Evidence Centre Seminar: April 2022

PARIS PORTER:    Mōrena koutou katoa.  Nau mai, haere mai, ki tenei wānaga o te kaupapa te ratonga a tau toku whakawhatinga Oranga Tamariki.  Just Sayin' 2021 was the second round of the Just Sayin' survey.  In 2020 we did two surveys, one of 16-year-olds and then another general one, but this one was for anyone aged 16 to 20 who was eligible for Transition Worker support.  We managed to get in contact with 355 young people.  331 were included in the analyses and the other 24 were included in a separate youth justice report, which is now up on Oranga Tamariki's website, so if you want to see that I'm sure the link will be shared after this.  In terms of the sample, young women were overrepresented in the sample, and we heard from rangatahi Māori, Pacific young people and then other ethnic groups.  There was a bit of cross-over with the Māori and Pacific group, as you'd expect.  There were 32 young people who were both Māori and Pacific.  Yeah, so the in-care group, we've got 129 young people who were still in care and 202 who had left care.  In preparing for transitions, around two-thirds of young people responded positively to questions about their social worker.  So that includes the questions, "Does your social worker do what they say they would do?"   "Does your social worker -- are they there for you when you need them?"  And, "Do they provide the type of support you need for when you leave care?"  79% of young people felt they had a say in the important decisions about their life, most or all of the time.  And so, when we look at the in-care versus left-care group and we're thinking about their planning through the FGCs, 49% of young people who were in-care had already had a plan worked out for when they left care and 62% who had left care knew that they had a plan.  In terms of who is involved, it was pretty similar outcomes for in-care and left-care groups, for young people who felt they had a say in the important decisions about their life all or most of the time, or that the important people in their life such as their whānau were involved in their planning as much as they would like.  Over twice as many Pacific young people had a copy of their plan for leaving care than the rest of the population: 25% of Māori, 64% of Pacific and 73% of other ethnicities.  For the whānau involved in their planning, there was 56% of the total population and Pacific young people felt that the important people in their life were involved most, out of the Pacific, Māori or other groups. 

Here's some -- just some quotes about young people who felt that Oranga Tamariki made things better for them or not at all.  Some people spoke about a supportive social worker, others felt that they were safe with Oranga Tamariki, and others mentioned that their social worker was kind of elusive or that they had social workers changing often and it was hard to have that ongoing support. 

In terms of transition worker support, young people were really positive about transition workers.  Most young people said their transition worker understood the kinds of support they need, were there when they need them, and did what they said they would do most to all of the time.  So that's the same questions that we asked about the social workers earlier on, and 71% of all young people gave positive answers to all three of those questions.  So, of the young people that we spoke to, 85% had been asked if they wanted a transition worker and 63% of young people who had a transition worker thought that the frequency of contact was about right.  So, we also asked them how often they interacted with their transition worker.  We had options like "a week", "once a year", "every few months", but there wasn't a correlation between those who felt that the frequency was right and what the frequency was.  Yeah, so all groups rated their transition worker highly.  Most highest was the Pacific group, and then Māori, and then the other ethnicities.  Then on the right there, 23% of rangatahi Māori were supported by a Māori organisation and 24% of Pacific young people were supported by a Pacific organisation.  38% for both Māori and Pacific groups were supported by a transition worker who was also Māori or Pacific.  And then we asked young people, "What difference does it make having a Māori Transition Support Worker?" for those who did, and a lot of it was just around understanding the tikanga, pūrākau, you know, the histories and the korero and just a significantly better cultural understanding. 

Pacific views of having a Pacific transition worker.  Pacific young people weren't as -- they didn't feel as strongly that they needed a Pacific transition worker, but I -- that might have to do with the fact that in fact most of them were Māori and Pacific so, like that first quote there, "I'm two cultures, it doesn't matter who they are, as long as they help me out."  But others felt that having a Pacific transition worker was -- would be super helpful and make a real difference to their lives. 

Living arrangements.  38% of young people in care thought they would be living in the same place as they were when they left care and 28% of young people actually were living in the same place as before they left care.  Most young people, 87%, selected only one place that they were living, and the most common place that young people lived was in a family home, and most commonly with their whakapapa whānau.  9% of young people were living in unstable housing, which included a garage, couch-surfing, motels, cars, vans, or sleeping rough.  So that was about 30 young people.  We do have a facts sheet that is now up on Oranga Tamariki's website of just a few findings.  With that small number of 30 young people we couldn't do too much analysis, but yeah, there's a little bit up there on the website.  A higher proportion of rangatahi Māori lived with whakapapa whānau than other ethnic groups. 

Parenting.  We asked young people whether they were hapū or pregnant, and 17% of young people were either a parent already or were hapū.  Of that group, 63% lived with their child either some or all of the time, and of those that did live with their children some or all of the time, 59% said that they had lots of support for looking after their child, 47% rating that they had 10 out of 10 support. 

Identity.  So, 72% of young people felt secure in their identity, proud of who they were and hopeful about their future, and 58% were positive about all three.  Pacific young people were more secure in their identity, proud of who they were and hopeful about their future than the rest of the population, by about 10%, but all groups rated highly on the scale of very good to excellent.  We asked young people, "Where do you see yourself in the next five years?"  62% of young people had goals that related to jobs, and we have a slide a bit further on that in -- talks about the skills that they want to learn to help with their future. 

Wellbeing.  So, Pacific young people rated their lives slightly higher than the rest of the population, other ethnicities, with the lowest at 37% rating very good to excellent, so that's that other ethnicities group which includes NZ European and any other group that isn't Pacific or Māori.  But 31% rated their lives as fair or poor.  With the mental health, the most problematic one for young people, and those who rated their lives poorly did so regardless of whether they had a transition worker or not, there wasn't a correlation in that side.  So we asked young people if they're worried about anything in their life at the moment, and we also asked rangatahi who were still in care how worried they were about leaving care.  Most young people were doing well, but around one-quarter were struggling with some aspects of their lives, including those ones on the previous slide: being secure in their identity, proud of who they were, hopeful about their future; knowing their iwi; general life ratings and ratings on Te Whare Tapa Whā.  Pacific young people were more worried about what would happen when they left care than the rest of the population, following by Māori and then the other ethnicities group.  With Pacific young people, 30% had moderate to serious worries, so yeah, approximately one-quarter were worried about something in their lives and with that bottom right chart if you look at that one, that one is -- if you're worried about anything in your life right now, and how they feel about their lives.  So there's pretty strong correlation there if they're not feeling great about their lives they're probably seriously worried about something.  We asked young people what they were worried about in their life.  A lot of it was regarding, you know, uncertainty for their future, about their mental wellbeing, finances and you know, who's going to look after them if their whānau is not there.  And when we looked at this by groups, for example if we looked at the disability group, as you would expect they were kind of worried about who was going to look after them and their mental health or their physical wellbeing.  If we looked at the unstable housing group they were worried about becoming homeless and financial stability, and rainbow young people had similar kind of outcomes. 

So we asked about disability.  If we look at the disability group, 59% of young people reported difficulties with learning or their emotional or mental health.  So looking at the overall disability group, 14% had just a physical disability, 58% had only a psychological disability, and 28% of the disability population had both a physical and psychological disability.  The most common disabilities were learning, remembering and concentrating, and emotional, psychological, or mental health conditions.  Fewer young people with a disability were positive about their life, with 59% of young people with a disability reported good or better about their life and -- compared to the non-disability group which was 83% positive.  Young people with a disability rated aspects of their life more negatively than other people.  Especially about their social worker, actually, so 46% rated positively compared to 66% of the non-disability population. 

So we asked young people if there has been a time in the last 12 months when they needed to access a doctor or nurse and weren't able to.  34% of the overall population needed to see a doctor or nurse and wasn't able to see one in the last year.  So we asked what the barriers were to accessing healthcare, and that was mostly transportation, cost and anxiety.  A lot of people were a bit isolated and didn't know how they would get to the doctor in the first place.  Others saw the fees as a barrier.  Here is a quote.  "Opening up to my parents is a big fear of mine and I didn't, and still don't know, how to ask or say that I need help to need a check-up, because of my past.  I feel still scared deep inside."  So, a lot of young people were struggling with, for example, depression and anxiety, same as that bottom right one, or even just coming to the point of being to ask if they can go and access healthcare, despite knowing that they needed to. 

And so we asked about support.  69% of young people said that they would turn to an adult if they needed help during a difficult time.  A high proportion of young people would talk to their transition worker about their worries compared to their social worker.  78% of the overall population said they could talk to their transition worker about their worries, which is really promising and kind of, in contrast to the social worker, 53% said that they could talk to their social worker about their worries.  40% of young people said they were being supported by organisations outside of their transition provider and Oranga Tamariki, and 69% of young people knew how to contact Oranga Tamariki if they needed help, while 48% knew how to contact VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai.  77% had an adult they could turn to for help, 68% of Māori had an adult they could turn to for help and 66% of the other population.  So, a lot of people, when we asked who they would talk to, a lot said their friends and other.  Other mostly included their transition workers, their social workers, or you know, someone else who was kind of in their care circle. 

So we asked young people what skills they wanted to learn to help with their future.  Most commonly young people wanted to get their driver's licence, and secondly young people wanted to learn money management skills.  If we look at that chart on the right, so that's looking at those who are getting support to learn the skills and those who aren't getting support.  So of those who aren't getting support, they most want to learn money management skills, and of the other group, we've got a few on the right there.  People said communication skills, they wanted to learn, first aid course or specific sort of trades and things like that. 

Education and training.  So 50% of the cohort was in education or training.  If you look at that chart at the top right you can see that the population of who we surveyed is kind of a bit younger for those who are not in education or training.  47% of those who were not in education or training had NCEA Level 2.  If you look at that chart at the bottom, so that's comparing their school achievement versus the national statistics for school leavers, so it's 81% for school leavers and 47% for those who are not in education or training.  If we look at the NEET rate, the NEET rate for Just Sayin' young people is higher than the national rate, 19% compared to 12.2%, age 15 to 24.  32% of Pacific young people fell into the NEET group and 25% of Māori, although for the Pacific young people’s group, it was quite a small N-value, so kind of take that with a grain of salt. 

So if we're looking at challenges for young people, the largest sample size in the 2021 survey provides more information about the transition needs of young people, with different characteristics and contexts amongst those leaving care.  But next round, so the Just Sayin' 3, we're hoping to get in contact with even more young people so hopefully things like that Pacific N-value will be a bit bigger, and we'll be able to make a few more analyses of things like that and things like the unstable housing group. 

So if we look at the Transition Support Service, there's a close relationship between young people and their transition workers.  They feel like they can kind of talk to their transition worker about their worries, so it's pretty positive overall.  The contact frequency, kind of cracking that code, what's the perfect frequency for young people to be in contact with their transition worker, and there was quite a lot of variance across, you know, how often young people were in contact with their transition worker.  We also thought that we could provide more support to develop the skills that young people thought they needed, such as helping with the driver's licence, money management, and those other pieces that they wanted to learn.  For young people with disabilities, smaller proportions of young people with disability were positive about all aspects of the survey questions, so providing support for those young people with disabilities which was actually highly made up of rainbow young people.  And young people’s voices.  Many young people felt their voices were not heard and asked for Oranga Tamariki to listen to them.  So we had an open text box at the end of the survey asking, "What is one thing that could help with your support that you need?" and probably the most frequently answered was just for people to listen to them.  For rangatahi Māori, many rangatahi Māori valued support by a transition worker, but only 43% said they had a choice about the organisation that would support them.  So, just looking at creating a better support system for rangatahi Māori, and being able to help connect them with maybe a Māori organisation or Māori transition worker if they want.  And Pacific young people who are receiving transition worker support had statistically similar outcomes to non-Pacific.  And that's the end of my slides.  Ngā mihi nui. 

KANCHANA SUBEDI:  Tēnā koutou katoa.  Ko Kanchana Subedi tōku ingoa.   

We did some detailed analysis for some of the specific groups that we are interested in.  So I'll be talking about some of the key findings from the three thematic reports that we produced based on Just Sayin' 2021 responses, and some in-depth interviews with young people who responded to the Just Sayin' survey.  So the three groups that we looked into, one of the groups included young people from rainbow communities, and we use the term "rainbow" in our report to indicate the umbrella -- used as an umbrella term to indicate minority genders and sexual identities.  There were 63 young people in the survey who identified themselves as part of rainbow communities and this report includes analysis of responses from these 63 young people.  The second group that we were interested in were young people who were in Youth Justice residences at the time of Just Sayin' 2021.  There were 24 young people in this group, responding to Just Sayin' 2021.  We did some in-depth interviews with 17 young people and some staff members as well,   and synthesized findings from these data sources in the form of a thematic report.  The third group that we looked into were rangatahi Māori and Pacific young people.  In the Just Sayin' 2021 responses there were 201 responses from rangatahi Māori and 44 from Pacific young people.  We further interviewed 17 young people from this group and synthesized findings in the third thematic report.  Paris spoke some of the things about rangatahi Māori and Pacific young peoples' needs and how they are doing, so I won't go into a lot of details for this group, but we'll talk some of the findings from the report.  Before I go into the details for these specific groups, I would like to acknowledge the work that Malatest research team, including their Pacific research team and Māori research team, in carrying out this research and analysing information for us to be able to understand the needs of young people transitioning out of Oranga Tamariki care as we seek to provide better services for this group of young people.

So the transition needs of rainbow young people.  In Just Sayin' 2021 we included a question that asked whether young people identified themselves as part of rainbow communities, and by "rainbow community" we mean all young people within the minority genders and sexual identities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, asexual, transgender, takatāpui, faʻafafine, non-binary, genderqueer and other identities.  So, it's an inclusive group, and a commonly used term, "rainbow", is used in the report.  For young people who are not part of the rainbow community, we've used the term "trans-homosexual" young people  -- sorry, "cis-heterosexual" young people.  In our research we found quite a lot of young people who identified themselves as rainbow young people, they were 19% of the 331 who responded to the survey and identified themselves as part of this community.  In general, there were lots of areas in their transition from Oranga Tamariki care where they said they were doing okay like, for example, there were about 67% of young people who said -- young people in this group who said their health needs were being met, an equal proportion of young people who thought their life was excellent, and this was actually more than the cis-heterosexual young people responding to the survey. 

In terms of schooling and work, there were a lot of young people, 87% of young people from this group, who were in some form of schooling and/or work.  They also reported that they were generally doing okay with their housing experience, and they were positive about their housing experience and were proud of their identity.  The chart shows that in this group of young people there were more proportion of female rainbow young people who responded to the survey compared to male young people, which is consistent with research from international sources.  There were also areas where young people were not doing that well - young people in this particular group were not doing well - for example, disability.  73% of young people reported they had a form of disability, and disability was measured using Washington Group Short Scale.  rainbow young people were also less positive about their overall wellbeing, based on the four domains of Te Whare Tapa Whā, and most notably they were not doing that well in their mental wellbeing like, as the slide shows, there were 54% young people who self-assessed their mental wellbeing or taha hinengaro as poor or fair, and the difference we found was statistically significant as well.  There were some other areas as well, which I haven't included in the slide and I included in the report, where rainbow young people were not doing okay, like, for example, 38% of this group of young people who responded to the survey said that in the last 12 months there were at least one occasion where they wanted to see a healthcare professional, a provider, but were unable to do so, and the barriers included, as Paris mentioned in her slideshow, some of the individual circumstances including transport or financial issues or anxiety issues. 

Overall, based on the report from -- for this group of young people, we take on board the learning that rainbow young people needs to be a part of the focus in our disability work programme.  Oranga Tamariki has a programme of work looking into disability and complex needs of Oranga Tamariki cohort, and that includes 40% of the transition cohort.  We also see that young people, rainbow young people, need to be ensured to have access to support from social workers and transition workers who can actually understand the needs, additional needs, of this group of young people, and ideally be part of the rainbow community themselves to be able to provide support that this group of young people needs. 

I'll move on to the second group of young people that we looked into, into details, which is the young people who were in one of the four Youth Justice facilities at the time of Just Sayin' 2021.  Just to note that this group of young people of the report does not include those young people who may have had past experience of Youth Justice facilities, so it only includes those 24 young people from Just Sayin' 2021 who were in the residence at the time of the survey, plus additional interviews with 17 young people and similar numbers of staff members in those residences.  Overall, this thematic report again highlights the long history of care experiences, and complex needs of this group of young people.  Nearly 50% of rangatahi in this group were supported by whānau and wanted to go back to their whānau where they lived after their time in their Youth Justice residence.  A lot of people said that they had nowhere to go after leaving their Youth Justice residence, and there were several factors or complex situations leading to having young people not knowing where to go after their time in their Youth Justice residence. 

For example, there were uncertainties in relation to when the young people will be leaving their Youth Justice residence, which made it harder for young people to plan where they were going.  For some young people, they did not want to go back to the -- to their previous caregivers, for example, or the undesirable living arrangements, which meant that they didn't know where they would be going or where they would be living after their time in the Youth Justice residence they were at.  There were also uncertainties in terms of where they will go after they were discharged, because they could be discharged in another location, or reason, after being released from the Youth Justice residence.  There were also complexities in terms of leaving Youth Justice residence versus leaving the Youth Justice system altogether.  So leaving the residence or -- leaving the residence does not mean leaving the whole Youth Justice system altogether, so there were complexities added by that as well. 

However, in terms of the support being provided by Transition Support Services, the report highlights some positive feedback about young people in terms of the support they get from Transition Support Services, like, for example, 63% of young people had a transition worker, despite the challenges of -- additional challenges of linking a transition worker to the -- to this group of young people.  There were 74% young people who had talked to someone about a plan for leaving the residence and 22% of young people in this group had a copy of their plan with them, though I have to say that, in terms of the plan, young people were not -- or not all young people were entirely sure about what plan they were talking about, whether it's a plan about leaving the Youth Justice facility and their integration into the community, or is it a plan for their transition into their adulthood? A lot of young people in the interviews also talked about, you know, being listened to, whereas others felt that they were not being listened to, so their voices did not matter, but for those rangatahi who felt their voices were being heard during the planning process, were more likely to engage in their plans and have their plans reflected in their goals as well. 

The report highlights what young people want in terms of practical skills, which Paris also spoke about, and that included driving, budgeting, and they wanted work in the field of construction or wanted to be mechanics, for example, so the  trade-related areas.  For some rangatahi, the Youth Justice experience was seen as positive, their time in the residence had provided them opportunities to reconnect with education and to change their lives altogether.  I've included a quote from one of the young people in one of the Youth Justice residences in an interview, which speaks a lot about how they feel about their time there in the residence.  Overall, we see this group of young people have complex needs, and being in a Youth Justice residence adds to the complexity, and through the transition process; some of the reasons are the ones that I spoke about in the earlier slide. 
We also found that there was a confusion about roles and responsibilities of Youth Justice and transition workers.  We have taken this finding on board and already started work in terms of clarifying roles and responsibilities of transition workers, and produced new resources that better explain our transition obligations and the role of transition workers.  We are also making sure that the frontline kaimahi get the training on the new resources, which will be rolled out in early May.  As we can see, the report highlights the need for intensive support for this group of young people and to cater for their needs, and that also includes providing safe and stable accommodation, which Paris had highlighted in the earlier presentation.  Providing safe and stable accommodation is a challenge across the transition population and Oranga Tamariki has been working with other agencies through the Oranga Tamariki Action Plan to increase access to suitable accommodation options for those young people who are living in care and Youth Justice.  For this group of young people, the support people, including social workers and transition workers, may need additional skills, and particularly if we see the example about the group of young people who reported some form of disability, there were 50% of young people from this group who reported some form of disability.  So, definitely, transition workers who can actually work with this group of young people and can make sure that support is provided by accessing specialist services is what is needed for this group of young people.  There are quite a lot more findings in the report, but I'll just stop it here for this group of young people and move on to rangatahi Māori and Pacific young people and understanding their transition needs.

For this group of young people, we found that the challenging and complex lived reality is always with them, and in the interviews they highlighted these complex issues that they have during their time in Oranga Tamariki and after they leave the Oranga Tamariki care as well.  The quote from one of the interviews explains a lot about how they feel about their situation and the issues they face.  For this group of young people, we also learn from the report that there is a high level of disengagement from education.  42% of rangatahi Māori, and a similar proportion, a little bit more than rangatahi Māori, that's 48% Pacific young people, were in education and training, which is quite low compared to all other ethnic groups, which sits at 61%.  This group of young people also had complex health and social needs and they needed more support during the transition, like, for example, 26% rangatahi Māori and 27% Pacific young people self-identified challenges within two or more disability categories, and among them only 50% were receiving the health support they needed. 

Now, in terms of Transition Support Services and the support they were receiving, we have very, very positive feedback, in fact, from young people, and the support they are receiving, young people saw that as being invaluable in supporting them across multiple domains of their lives.  Quite a high proportion of rangatahi Māori and Pacific young people said that they felt that they had a say in important decisions about their lives.  A lot of people also spoke about reconnecting with families, and especially with siblings, the reconnection was seen as an integral part of the healing for these young people, and many young people, both rangatahi Māori and Pacific young people, felt that they had as many chances as they wanted to connect with their whakapapa whānau, and the figures from the report sits at 70% for rangatahi Māori and 84% for Pacific young people. 

From next week we are doing the Just Sayin' survey, and the survey will go live on 2 May.  The information about Just Sayin' 3 and encouraging young people to participate in the upcoming survey is very important and we would definitely like to increase the number of respondents participating in the survey.  The target group for the survey, as for Just Sayin' 2, includes rangatahi who are eligible for a transition worker, and who have been in care and custody -- Oranga Tamariki care and custody.  A key feature of this survey is that the responses from young people will be anonymous; Oranga Tamariki will not know who responded to the survey and who did not.  For Just Sayin' 3, as with Just Sayin' 2, we have three different groups of young people participating in the survey.  One is rangatahi who are still in care and who we have - "we" meaning Oranga Tamariki - have contact details for.  Rangatahi can complete the survey online based on the link that they receive from Malatest.  They can also complete the survey via a dedicated 0800 number and they can complete the survey with an interviewer from Malatest, or they can do face-to-face completion of the survey with the help of an interviewer. 

The second group that is eligible for the survey is rangatahi who have left care and who we may have contact details for.  For this group of rangatahi we are trying to send information about the survey to Transition Support Services partners, transition workers, care partners and carers, so Oranga Tamariki have been communicating with these different groups to make sure that they are aware of the survey and that they encourage young people to respond to the survey.  We also encourage caregivers and request them to pass information to rangatahi.  The Transition Support Services partners are requested to actively promote the survey using their preferred channels.  The third group of eligible young people includes rangatahi with no contact details and they are not supported by a transition worker, and this is the group that we didn't hear much from in the last round; we definitely want to increase responses from this group.  To a large extent, we rely on organisations such as VOYCE to help young people, encourage -- to participate in this survey.  Like in the last round, we had very positive feedback from young people, particularly in the Youth Justice residence, on VOYCE, and almost all of the young people who took part in the survey said that they know VOYCE, they've heard about VOYCE, and almost three-quarters of them knew how to contact VOYCE.  So we definitely would like to get help from VOYCE and similar organisations who are maybe participating in this webinar.  And just a note that young people will be receiving koha for completing the survey, which might encourage them to participate in the survey. 

So that's about Just Sayin' 3: Just Sayin' 2 and then Just Sayin'3.  I just wanted to note that Just Sayin' is just one component of the overall evaluation of the Transition Support Services.  Other streams of work that Malatest is doing is regional case studies.  The regional case studies are underway in four different locations, Auckland, Christchurch, Bay of Plenty, and West Coast and Nelson Marlborough region, and we are hoping to understand more in terms of transitional needs of specific priority groups that we talked about earlier.  We would also like to know the interface between Oranga Tamariki and Transition Support partners, and the transition support being provided to young people.  We are hoping that Malatest will be able to do some data analysis based on anonymised client-level data provided by some Transition Support Services partners. 

The Evidence Centre. We are also scoping a quantitative analysis to assess early outcomes from Transition Support Services, so we'll be using data from IDI and looking into some of the early indicators in terms of education, health, employment, for example, or justice, to understand how the TSS is doing and what outcomes are we seeing.  We have quite a lot of information about young people so far, not full information but a lot of information.  In November last year we prepared a synthesis of findings based on data we've got so far and the report is available on the Oranga Tamariki website.  I just have -- thought I would include some of the key highlights from the report, which shows that the Transition Support Services has been established in different locations.  The TSS is providing support to young people that matched their needs, for example life skills or becoming independent, helping them to obtain ID documents, for example, goal setting and help with work, and encouraging them in education and training.  We are still early to be able to say anything in terms of outcomes from TSS, but there are promising indications that TSS has improved outcomes for young people leaving care.  A lot of young people, as we saw both in Paris's presentation and my presentation, that they were very positive about the support they are receiving from Transition Support Services and transition workers. 

The report also highlights some of the issues that are still in the process of improving, for example, pre-transition planning was not yet consistent and there were variations in practice noted.  And there are quite a lot of other findings in the report, I would encourage you all to go onto the Oranga Tamariki website and read the whole set of reports, including the synthesis report, Just Sayin' summary report and thematic reports, supported by other fact sheets that are part of the Transition Support Services evaluation. 

If you've got any question in terms of the research that we conduct as part of the Evidence Centre, please visit the website, Oranga Tamariki website, and to the research page.  If you've got any question on those researches please feel free to email us on research@ot.govt.nz.