Child Youth and Family says it is working to prevent a repeat of the situation where a 14-year-old girl ran away from its care 43 times, but has stopped short of conducting an investigation into how that was allowed to happen.
The Dunedin girl was last week removed to a secure care and protection residence in Dunedin, where she will stay for a short period while CYF staff work with her on improving her behaviour, after she repeatedly ran away from a family group home.
CYF southern regional director John Henderson said CYF was "working to avoid this happening again".
Caregivers and social workers had worked "very hard" to try to manage the girl's behaviour, but ultimately CYF should have recognised earlier that a different solution was required, he said.
However, it needed to be remembered that CYF was regularly dealing with damaged children who placed themselves or others in danger.
While this girl's absconding was "extreme and inconvenient" for many people, her behaviour - typically to go missing during the day and return at night - was ultimately less risky or dangerous than that of several other young people CYF was dealing with, he said.
The girl's grandmother told the Otago Daily Times last week she was frustrated with CYF, which she had asked repeatedly to do something about the girl running away.
Her concerns stemmed from the behaviour of her daughter, who was the same age as her granddaughter, and who, she said, was getting into increasingly serious trouble while hanging out with the granddaughter while she was a runaway from the CYF home.
The woman said she believed the caregivers at the home and police did what they could, but did not get all the support they needed from CYF, especially when a child ran away.
Asked why it appeared CYF did not make much effort to physically search for young people missing from their homes beyond making a missing persons report, Mr Henderson said CYF staff did make their own inquiries to try to find out where young people were and had done so in this case.
"We also work with police in these situations as they are regularly engaging with troubled youth themselves - so it makes sense to team up with them and share information as to where a missing young person might be."
Twelve new supervised group homes across the country would essentially "plug a gap" between family homes, which were run by caregivers, and the more secure care and protection residences, Mr Henderson said.
The new homes were for young people with complex and challenging needs and were staffed 24/7 by trained staff who worked to improve the young people's behaviour.
One was already open in Christchurch, with a second one to come.
Another was opening in Invercargill.
Dunedin was not getting one of the homes, but any Dunedin child needing to be placed in one would probably be sent to Invercargill or Christchurch.
CYF also had a programme to refurbish family homes and bring in more staff and community agencies to work with the young people living in them, Mr Henderson said.
