{"id":720889,"date":"2026-06-23T09:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T09:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720889\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T09:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T09:26:10","slug":"mental-health-minister-matt-doocey-seeks-meeting-to-apologise-to-family-of-waikato-girl-mistakenly-sedated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720889\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey seeks meeting to apologise to family of Waikato girl mistakenly sedated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says the 11-year-old Waikato girl mistakenly restrained and sedated, and her family, have been failed by Health New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Doocey told reporters on Tuesday morning the findings of the health agency’s investigations clearly showed that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Through the family’s lawyer, Doocey wrote to them and asked to meet with them, on their terms, to personally apologise.<\/p>\n

Doocey acknowledged the director of mental health, John Crawshaw, who on Friday also made an apology.<\/p>\n

“I’ve made it very clear to Health New Zealand they need to ensure that they continue to provide wraparound support not only to the young girl, but their family as well.<\/p>\n

“The section 95 report that John Crawshaw published on Friday has a clear list of actions, and my expectation is I’ll be working with Health New Zealand and the Ministry of Health to ensure those actions are rolled out successfully.”<\/p>\n

“This cannot happen again. I’ve made it very clear that the actions don’t just stop with the Waikato region. The actions need to be rolled out across the whole of the country.”<\/p>\n

Doocey confirmed the government was open to considering compensation for the young girl and her family.<\/p>\n

Health Minister Simeon Brown said he echoed the prime minister’s comments on Monday when he apologised to the family for an “absolutely horrific set of circumstances”.<\/p>\n

“We’re incredibly sorry for what’s happened here – we expect the system to learn from that,” Brown told reporters at Parliament on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

“It was a tragic and terrible circumstance, and our expectation is that the recommendations from the Health and Disability Commission, and their inquiry into this, are acted on.”<\/p>\n

Brown said it was his understanding Health NZ was taking the mistake “very seriously”.<\/p>\n

On Monday, at his post-Cabinet press conference, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said<\/a> “as a human being, as a dad, as prime minister” he was really sorry about an “absolutely horrific set of circumstances” where an 11-year-old autistic M\u0101ori girl was mistaken for an adult, restrained and injected with drugs.<\/p>\n

He said he had spoken to Doocey, who is looking at the response from the family and will respond in due course.<\/p>\n

“We were all quite heartbroken about that story when we first heard about that.”<\/p>\n

In March 2025, the k\u014dtiro was taken to Waikato Hospital by police, who were concerned for her welfare after she was spotted in the middle of the road and climbing a bridge. Police misidentified her as a missing 20-year-old mental health patient who was under a compulsory treatment order.<\/p>\n

The wh\u0101nau of the girl told RNZ the prime minister’s apology “means an awful lot” to them.<\/p>\n

They wanted a formal apology from the prime minister and greater accountability from the state.<\/p>\n

In a statement sent last week, the wh\u0101nau of the k\u014dtiro said she was still experiencing “traumatic flashbacks” because she felt unsafe and the whole process had been both overwhelming and daunting.<\/p>\n

They sought apologies<\/a> from the prime minister, Cabinet and the five ministers responsible for health, mental health, disability issues, police and Crown relations, and their respective agencies.<\/p>\n

They also want an independent review of disabled people’s experiences across all government agencies, “meaningful reform” of the rights and wellbeing of autistic people and minors, and more awareness to prevent similar harm from occurring.<\/p>\n

\"Waikato<\/p>\n

Waikato Hospital.<\/p>\n

Supplied\/ Waikato Hospital<\/p>\n

Asked if he would consider compensating the wh\u0101nau, Luxon said Doocey would give “due consideration to all of those issues in due course”.<\/p>\n

He said Doocey, along with Brown, was putting the issue “into process”.<\/p>\n

“To make sure we get a review and actually get visibility, put sunlight on what actually happened there. All I can say is, just as a human being to that family, we’re incredibly sorry about that.”<\/p>\n

Labour leader Chris Hipkins backed the government to respond.<\/p>\n

“It’s an absolutely tragic situation and I don’t want to politicise that, because I don’t have access to all of the information that the government will have access to. I hope that they will get to the bottom of exactly what happened and they will make the right decision.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says the 11-year-old Waikato girl mistakenly restrained and sedated, and her family, have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":["post-720889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}