What’s currently happening at Historic Claims

The Common Payment Framework

The Common Payment Framework was introduced on 27 January 2026.  It is the tool used to guide decision making about what payment is offered to survivors of abuse in care who are accessing redress from government agencies under their alternative disputes resolution process.  It will be applied consistently by agencies when determining a payment offer for abuse in care following an individualised assessment of a claim. 

Details of the Framework can be found at:

Update on rapid payments

MSD began offering payments under the Rapid Payment Framework at the end of 2022 and these are now fully integrated into the Ministry’s historic claims process. The number of rapid payments completed each month continues to grow. The speed with which rapid payments can be completed has enabled us to connect with more claimants and progress more claims than in recent financial years.

Claimants have the choice of having their claim assessed under the rapid payment framework or an individualised assessment. Whichever pathway a claimant chooses they will be able to access all other parts of the Historic Claims process, including:

• having the opportunity to tell their story and be heard
• being assisted to access supports and services, such as counselling, wraparound support services, etc
• being provided with a copy of their files and have their questions about their time in care answered
• receiving an apology letter from the Ministry’s Chief Executive.

Up to 31 December 2025, we approved payment of $69,639,744 to 2,731 people through the rapid payment process.

The rapid payment option is currently being chosen by more than 70% of claimants who are offered the option of receiving a rapid payment.

Generally, the feedback from claimants who Historic Claims has worked with directly has been positive. These claimants have appreciated the speed of getting a rapid payment, not being required to share full details of their abuse, and the opportunity to choose an assessment option depending on what is important to them, while for other claimants it remains important to have their concerns individually assessed.

How rapid payments are worked out

Rapid payments are calculated based on the length of time a person was involved with Child Youth and Family or its predecessor agencies and is not calculated based on a claimant’s individual experience and concerns. This acknowledges that the longer a person has been involved with the State, the more likely they will have experienced harm. Whereas an individualised assessment is a more detailed assessment which takes more time as it considers a claimant’s specific concerns and care experiences and also includes reviewing all of the claimant’s care records. The Rapid Payment Framework was designed to be broadly on par with existing payment levels.

The rapid payment categories effective from 27 January 2026 are as follows:

Further information about rapid payments can be found on the Rapid Payment Fact Sheet.

How we’re doing on resolving claims

We approved payment of $14,844,869 to 738 people through assessments completed prior to 1 November 2018.

We paid out $11,671,500 to 642 people during our one-off initiative through a two-path approach that was available from May 2015 to 2017.

From 1 November 2018 to 31 March 2025, we approved payment of $21,792,500 to 1,019 people through the individualised claims assessment process.

The following table describes the totals for claims received and closed for each financial year from 2017/18 to the latest quarter, 31 March 2025, along with an update of the number of claims in MSD's process.

The following chart shows high-level information about the numbers of claims Historic Claims has received between 1 July 2017 and 31 December 2025.

Chart: Purple bars show the claims received, green bars show the claims closed and the green line shows claims that are still being processed.

How the claims process has changed over the years

The Historic Claims process is an out of court alternative dispute resolution process which was developed and implemented by the Ministry across 2007 and 2008. Over time it became apparent that even though the Ministry was endeavouring to efficiently settle claims, it was still receiving claims faster than it could settle them. In May 2015 the Ministry rolled out the two-path approach as a one-off mechanism to reduce the number of claims the Ministry had in the process.

In 2017 the two-path approach was put on hold while the Ministry worked through how to incorporate the lessons it had learned from the two-path approach and to undertake a consultation with claimants, with a particular focus on Māori claimants.

A new assessment process was rolled out on 1 November 2018 which was a culmination of all the previous work. The Ministry made changes to the actual process for assessing claims, significantly increased capacity and diversity of the Historic Claims Team and put continuous improvement measures into place.

In January 2026, the Government introduced the Common Payment Framework, a tool to be used by all government redress agencies to ensure payments to survivors of abuse in care are applied consistently.

Our commitment to continuous improvement aims to align with the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care's expectation of the Crown to continue working to make improvements to its claim processes.