed and she had to change her phone number, but she was determined to do that for the sake of her kids. Getting them back was so important to her and she didn’t want to give OT a reason to keep them from her.

“Oranga Tamariki just tell you what’s going on but then don’t really support you”

When Katrina went in to labour, she still wasn’t sure whether OT were going to let her keep the baby: “That day I still didn’t know… by this stage my nana was supporting me again, and you know my nana’s at the hospital with me and we just didn’t know what was going to happen.” Oranga Tamariki said that they wouldn’t be comfortable allowing Katrina to keep her kids unless her and her partner entered a drug treatment programme. They suggested a programme for Katrina to attend in order to keep her baby and get her older kids back, but that programme wouldn’t have allowed her to stay with her newborn baby. There weren’t many programmes available where she lived (in a relatively affluent area) which made it difficult for her to access professional support.

By this time, Katrina had left her partner and her family were supporting her again, but her social worker still insisted she complete a ‘programme’ in order to assure the safety of her children (with the implication that the kids would be removed if she failed to comply). She agreed to go with an intensive family support programme, in order to have a chance at having her older kids returned. At this stage her baby was one week old, and she still felt really pressured by Oranga Tamariki (Katrina had had an emergency caesarean so was still recovering). She explained it this way:

“The thing I find with Oranga Tamariki is they just tell you what’s going on but then they don’t really support you.  You know, like, I had to go to rehab to get my kids back but if I didn’t have determination or that willpower, which is really hard to find when you’ve got no support, I just didn’t know where to start.”

Even after leaving her partner Katrina still worried about what would happen. She said she wasn’t sure what he would do, and in some ways that not knowing was harder than what she had gone through previously. She worried about how everything would affect her relationship with her baby, she said that at least when her older children were removed she had already formed a relationship with them. She says that her kids mean everything to her; “I’m broken without them, you know?”

“They have to trust you, they won’t tell you much otherwise”

Through the intensive family support programme, Katrina met Sarah. Sarah said that when they first met, it was important to her to take time to build a relationship. “You’ve got to have an understanding what they’ve been through previously to being under the spotlight of Oranga Tamariki, then you’ve got an idea of how you can build that relationship.” She explains why this is so important:

“By building a relationship, it’s like friendship… they have to trust you because they won’t tell you much otherwise. So you build that with them, you know.  It can be within the tone of voice or your understanding, being honest with them and empathy around what it is that they go through, you know, and as soon as they hear that from you, they feel comfortable and now they will share with you, you know, like a good friend does.”

Sarah saw in Katrina a motivation to change her behaviour for the sake of her children: “The strength and love of your children, you know… that’s what happened for Katrina. She missed them so much and she wanted them back. So that’s the determination, that’s what you aim for.”

Sarah spoke about the whakamā or shame that many people in Katrina’s position can face, and how important it is to help build people’s confidence. She sees her own role as helping to educate, motivate and walk alongside people, encouraging them every step of the way. She spoke about the stigma that former drug users can experience, and how important it is to avoid judgement.

There were also material things that Sarah helped with. When she first met Katrina, one of her main goals was to create a good physical environment for her children. Sarah spoke about helping Katrina find furniture for her house and make sure they had all the basics. This include supporting Katrina with financial knowledge, for example, trying to avoid hire purchases or high-interest loans:

“Finding the money to be able to purchase everything was better than her thinking about hire purchase, because there’s no way that she’d be able to get that. If she did, she’d be looking at getting money from some backstreet place where she’d be paying 30% back in payments, you know, so no.”

Sarah said that Katrina’s determination to create a good life for her newborn daughter was a strong motivator throughout her journey. She said that Katrina always spoke about having her older children home with her on the weekends, and how she looked forward to having them home permanently. Sarah helped her take steps to ensure that could happen.

Often this involved supporting Katrina to navigate systems like WINZ and Oranga Tamariki. Sometimes it was practical things like helping Katrina communicate with social workers or case workers in calm, reasonable ‘professional’ language. Sarah described helping Katrina write an email to her social worker, and why that was important:

“Yeah because it’s a skill isn’t it, writing a gentle and polite email… I’d say to her, ‘now if you were receiving an email, how would you like to read that email? You’ve always got to put yourself in the other person’s position.’ … It was just building confidence to be able to deal with professional people.”

She described helping Katrina strike the right tone and use the right language in dealing with people like social workers and teachers. There were also practical benefits like having a paper trail of conversations with professionals, which helped her stay on top of things.

Sometimes Sarah supported Katrina in visits with professionals, such as the principal of her children’s school. Again, this was often about building up Katrina’s confidence in communicating with those people. Katrina said that she didn’t always know what she was entitled to, and often just went along with whatever her case worker or social worker was saying because that’s what she thought she had to do. On the other hand, if she felt backed into a corner, there were other times she would explode or not show up for appointments. Nowadays she has more confidence in standing up and advocating for herself in a calm way.

Sarah spoke highly about the other support people in Katrina’s life, including her grandparents. Those people have supported Katrina but have also helped her build her own internal sense of strength and resilience. Although they have less contact now that the intensive family support programme is over, Sarah says Katrina knows she can “always call me”.

“I think when someone shows you that kind of care, you do tend to trust them”

The intensive family support programme was tough at the start. “Honestly, at the beginning I hated it,” Katrina explains. The programme involved Sarah coming to her house every day at first, and Katrina found that quite intrusive. Now she says she misses Sarah a lot, but at first she wasn’t so fond of her. But Sarah’s commitment to her job won Katrina over. She explained, “I think she went a bit above than what her job is, you know? Like I don’t think she really had to do all that but she wanted to for us, and I think when someone shows you that kind of care, you do tend to trust them.” She also said that Sarah “has a kind of vibe where you can talk to her about anything.” She later described this as “that nice aunty sort of vibe.”

The vibe Katrina felt from Sarah was very different to her experiences with CYF and OT:

“I didn’t have to be like how I feel with CYFS, like you just, especially at the beginning, like you have to just tell them what they wanna hear or else you’re afraid of doing something wrong and they’re just gonna use it against you. Whereas with Sarah, if I was struggling with something, I could tell her and not be in that fear of are they gonna, you know, keep me from my kids again.”

Katrina now speaks with a lot more confidence as a mother. She says that losing her kids took a lot out of her, but Sarah helped rebuild that confidence. This includes challenging much of what CYF and OT alleged about what she had done. For example, they had said that Katrina uses drugs in front of her kids, but she insists that was never true. They also said she was neglectful and didn’t feed her older kids, but that wasn’t true either. “Some of the stuff was written that didn’t happen,” but the word of the CYF/OT social worker was rarely, if ever, challenged.

Katrina was involved with the intensive programme for around six months. At first, Sarah was in her house daily, and then eventually it was once or twice a week. Sarah still helps Katrina with things occasionally, which she really appreciates. She sometimes has challenges with practical things like the cost of housing, but she still gets by. Katrina is connected to a church group, who have helped with things like the occasional food parcel and Christmas presents for the kids. And she doesn’t regret leaving her old life, even though the material things are sometimes more difficult now. Looking back she says she “didn’t have what I have on the inside now. I didn’t have that then.”

“That could’ve been me”

Katrina watched the Hawkes Bay case play out on the news last year and thought to herself, “that could’ve been me.” She realises it took a lot of strength to get out of the situation she was in. She says that her faith has been a part of that, as well as having support from family. She has managed to avoid using again.

Katrina says that one of her strengths as a parent is how affectionate she is with her children. “I think probably because I grew up without a mum, I’m quite loving with them, cuddly and affectionate and I listen, my kids can talk to me about anything.” She jokes that that means it can be challenging to put up boundaries as her kids can sometimes treat her like a friend, but that’s just part of them growing up and finding their independence. She is proud of staying clean, and of managing to keep her kids despite the challenges she has faced.

In terms of what made a difference, Sarah says that the intensive family support programme allows practitioners to build relationships with families to be able to support them to make some changes. “This programme is different,” Sarah explains, “… it gives you time to build that relationship, because that’s the most important. It allows you time, whereas a lot of services don’t.”

Sarah says that the intensive support programme also allows practitioners to manage whatever stress the family are experiencing, not just a single issue. This is in the hope that that will create a positive environment where other issues can be dealt with in turn: “Addressing those stresses… providing a safe environment can encompass a whole other thing, budgeting, you name it, all sorts of things. You know, it’s not just parenting.” This creates space for a wide range of issues to be dealt with. “Once you get that under control, once you get yourself clear minded… you will still have your off days, but it’s being able to manage those off days.”

In terms of what she would change about the system, Katrina believes that it’s way too difficult to get into rehabs, waiting lists are too long, and that doesn’t give people many options, particularly if OT have an unrealistic timeline. She believes that OT social workers need to be able to not take on too many people at once, so that they can focus more on the people they’re trying to help. She says that social workers need to avoid judging people, and she is also critical of the approach of only helping children, rather than also supporting parents.

Katrina’s key messages for policy and practice:

1. Provide more drug rehab options, especially for people who are pregnant or have young children. Timely access to these is crucial if timeframes are to be met.

2. Oranga Tamariki social workers needed to not take too many people on and focus more on helping the families they’re working with.

“They should not take on so many people at once… it’s probably hard because there’s so many families that are involved with them, but she’s always so busy. I can never get a hold of her and sometimes it goes months before something’s sorted out, and that makes it really hard.”

3. Social workers also need to avoid judgement based on records, and have a more support-focussed role:

“Maybe not always judging the situation by the paper, like maybe being more involved in people’s recovery and that too.”

4. More focus on parents, because they are the vehicle for ensuring children are looked after:

“They only help the children apparently… That doesn’t make sense because the children need to go back to their parents, you know?”

5. Finally, the importance of making intensive family support programmes like the one she participated in more widely available to others.

Sarah’s key messages for policy and practice:

1. The importance of relationships:

“The key thing to be able to keep those children at home would probably be relationship building I suppose. That’s probably the key thing for me.”

2. Services need to be holistic, not focussed on one thing only, in order to be able to meet the needs whānau actually have, rather than what is defined by what the service is contracted to offer. This allows the service to be able to focus on addressing all the causes of family stress that are detrimental to parenting.

3.  Oranga Tamariki needs to be dismantled and replaced by something else that works for Māori. 60% of the children in contact with OT are Māori, and there have been millions of dollars put into the system only for those children to end up in prison. The system hasn’t worked, and it needs to change to recognise the damage and trauma of colonisation.