Child Matters CEO, Megan West: A year ago today, Tom Phillips’ children were found in the thick Marokopa bush where their father had been hiding them for four years.
A year ago today, the question on everybody’s lips was “how could this have happened”?
A year on, we’re still waiting for the answers to that question.
The public inquiry into the case was set up to examine whether agencies took all reasonable steps to protect the children.
Without the answers to these questions, we cannot start putting the necessary safeguards in place to prevent a situation from getting to this point in the future.
While every situation involving children is unique – and this one even more so - many of the risks and warning signs are the same. We need to ask at what points our child protection system, consisting of multiple agencies, failed in this case, and how our system can be improved.
Those working at the frontline of child protection are constantly balancing risk, unknown factors, parental rights, and children’s needs. This inquiry shouldn’t be an attack on individual workers – rather, a robust critique of a wider multi-agency system that isn’t providing the right training, funding, or support to enable sound decision-making.
The Phillips case reinforces that children can be known to the system, but not safe. More needs to be done to enable agencies to work collaboratively and close the gaps that are allowing children to fall through the cracks.
Despite being known to the system, ultimately the Phillips children’s needs became invisible to health, education, justice, and child protection agencies – the error only being realised once it was too late.
Releasing the inquiry findings is the crucial step we need to identify specific failings and start building a safer, more robust network around vulnerable children, including immediate and extended family, community, and government.
Without this, more children will become invisible to the system that is meant to help them.
The Phillips case sadly isn’t alone in highlighting the need for systemic change.
Just last month, it was revealed that the same Oranga Tamariki office, which was the subject of a scathing internal review following the murder of baby Mustafa Ali, also managed the case involving the Phillips children.
The internal baby Mustafa review identified several failings, including minimal analysis of risk, insufficient monitoring, and a lack of basic knowledge of practice and legislation among some workers. Again, multiple agencies were involved and questions remain on how this case unfolded.
This is undeniable proof that we need an integrated, information-sharing system that goes beyond words on paper and genuinely implements legislative and child-centric frameworks.
Child safety depends on more than one person or agency doing their job. It needs to be a whole-of-government approach and one that is comprehensively informed.
So where is the Phillips inquiry report?
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