Kei te rongo koe? Are you listening? is VOYCE’s first biennial state of care report. It’s about what’s going well, what’s not, and what needs to change for tamariki and rangatahi in care in 2025. It’s a long report. But it’s important. Even though there are already many other reports about what’s going on in the care system, this one is different. For starters, it’s not really about the care system.
It’s about whether tamariki and rangatahi feel cared for.
Most reports about care focus on problems to be solved, standards to be monitored, risks to be managed, improvements to be made. Often in other reports, tamariki and rangatahi in care are reduced to small parts of a very big picture – parts of a system.
But that system is their childhood. These are their lives.
So this is the state of care according to the tamariki and rangatahi who live it. This report is theirs.
VOYCE – Whakarongo Mai (VOYCE) is dedicated to amplifying the voices of those tamariki and rangatahi. Co-written with care-experienced rangatahi, and drawing on the experiences of hundreds of others, this report is about what matters to them. It’s filled with their words, their experiences, their questions and demands for accountability, their solutions, and hopes for the future.
Kei te rongo koe? introduces a scorecard to assess whether the 6 Promises are being kept.
Spoiler alert: Every one of the promises is being broken in 2025.
This is a major wake-up call for the Government and care-experienced young people want to know if they are listening. In the report, they make three calls:
Put us ahead of politics: We call on current and future governments to work together across parties to take politics out of the care system. Stop changing direction every three years. Focus on evidence, not election strategies.
Make us a priority: We call on the Ministries of Health, Education, Social Development, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as Health New Zealand and Kāinga Ora to add children in care to your policy, planning and funding priorities. Stop arguing over who is responsible – you all are. Work together and give us an extra hand so we can succeed.
Tell us how you’re going to do better: We call on Oranga Tamariki to coordinate a response to this scorecard from across the agencies we have named, and we call on the Minister for Children to make sure they respond. Kei te rongo koe? is your guide. Respond to our findings. Tell us what you will do to improve these scores in 2027.
Kei te rongo koe? draws on more than 140 reports and information sources on care published between 2020 and May 2025 as evidence. You can see the full Bibliography of works, check out the 2025 scorecard, and read the full report below.