In delivery rooms around New Zealand, the state is removing baby after baby from the same mother. Are we failing the very families that need the most help? Michelle Duff reports.

Jean Te Huia has been a midwife for 28 years. She used to try to work with the system.

That was until she saw a newborn baby whisked away from its mother by hospital staff the moment she gave birth to it by emergency caesarean section.

Aware of the importance of skin-to-skin contact and the baby's need to breastfeed, Te Huia went to try to find the child. She was told the mother was not allowed to see the baby, as it was earmarked for foster care by Oranga Tamariki. It would be picked up by its new parents later that day.

It was Te Huia's job to explain this to the distraught mum. "This was the first either of us had heard about this, we hadn't been involved in any conversations. She had to stay in the postnatal ward for three days, recovering, without seeing her baby.

"That's when I realised I couldn't be part of a system that removed newborns from their mothers like that. Now it's my mission to make sure Māori women are safe from this insidious, unjust behaviour."

New laws making it easier for the state to take babies from their mothers are being blamed for a sharp increase in newborns being removed.

A Stuff investigation has found more children are now born into care than at any time in the past decade, with around five babies a week now separated from their mothers. The majority of these pēpī are Māori.

Iwi leaders and Family Court lawyers say the practice of uplifting newborns hours after birth is creating a "stolen generation" of Māori children, with a system so stacked against parents that regaining custody is almost impossible.

Newborns are taken into care when it is decided they are at risk of suffering abuse, neglect or harm.

In the past three years, the number of babies removed from their parents in the first three months of life has jumped by more than a third. In the year to June, 281 babies were removed, compared to 211 in 2015.

The stated aim of new agency Oranga Tamariki is fewer children in care.

However, some experts say social welfare reforms ushered in a draconian shift in policy which was never compatible with this objective. New legislation now works to prioritise earlier intervention and taking children into permanent care.

One of these new laws, enacted in mid-2016, means a parent who has had a child removed previously must now prove they are capable of keeping any new baby.

Critics say this unfairly discriminates against parents who may have had no Oranga Tamariki contact for years, and establishes an unfair burden of proof on the parent.

"This legislation assumes people don't change, so you're guilty until proven innocent," says Dave Hanna, director of Wellington's Wesley Community Action, an agency whose work includes supporting young mothers.

"They've usually got factors working against them anyway - living in poverty, hardship, with difficult relationship backgrounds."

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF David Hanna, director of Wesley Community Action.

His agency is concerned at the number of court-ordered uplifts they are seeing, often hours after the birth. Often, parents are unaware until social workers arrived at hospital with police.

"Sometimes we will have been working with a woman for quite a long time, we know her issues, we're working with her and then Oranga Tamariki comes in out of nowhere and will uplift the child. Taking children from their mothers is a really blunt instrument, and is potentially really damaging for them."

Often, the bereaved mother will get pregnant again, Hanna says. "This may seem like an illogical thing to do, but they mourn the loss of their child and there's no support for them. The child is taken, the mother is still yearning for it, this possibly leads to poor mental health outcomes and addiction issues and they still have other children. You can't just take a child away and things get better – that family is still there."

In the case Te Huia was involved with, the mother had past addiction issues which had seen children removed from her care - the last four years ago. Since then, she'd entered a rehab programme, attended counselling and had good family support. This did not make any difference, Te Huia says.

JOHN COWPLAND Katarina Jean Te Huia is the director of Nga Maia, the Māori midwives organisation. She is shocked by the number of Māori newborns removed from their mothers at birth and says the families would be able to raise their own children with help.

"A mother whose child has been removed from her care can never find redemption, unlike a murderer in this country," says Te Huia, who is the director of Nga Maia, the 200-strong Māori midwives association. "It's an absolute travesty of justice that we spend millions on educating foster parents - but where is the support for birth parents?

"If a woman has lost a child to the state, shouldn't she be a priority? At the moment, I think the law is there to punish these parents, not help them."

A report in the United Kingdom released in October sparked concern after showing newborns subject to care proceedings had increased to 35 removals per 10,000 of that country's population.

The rate for New Zealand children is 47 per 10,000 overall, and 103 for Māori.

Globally, New Zealand consistently ranks poorly when it comes to child abuse and neglect, most recently placing in the lowest five out of 30 OECD countries. One child is killed here on average every five weeks.

Because data is collected across so many different organisations – police, health, Oranga Tamariki, justice – it's difficult to get a clear picture of whether things are improving. The Family Violence Clearinghouse, a reference library, used to collate the figures centrally until last year, when it stopped due to a lack of funding.

While substantiated findings of abuse by Oranga Tamariki have dropped by 40 per cent over five years to 13,966 in the year to April, this is more likely due to a narrowing in the investigation of cases, Otago University researcher Emily Keddell says.

"Their data is not a good indicator of rates, it can just tell you how many came into contact with the system," she says.

Health and education outcomes for children in state care are often poor, with the average child having seven foster homes by the age of eight. More than 80 per cent of current prisoners have spent some time in state care.

Caregivers are often unsupported, and expected to take care of children in environments that are not always stable, Keddell says.

"There will always be a very small number of babies who do need to be removed at birth, but it also has the most lifelong consequences for both the baby and mother and wider family," Keddell says.

"It should be an absolute last resort, but given the massive increase we've seen and the lack of real prevention I'm not convinced it is."

She expects the pattern to continue unless money is directed into addressing the drivers of child abuse, like poverty, domestic violence, housing, addiction, and empowering families to look after their children.

Oranga Tamariki has promised a focus on prevention as part of a five-year plan, but this had yet to eventuate.

In a statement, Oranga Tamariki said removing a child from its parents was a "last resort", decided upon by a team of social workers and, ultimately, the Family Court. The court could rule against the uplift of a child if Oranga Tamariki did not provide compelling evidence they were at risk of harm, it said.

It was actively working with iwi and Māori organisations to establish support services that would prevent the need for child removal, it said. "We are also developing new ways of intervening early and intensively in children's lives."

It would not say how much funding had been earmarked for this.

The original 1989 Oranga Tamariki Act (formerly the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act) is considered by many, including Children's Commissioner and former Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft, to be a world-leading piece of legislation. It placed great importance on Māori being raised within whānau, hapu and iwi, and recognised Māori culture as part of the solution.

But perhaps the law was too ambitious. Partnership with Māori, on the scale needed to effect change, did not happen. Proper funding failed to eventuate, and by 2013 the number of Māori children in state care had ballooned by 20 per cent. Conversely, more white people were now getting to keep their children; Pākehā kids in care dropped by 20 per cent.

Meanwhile, there had been no meaningful government drive to address child abuse and neglect.

This changed with the Children's Action Plan in 2013, when a raft of changes ostensibly designed to protect children from abusive parents were passed. The new law reversed the burden of proof, introducing the idea of "subsequent children" that a parent must demonstrate they can care for. It also gave foster parents the right to restrict birth parents' access to children, through special guardianship orders.

Around then, Rotorua family lawyer Tania Williams Blyth realised her clients were often the fourth generation of families with experience of state care.

For Williams Blyth, a lawyer of 20 years experience, the cycle of disadvantage for Māori – which began with colonisation – is being encouraged by changes to the law.

"If the state takes one baby, all future babies are in the pool to be assessed," Williams Blyth says. "For Māori, given our terrible statistics, that means we are in danger of losing a generation of children.

"Once they're taken, the chances of that whānau being able to get that baby back is slim to none."

The process of re-gaining custody is arduous – and in no way guaranteed – even for the most determined of parents, Williams Blyth says.

DOMINICO ZAPATA/STUFF Tania Williams-Blyth, a Family Court lawyer, says Māori are at risk of losing a generation of children to state care.

For a study published in the New Zealand Law Journal in 2018, Williams Blyth and a team at Whakauae Research Services interviewed 10 Māori parents and grandparents about their experiences of state intervention.

They found parents often felt confused by the process, alienated, disempowered and judged. "It's like, I'm brown, you're white, I'm f....d," one participant said. "I'm gonna sit here, feel ashamed, let yous all stare at me and go 'you should be ashamed' cause that's exactly how you feel. That's exactly how those [Oranga Tamariki], lawyers and the judge make you feel."

Parents found it difficult juggling court dates, unexpected legal costs, travel and childcare for meetings, with a high turnover of social workers adding to the instability. Depending on access granted by the court, a mother may see her baby for an hour every couple of weeks. Coupled with seeing the attachment the baby is beginning to form with its primary caregiver, it all often becomes too painful and overwhelming, Williams Blyth says.

And in Williams Blyth's experience, there's often no desire from the state to work with the family. Foster parents are told from the baby's birth they will be the child's permanent caregivers. "They love this baby and they're good people, but it's completely unfair for the family who think they're going to do some work and get their baby back. It's not going to happen. It's soul-destroying."

The analysis of a "safe" home is also inconsistent, Williams Blyth says. She's been involved with families where Oranga Tamariki has been trying to work with them to get a teenager back in their care - who may have run away from several foster families, and be considered a problem child – while simultaneously removing a baby. "The babies are easier to find caregivers for. They're so cute."

To combat the law change, Williams Blyth partnered with Waikato-Tainui to train a team of legal navigators. These iwi advisors support families in their interactions with social agencies, explaining the consequences of their choices. Williams Blyth also travels the country educating Māori of their legal rights as part of the Te Korimako initiative, with the aim of reducing the number of Māori in state care.

Some, like Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft, are optimistic change may still be coming. A raft of new laws drafted in 2015 under then Social Development Minister Anne Tolley will take effect in July next year. They include strict requirements for the government to measure and report back on outcomes for Māori children.

"It requires much greater prioritisation for children who are Māori, and there are new and strengthened provisions for that. There is a much greater emphasis on earlier intervention where there is a risk of removal, rather than the intervention being triggered when the decision has been made to remove the child," says Becroft.

"I think one of the big dealbreakers that's possible in this [new] system is that there will be a much greater chance of keeping children in their families, with the provision of wraparound assistance for the family."

In the meantime, Te Huia is sick of waiting.

She's lodged her own Treaty of Waitangi claim urging the Government to recognise the discriminatory treatment of Māori women, illustrated by the taking of their children and inequities in maternity care, as part of the Mana Wāhine Kaupapa Inquiry.

JOHN COWPLAND Te Huia has lodged her own Treaty of Waitangi claim against the discriminatory treatment of Māori women and babies.

She hopes this, along with the stalled Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse, will lead to radical changes in the way child protective services operate.

"The Government – and that's every government, whether Labour or National – refuses to accept that what they're doing is taking children, and as a result refuses to apologise as they see nothing wrong.

"Until the government is willing to address the systemic racist abuse of Māori, then it will continue."