The carpet looked wet, and the house smelled. Rubbish and dirty nappies were strewn around the outside.<\/p>\n
Everyone had been sleeping in one bed, which was covered in clothes. <\/p>\n
The parents were told to take the baby to Waikato<\/a> Hospital in Hamilton<\/a>.<\/p>\n They took him instead to a regional hospital, where staff also told them to take the baby to the paediatric unit at Waikato Hospital, and gave them petrol vouchers to cover the trip.<\/p>\n But the parents did not take the baby to Waikato Hospital.<\/p>\n The following day, OT obtained a \u201cplace of safety\u201d warrant from a judge, which allows social workers to enter premises and remove children from a harmful situation.<\/p>\n When police and OT returned to the home, all three children were wearing the same clothes as the day before. <\/p>\n Baby wet and vomiting<\/p>\n The baby was wet and vomiting while trying to breastfeed. A medical examination found he had methamphetamine and amphetamine in his urine.<\/p>\n The 2-year-old was wearing a full nappy and dirty clothes, which were wet around her neck, where she had a rash. Her hair was matted. <\/p>\n The 3-year-old was also wearing a full nappy and his clothes, hands and feet were dirty. <\/p>\n A medical examination revealed that his upper front teeth were damaged.<\/p>\n The middle four teeth were decayed almost to the gums.<\/p>\n The children\u2019s father acknowledged in a meeting with social workers that he was a \u201cfrequent\u201d methamphetamine user.<\/p>\n He was charged last year with neglecting the children and jailed for two years and five months. <\/p>\n He appealed to the High Court, arguing that the sentence was \u201cmanifestly excessive\u201d.<\/p>\n The recent decision states that lawyers for the Crown and defence both accepted that the sentencing judge had been given the wrong summary of facts, which contained additional allegations against the couple that had been dropped from the case.<\/p>\n The father argued that having the correct summary would have led the sentencing judge to adopt a lower starting point when considering the sentence.<\/p>\n However, Justice Mathew Downs said he was inclined to agree with the Crown that having the wrong summary did not have a material bearing on the starting point adopted, or the end sentence.<\/p>\n Justice Downs also tested the starting point against other similar cases and found that it, and the sentence given, \u201ccannot be impeached\u201d.<\/p>\n The children\u2019s mother is being dealt with separately by the courts.<\/p>\n Children with \u2018approved caregiver\u2019<\/p>\n Oranga Tamariki confirmed that the children were now being looked after by an \u201capproved caregiver\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAny incident of harm to a child or young person is unacceptable to Oranga Tamariki.<\/p>\n \u201cWe urge anyone who ever has concerns about a child to contact us.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you believe a child is in immediate danger, call 111. If you are worried about a child and want to make a report of concern, you can freephone us on 0508 326 459.\u201d<\/p>\n Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decision states that the baby boy failed to put on weight after he was born, despite help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28210,15408,95,6794,15117,1121,2511,182590,2209,2082,182591,1351,78,17709,14641,1868,13240,42919,111,43,139,69,675,2989,18560,112823,1072,6110,46849,1524,182592,102,4478],"class_list":["post-341877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-3yearold","tag-almost","tag-and","tag-baby","tag-boy","tag-case","tag-child","tag-decayed","tag-father","tag-for","tag-gums","tag-had","tag-in","tag-investigating","tag-jailed","tag-meth","tag-methamphetamine","tag-neglect","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-police","tag-positive","tag-rescued","tag-rotten","tag-social","tag-teeth","tag-tested","tag-waikato","tag-weeksold","tag-with","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The High Court has made a ruling on the father’s case. <\/p>\n