Child-welfare question: can non-Maori really cope more comfortably with officials who remove their kids?

Radio New Zealand has been airing concerns about social services being “so complicated that Māori families are having their children uplifted because they don’t know their rights”.

The report taps into a gathering of about 70 Māori support workers and lawyers at a workshop in Hamilton to learn about the legal rights of families “who come to the attention of Oranga Tamariki”.

We suppose this refers to families who trigger state interventions in response to (a) reports officials have received about a family and (b) increasing social pressures to deal with child abuse.

Many of those at the workshop – professional people by the sound of it rather than families directly affected by these interventions – complained that the system is complicated, confusing and biased, and that it is contributing to the alarming rates of Māori children in state care.