Placement — children in need of care and protection — safe home — Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi — Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, ss 4, 7AA, 14, 78, 101, 128, 129, 130, 134, 135 & 137 — United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — Police/Oranga Tamariki v LV [2020] NZYC 117. This hearing was to determine placement of four siblings. Both parents lived overseas and the siblings, who lived in New Zealand, had been placed in the care of Oranga Tamariki ("OT") following incidents of violence while in the care of their grandmother. They had been split up and moved through various placements. Most recently, the eldest sibling had been living in a motel with "trackers" (people contracted through an agency to provide transport and watch over children in OT's care, but who are not approved caregivers) for close to a year and had been assaulted by one of the trackers. The younger siblings were in a children's residential home with trackers. The proceedings had progressed to a family group conference and a hearing with people involved in the children's education, who voiced concern for the situation and the children's escalating behaviour. OT were in the process of looking into placement of the children in Australia with their father. The Judge stated that keeping a 10-year-old child in a motel for 11 months was unacceptable and in clear breach of the principles of the Oranga Tamariki Act ("OTA") and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. OT would need to cast its net wider and put more resourcing into determining an appropriate placement for the children, and to honour its obligations under OTA, s 7AA by including the children's iwi in the decision-making process. The Judge directed that a copy of the judgment be sent to the OT Chief Legal Counsel and the Children's Commissioner, so that more resourcing could be put into finding an appropriate placement for the children. Judgment Date: 15 June 2020. * * * Note: names have been changed to comply with legal requirements. * * *