Unable or unwilling to care for or have abandoned te tamaiti or rangatahi

Updates made to this page

Changes have been made to a number of pages on the Practice Centre to align with the practice approach. Specific changes include:

• Tiaki Oranga replaces the safety and risk screen, and is now being used throughout the life of a case, across service lines whenever we need to understand current safety.
• All references to the Tuituia domains and subdomains have been removed and we now promote the use of Te Puna Oranga and our models, tools and resources to build and deepen our understanding.
• The Tuituia report has been replaced with the assessment report. 

Unable or unwilling to care for te tamaiti or rangatahi

There are many reasons that a parent may be unable or unwilling to care for te tamaiti or rangatahi, including death, incarceration, illness, substance abuse and financial instability or being unwilling to provide care, support or supervision for te tamaiti or rangatahi.

Unable or unwilling is used to describe a variety of behaviors. Specific examples vary but may include:

• leaving te tamaiti or rangatahi with another person without provision for their support and without meaningful communication with te tamaiti or rangatahi for long periods of time
• making only minimal efforts to support and communicate with te tamaiti or rangatahi
• being absent from the home for a period of time that created a substantial risk of serious harm to te tamaiti or rangatahi left in the home.

Use Te Puna Oranga to build an understanding of the context and circumstances of the situation. Use Tiaki Oranga to understand current safety.

We involve family, whānau, hapū and iwi early to ensure whakapapa and whanaungatanga links and connections are identified, supported and maintained.

Te Puna Oranga

Tiaki Oranga

Abandonment

Abandonment is different from being unable and unwilling to care for te tamaiti or rangatahi as it is when there are no means of identifying the parent or whānau or family of te tamaiti or rangatahi who is left without care – for example, leaving te tamaiti in a basket on a doorstep with no means of identification and then no response to requests to claim te tamaiti.

In some cases of abandonment, we may not be able to identify whānau or family. If this is the case, the legislation does not require a family group conference to be held.