Urgent Debates — Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015 Report

I have received a letter from Carmel Sepuloni seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the State of Care 2015 report on Child, Youth and Family from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. The release of the report is a particular case of recent occurrence. The report deals with Child, Youth and Family, which is the service arm of the Ministry of Social Development. The report raises many very serious concerns about the care of vulnerable children by the State. It recommends significant changes to improve outcomes for children. Having carefully considered this application and having read the report, I believe that it does require the urgent attention of the House. I therefore call on Carmel Sepuloni or an alternative member to move that the House take note of an urgent matter of public importance.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that we may be in new territory here. When members normally seek the leave of the House for a debate on such matters, they put their signature to it because they want to speak to it. In this case, where someone else is filling in for someone who was here earlier in the day, I think it is a little poor.

No, this is not the first time that this has happened. It is quite possible that a member can put in for an urgent debate, that it can be considered and a decision can be made, and that if the member is not here for any reason, it can equally be moved by somebody else.

on behalf of Carmel Sepuloni (Labour—Kelston): I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. The report that we have before us today is an absolute indictment, and it is only right that this House give its time and consideration to what can only be considered some of the most important issues that we have a responsibility to address as members of this Parliament. There is no statement in this report that captures the seriousness of the issues more than the statement by the Children’s Commissioner that “We don’t know if children are better off as a result of State intervention, but the indications are not good.” To hear from the representative and advocate of children in this country that we cannot even guarantee that a child who is potentially being abused and neglected and who is subject to an intervention by the State will be better off necessarily as a result of that intervention—what an absolute indictment it is on this country, that we are in this situation.

The commissioner lists a range of areas specifically where we are failing our most vulnerable, and they are our most vulnerable. More than 50 percent of these children are under the age of 10, and 5,000 of them are the care and responsibility of this State. The State is their parent. The State has become the only stable thing, which the Government has determined needs to take over so that the safety and security of those children can be assured. Yet what is happening to those children after that intervention? We have the case of one child who had up to 60 different placements. What message do you send to a child who has experienced abuse and neglect at the hands of their own family or caregivers if you then shuffle them around into up to 60 different placements? We have got records of caseworkers constantly changing and of a lack of stability, care, and support for those children—a lack of support when transitioning not only between care but also out of care. Let us remember that “out of care” in this country means to be 17 years of age. This is one of the youngest ages in the developed world at which to exit care. And even then, we are not supporting those young people. There is the horrific number of more than 100 children who are experiencing further abuse and neglect even once they are removed. What long-term hope do they have when only 20 percent of those children are then reaching National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 or higher. All of this paints a damning picture not only for the State but also for the children who are experiencing this.

It is true to say that we have had issues arise before in an area such as this, where you have wickedly complex problems. Labour members had to deal with this when they came to office in 1999, and what did they do? Straight away we recognised the under-funding and under-resourcing of the department. We increased the baseline funding for that department by more than 50 percent. I will say that again: when Labour last took office, we increased support for baseline funding for Child, Youth and Family Services by more than 50 percent. But even then, as the years went on, we recognised that we needed to do more, particularly with the workforce. We undertook a baseline review. That piece of work was completed by the Hon Ruth Dyson. And before that, we also made sure that we started the registering of social workers, and now we say that it is time that that becomes mandatory. We improved relationships with the community sector, and our 10-month baseline review resulted in $111 million in operational spending going into Child, Youth and Family Services. Why? Because it did not have the resources that it needed in order to do its job.

When that happens, you have got to have the courage to stand up and acknowledge that you are in Government, and that is what we are calling on this Government to do. As much as the Minister for Social Development stands up and says “We can’t just throw money at the problem.”, well, Minister, the last time that we looked at whether this department was sufficiently resourced was 13 years ago. The last time that a baseline review was done of Child, Youth and Family was 13 years ago, and a lot has changed since then. Reviewing these issues again is not “chucking money at an issue”; it is good practice to check whether your social workers have the support that they need to do the work that they are doing.

What has changed? We do not have a static picture when it comes to vulnerable children in New Zealand. Let us just look at the numbers. During the year to 30 June 2014, Child, Youth and Family received 146,657 notifications of possible abuse or neglect—146,657. That is enormous. That is 17 percent higher than just 5 years ago—80,000 notifications were made back then. That is just a massive increase in a short space of time. The Minister will claim that not all of those notifications are substantiated, that we might have false reporting, and that it is just a case of more people knowing about the vulnerability of children. Some of that will be true in part, but not all of it. In fact, we know that roughly a third of those notifications are coming from police, who know that those children are witnessing domestic violence, and we know the impact that that is having on those children.

We also know from the police that a lot of those notifications are in fact substantiated. In fact, the recorded number of cases where children have been abused has gone up to 5,397 offences. That figure is 56 percent higher than it was in 2009. So in that short space of time, the workload on Child, Youth and Family and the increase in harm against children has absolutely been documented. And what has happened to staff? What have we done to make sure that they are able to cope with those dramatic jumps? How many more social workers would you expect to be dealing with 66,000 more notifications in 5 years? How many more staff? Well, in that short space of time, there have been 76 new fieldworkers—76 new fieldworkers. Crudely, that is 877 cases per new social worker. That is phenomenal. There is no way anyone in this House can claim that that is sufficient to deal with the extra demand that this department is dealing with.

Yes, some issues in Child, Youth and Family have cut across Governments—absolutely; there is no denying it. But there is no denying that right now, in the period of time that this Minister in this Government has had responsibility for, the changes to Child, Youth and Family have been enormous. The Children’s Commissioner put it like this: “The ability of CYF’s current workforce to improve the outcomes experienced by children in the care system is constrained in various ways: limited resources, high caseloads … and the need to invest in training …”. The Minister cannot put her head in the sand. She must support her department as part of answering these issues. I wonder whether the Minister could, in fact, respond even to the body who represents social workers, when they said, and I quote from the Public Service Association: “The Government must address these issues of underfunding and capability, otherwise there will be no improvement for those most in need.”

I do not want to hear a contribution from the Minister that says that chucking money at this problem is not the answer. No one has said to chuck money at anything. We said: “Invest in the people that you have charge of. Make sure that they are equipped to do the job.” It is a hard job, and at the moment, all of the indications are that the cracks are showing in what they are having to deal with. No one knows this better than the Children’s Commissioner. Even he has had static funding, so much so that he has closed his Auckland office. He cannot do an annual visit to all of the residences that he is meant to monitor—that has moved to every 18 months. He is struggling under the weight of an under-investment in this sector. He will not say it, so we will say it on his behalf.

The one area that the Children’s Commissioner has said that Child, Youth and Family is doing a good job at focusing on is that first intervention—the moment when it is first told that there is a potential issue with the safety of a child. In fact, this is how he states it: “Our analysis is that Child, Youth and Family is very focused on keeping children safe and managing the intake and assessment processes at entry to the system.” I will say that again—at entry to the system. He said: “They’ve lost sight of what children need while in care and what they need to receive to ensure they thrive once they’ve left. That concerns me.” That beginning is incredibly important. It is the triage phase. It is the point where we make sure that a child is not in immediate danger. Interestingly, it is also where the political risk exists. As Social Service Providers Aotearoa stated in its response to the report: “CYF’s staff are extraordinarily challenged by the dual expectations of managing both political risk and the risk of abuse to children.”

Very few social workers ever speak out of turn—they are very professional. But I will never forget when I had a Child, Youth and Family social worker who retired and came to see me and said that they are required to keep a political risk register—not a register of harm to children, not a register of risk to family; a political risk register. We all have to take responsibility when a department starts focusing on politics instead of focusing on children. That is an absolute indictment, and it is part of the problem. It is part of what must change if we are to focus on outcomes for kids.

What have we lost sight of? The Children’s Commissioner put it clearly: transition into placements, support for caregivers, and focus on residential care. I want to touch on residential care. The Minister knows that she has had problems with residential care—that is, Children, Youth and Family residences, including youth justice residences run by the department. How do I know that? I have Official Information Act information to prove it. I have never used these statistics in the House, or anywhere in fact, but there is a youth justice facility in Christchurch that the Minister has been briefed on almost continually for a couple of years. And why? Because, based on the Official Information Act information that I received, that facility had more than 600 dangerous incidents between July 2014 and April this year.

💬 Hon Nanaia Mahuta: How many?

I will say that again. Between July 2014 and April this year, a Christchurch-run Child, Youth and Family facility had more than 600 recorded serious incidents, including serious assaults, drug use, and self-harm. The police have been called to the centre numerous times, and in the past 2 years, as the Children’s Commissioner pointed out as part of the problem, it has had 16 temporary staff and five different residential managers. I have briefings that show that the Government knew about the problems at this residence, and, indeed, it knows about the problems within Child, Youth and Family more broadly. What have we had from that Government in response to these kinds of issues? We have had a white paper, we have had a green paper, and we have got a Children’s Action Plan. The Minister places a lot of weight on children’s teams, for instance. Apparently they are going to help 20,000 kids. Where is that resource going to come from? I will tell you where—from Family Start. The Minister is reprioritising resources that are already in the field of early intervention and is shifting them to her new action plan.

That whole exercise had the goodwill of the community sector behind it, but it did not address the core issues. What we should be looking at is putting children at the heart of all of the decisions that we make around them. We should be focusing on early intervention. This means that Ministers and the Government will have to look at deprivation, poverty, and inequality in our communities. That is at the heart of many of these issues that we are dealing with. It needs to join interventions in the home and continuity of care back together, because they have been separated. It needs to focus on ensuring that its department is resourced properly, trained properly, and supported properly. It needs to guarantee that it will not privatise the bits of the system that it is scared are falling over and causing accountability issues for it. We have all heard rumours about Serco sniffing around youth justice facilities. We need the Minister to rule out that that will be her answer and her way of getting this issue off her plate.

What we also need to do is ensure that young people who are in care and protection right now—the kids who are in the facilities, the kids who are in care, and the kids who are in foster care—are used in order to come up with the answers. They should be part of this discussion. Not only did the Minister’s expert advisory panel not even include a social worker but also it did not include a young person who knows care and protection better than anyone, and those are the kids who are in it.

Labour will use those voices. Labour will use the voices of social workers. Labour will use the community sector that works in this space. Only collaboratively will we come up with solutions, and that includes Māori and Pasifika as well. Yes, some of these issues go beyond just the past 7 years, but this report absolutely has to be taken on board by this Government, and responsibility has to be taken by this Government right now to repair the damage that has been done to children’s lives. We should expect no less.

As the Minister for Social Development I welcome the release of this report, and I thank the Children’s Commissioner and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. I know that a great deal of work has been put into it. I have said publicly that it makes for pretty grim reading, and I stand by that, but it is not news to me. In fact, over the last almost 12 months since I have been the Minister I have had reports from the Children’s Commissioner as he has been out and about, doing the job that we task him to do—inspecting residences and family homes. I have met with him, and we have talked about a number of the issues that he has raised in the report we are debating today. One of the reasons I welcome his report is that the report itself highlights the concerns that led to my decision earlier this year to appoint an expert panel to lead a complete revamp of the Child, Youth and Family Service, and I have said that earlier in the House.

We have had 14 reviews of Child, Youth and Family over the years. Some changes have been made, a large amount of money has been put in, and extra social workers have been added, but at the core of it the experience of young people in care has not changed significantly. I say that because although we do not have the data to show that—and that in itself is a concern—I have had 3 years as the Minister of Police and as the Minister of Corrections, and I know that almost 70 percent of the people in our prisons have had contact with Child, Youth and Family. I think that that is a terrible indictment on a system that is supposed to protect the most vulnerable children in our communities. It takes those children out of their families to keep them safe, and then does not give them better lives. I think the most important work I will do as a Minister is change that system, so that we can all be proud of a child protection system that indeed protects our most vulnerable children and gives them better lives when the State steps in and takes them from their families.

Before I go to the recommendations from the Children’s Commissioner, can I just say to the House that there are no quick fixes here. That is why I say that chucking a bit more money in and throwing in a few more staff is not going to make the systemic changes that we need to make. So it is not going to happen overnight, but by the end of this year the expert panel that I have appointed, working with a team of up to 50 people drawn from across the Government agencies, will have designed a new system to be put in place for Child, Youth and Family. There may well be legislative changes that will come to this House next year, but we are determined to make sure that we redesign the system, resource it properly, and focus it properly on what is most important in the system—that is, the children.

I come to the recommendations of the Children’s Commissioner. His first recommendation is that we set clear expectations. I have to say that when I first became the Minister, the agency was already working on a modernisation programme. One of the very first queries I had of it was as to whether it really did understand its core business. If you look at the terms of reference that I have given to the expert panel, that is front and centre: what is the core purpose of Child, Youth and Family? I was delighted to see that the Children’s Commissioner had set that as his No. 1 recommendation: clear expectations, child-centred practice, and a direction for Child, Youth and Family, and then he outlines some particular parts of that.

Recommendation No. 2 is that the service be fully child-centred. I have set up, as part of this process, an advisory group of eight young people aged between 15 and 23 who have experienced State care. They are amazing young people. There are incredibly heart-rending stories that they tell of their experiences. Some stories are good and a lot are not so good, yet they have come through that process and are prepared to get involved with redesigning a system that is about them—it is about them, their siblings, their families, and the children who come after them. That is what I saw in Europe when I went there earlier this year to have to a look at what other jurisdictions are doing. That was one of the key things that I noticed we were not doing here. We talked a lot about having a child-centred system, but the way it was operating was all about processes.

The Chief Social Worker’s review showed that our front-line social workers were spending less than 15 percent of their time face to face with children and more than 50 percent of their time with paperwork. That told me that our system was not child-centric. We talk about it but it was not so in practice. I was determined that we were going to have that in our system, so there were two things that I did. First, I brought out a man from Scotland to be part of that expert panel. Duncan Dunlop is the chief executive for an organisation in Scotland called Who Cares? Scotland, which is an agency that is independent of the Government and works on behalf of, and with, children who have been in State care. It lobbies the Government. It lobbied the Scottish Parliament to lift the age at which children need to be supported while they are in State care to 21, and it is going for a maximum age of 25. It provides activities and identity for children who have been in State care.

So in order to ensure that we have those children at the heart of whatever system we redesign, I asked Duncan Dunlop to be part of that expert panel. When I talk to his fellow panel members, that is what he has been driving. We have made good use of him. He has been up and down New Zealand, meeting and talking with young people, caregivers, and organisations that are working with these children, and talking about that. So I am confident that we will end up with a system that will be child-centred.

Recommendation No. 3 is that we invest in children in care placements. Again, this was something I saw in other jurisdictions. We increasingly have children with high and complex needs that are not currently being well supported in foster care places, simply because those foster care parents, even though they are well-intentioned, do not have the support and certainly do not, in many cases, have the skills. We need think to carefully about those placements. The children themselves tell us that.

I had a young girl tell me that she and her sister were taken into care. Her sister was very disabled both intellectually and physically, and although they were put into care together it became very obvious very quickly that the foster parents could not cope, particularly with the really disabled sister. There is a good news story, in part, with those two, because even though they were separated, the young disabled sister is getting very good care. The sad part of the story is that they have not talked to one another, seen one another, or been in contact with one another for something like 7 or 8 years. So we do need to be very careful about the in-care placements and we need to invest in those properly.

One of the concerns that I have is whether we are putting children back into some very financially stressed families who are unable to cope, so that another placement happens, and that churn is what the children talked to us about. They are being pushed from pillar to post, and all they really want—what they tell me they want—is that the first placement is the best placement, the right fit for them, so that they can settle down and get on with their lives.

Recommendation No. 4 is about addressing capacity and capability issues. We talked about that earlier in the House. The Chief Social Worker is leading an internal process around the ongoing development of good practice and the sharing of good practice around the country. In addition to that we do need to look at the support that we give to our social workers. I have been around the country and talked to Child, Youth and Family staff, and they desperately need the support of some of those specialist services—the child psychologists, the therapists, the cognitive development help. They need all those specialist services to deal with the traumas and the complex needs of these children.

Recommendation No. 5 is about improving cultural capability. I think I talked in question time today about the considerable work that is happening. Fifty-seven percent of the children whom Child, Youth and Family works with are Māori. When you talk to the children you find that their cultural identity is important. They want a connection with their hapū and their whānau. They want to know that they have a place that they can identify with, which tells them who they are, and there is a lot of work happening there.

Recommendation No. 6 is the classic. If we do not have good data about what happens to these children, how can we learn from their experiences? There is not good data. I have been amazed as a Minister at the paucity of data on what happens to children whilst they are in State care, and that will be changed. I welcome the really good emphasis that the Children’s Commissioner has put on that. We need to monitor the health and the education progress of these children. We need to know whether they are doing well at school so that we can put in the extra resources. I have stood in this House and talked about national standards for all kids in education. Well, it is even more important that at an early stage we follow what is happening for these children and what extra help they are going to need.

Finally, there is recommendation No. 7. It deals with setting clear expectations for other State agencies. I am delighted to tell this House that I have already begun talking with my colleagues in the social sector, in education, in health, and in justice, and we are all determined that we are going to work together to make sure that these children, the most vulnerable children in our community, get top priority, get the resources they need, and get the opportunities they need, and deserve, to live full and successful lives.

This is a good report from the Children’s Commissioner. I welcome it as part of the major piece of work that this Government is doing to ensure that we treat every child who comes into State care as if they were our own.

The Green Party wants to see children at the heart of all our decision making, so in this report, although it was not an entire surprise, it was nevertheless shocking to read of the experiences of young people within our collective care. Although I do hold this Government and, potentially, Governments before it, responsible, I do see the fact that these children are in State care, which is our care. We all have a duty to ensure those children are safe.

I have heard from the Minister for Social Development today that she has been reading the 14 reviews that have taken place, that there has been more funding put in—$23 million, even though the Ministry of Social Development last year indicated it needed $60 million—and that she has put more staff in, even though the caseloads and notifications have increased by 67,000 and the increase in the number of staff is only 76.

You could listen to her without hearing the other side of the evidence and think: “That’s reasonable. They care. They’re doing the work. They’re looking at this in the long-term interests of the country.” But then you come back to the question: is the investment matching the need? And the answer is no. Is the Minister treating this with any urgency? The answer is no. Despite what the Minister has said, we have had clearly written in here a message from the Children’s Commissioner that waiting on the Child, Youth and Family review and for the children’s teams will leave the children now in care without a structure to ensure their safety.

It was not a comment solely about the data, despite what the Minister said, because the Children’s Commissioner said: “Do we know whether children who are being lifted out of really dangerous situations”—and believe me, as somebody who understands that domestic violence is not even a threshold for a Child, Youth and Family intervention, how difficult and extreme this situation must be for Child, Youth and Family to take a child into its care. For the Children’s Commissioner to say he cannot even guarantee that children in care are safer than they would have been in that initial situation, and the indications are not good that they are safer, is an absolute indictment of a systemic failure in child protection in this country. I believe that that kind of information requires a really strong and urgent response from the Minister, not for her to say: “Well, the Children’s Commissioner thinks we’re doing a great job.”

The Children’s Commissioner has evaluated and looked at what is happening and has said that what is in train now will not protect those children in care now. That, to me, indicates we need a degree of more urgent action and at least an urgent review around the placement process that is happening now. I know the Minister is doing a Child, Youth and Family review and that the announcements are going to happen around that, but that is a different thing. When we are hearing from the Children’s Commissioner as well that we cannot guarantee children are better off and he is saying that there is a culture of “dump and run”—I know many people are interpreting that as a criticism of the staff within Child Youth and Family. I did not read this report in that context. I read this report as saying that where the resources are going in, at the assessment stage, is where the political risk is, and I think that point has been made in the House already.

So for the social workers, as well-intentioned as they may be in wanting to stay in contact and ensure that those children, once they are in a placement, are safe and that the family who is looking after them also has the resources to be able to bond with them, adequately care for them, and help them to have a better future, there is just simply not the resource. Therefore, because of the funding structure and the systems within Child, Youth and Family, this has resulted in a “dump and run” culture. That makes sense, considering how short-staffed we know the Child, Youth and Family social workers are.

The workload and casework review that was done by the Office of the Chief Social Worker in May of last year told us many of the same issues. It clearly said that we needed, in the short term, to change the expectations and clarify the expectations of social workers. Now we are hearing from the Minister, over a year on, that this Child, Youth and Family review panel, which includes one social worker, I think, from overseas—not one domestic social worker and not one person who works as a Māori social worker—is going to come up with a rework of the system. Yes, part of that will be expectations. This is over a year later, and these people do not have the expertise that is grounded in the experience of this country. It does not stack up. It is not good enough, basically.

When we read the words—I do want to take it back to some of the particular value I found in the Children’s Commissioner’s report, the voices of the young people themselves, and really highlight the urgency of this. There was an example from a participant in one of their youth voices workshops. They talked about the highs of having been in care as having got a job, got a car, they went flatting, and they raised their dog. That was out of the long-term outcomes for them. The lows were abuse at home; sexual, physical, and verbal abuse in foster homes; going from home to home to home; being separated from their twin; shit social workers who never listened or followed through with promises; constant change; Bible-bashers; being expelled from school; going on the run; depression; drugs; police anger-management courses; and alcohol. This is the experience of a child in our collective care. That is how we have looked after a child in our care.

When we asked the Minister earlier today whether she would rule out the privatisation of any child protection services, she did not. My real fear is that this Government has been running down Child, Youth and Family services and has consciously not invested what it is told needs to be invested—that is on the record—that it has seen this organisation under such pressure because of the Government’s policy and funding decisions, and that now it is going to do what it is doing to Housing New Zealand, and say: “Look at the state of our children. Look at the state of our houses. We can’t deal with this collectively. We will have to open up the opportunity for a business.”

I too have heard the rumours about Serco and youth residential services—looking at that as an option. I do remind this House of Serco’s international track record, including having children behind bars in detention camps in Australia and the very clear harm that we are seeing in our prisons being managed by Serco.

It is important that we take responsibility as a country for the welfare of these children, and that means we need to ensure these services stay within our collective control. That means they need to be provided by the State, because that is the most direct mechanism for us to ensure the quality of services. Once something is privatised and provided by a business, it is much harder for us as a country to have oversight. It is much harder for us to ensure that that profit-making motive does not undermine the fundamental care of our children.

I will finish by again reminding the House that this is urgent. This is about the 5,000 children—a number the size of a small town—who are currently in our collective care, whom we cannot guarantee are safe.

I believe that this is one of the most important debates we have had in a while in this House, because I do not believe that there is anything more important than ensuring the safety of our most vulnerable children. That is up there as priority No. 1.

What I am going to do is actually go through a few of the numbers that fall out of the report. What those numbers do is actually give a cold, hard, sobering slap in the face about what is actually happening with the real people out there on the ground. Also, I have got a few articles here that will give a little bit of commentary on the issues that fall out of it, and most of those issues New Zealand First has with this entire review.

So I would like to start off first, actually, with the front page of the New Zealand Herald. The first two words are quite apt. It says “Our shame”. If the Minister has not read this article—I am sure that she has—she needs to read only those two words in the headline, and that is the position that we are taking. We should be ashamed of where we are right now.

💬 David Seymour: You should be.

Mr Seymour may want to make a joke of this. You may want to giggle and laugh over there, but this is quite serious. What I am going to do is read to Mr Seymour four numbers, and we will see if he is laughing after that. One hundred and seventeen—that is the number of children who were abused last year in the care of Child, Youth and Family services. Sixty—the system is so stretched that children have had upwards of 20, 40, and, in one case, over 60 care placements. Is that winning or is that failing, Mr Seymour? Fifty-eight—Māori make up a growing share of all children in care, up from 52 percent in 2010 to 58 percent in 2013 and 2014. The last number here is 5,133—the number of children who were in State care last year. One-third of them were unhappy at not seeing their families.

What it says there is that it is a startling figure. Well, not according to the Minister for Social Development. The Minister says this has been happening for quite a long time and that this is not news. The Minister said that it makes for pretty poor reading or pretty bad reading—

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Grim—“grim” was the word.

—grim reading—but this has been occurring for a while. This is New Zealand First’s perspective. This is the problem that we have got. This has been happening for the entire time that the Government has been in power, and it has not reacted to any of the situations that have occurred throughout the entire 7 years. That was the basis of the questions that I had in the House today, which the Minister could not answer.

What has happened so far—the Minister has mentioned the 14 reviews, actions, or papers that successive Governments have gone through. But, actually, since 2011 there have been 10 papers, reviews, or actions that the Government has taken or attempted to undertake to deal with Child, Youth and Family services. In 2011 there was a green paper on vulnerable children that was released.

In 2012 the Children’s Commissioner announced the formation of the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. Again in 2012, the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children submissions were released. We had Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty options. We had a White Paper for Vulnerable Children and the Children’s Action Plan, which was released in 2012. Again, we had the final report of the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty.

Moving on to 2013, we had the Government’s response to the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. In 2014 we had the Children’s Action Plan, children’s teams, and the Vulnerable Children Act. Now we have an independent panel established to review the Child, Youth and Family services. Well, the question that we have is: when is this going to stop? Let us get one thing straight: the Minister is talking about a complete overhaul of Child, Youth and Family services, but what this is—we are waiting until December for just the review, so that then the Minister and the Government can have a look at the review and decide from there what is going to start happening.

On The Paul Henry Show this morning, actually, the Children’s Commissioner was asked how many children will be abused between now and December. It is around 50. What the questions in the House from Labour, from the Greens, and from New Zealand First were asking was what the Minister is going to do to help the children who are in care of Child, Youth and Family services right now, whom the Children’s Commissioner has highlighted as the issue.

The Minister refused to put any more investment in, to put any more money in—

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Not true. We’ve got a whole lot of money in the Budget.

—and to look at what the solutions are. We could talk about the Budget, but the Budget is not working. The Budget is not working. It has not worked. It has not worked over the last 7 years—it has not worked over the last 7 years.

💬 David Seymour: The member’s confused.

Oh, I am not confused, Mr Seymour. The white paper and the green paper in 2011 and 2012, as New Zealand First is saying, has been an absolute waste of time. In fact, it is an absolute schmozzle. The Children’s Action Plan responds to the white paper, and is based on nearly 10,000 submissions sent in on the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. And part of that is that it was showing—this was back in 2011—that best practice kept children safe from harm. That was back in 2011 and 2010.

So what has happened between 2010 and 2011 and now? Nothing has happened. Of course there needs to be an overhaul of Child, Youth and Family services. There needs to be a detailed review of what has happened, and we need to have a look at it and we need to be putting investment into it. We need to prioritise things.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: That’s what I’m doing. Isn’t that what I’m doing?

Why has that not happened? Why has it not happened? This is the question that New Zealand First has. Why has it not happened? Why has it taken this long? Why has it not happened? Why is it taking this long—7 years? The Minister stood up in the House today during question time and said that she wants to put the vulnerable children at the heart of State care and make sure that the safety of these kids is a priority. Well, why has it taken 7 years? That is the question that needs to be answered—that is the question that needs to be answered.

One of the other things that have been mentioned, also, is the possibility of privatisation. There is no doubt that that is absolutely an option on the Minister’s table at the moment, because I have asked the Minister twice whether she can absolutely guarantee ruling out privatisation of the social services sector and using companies like Serco, which she answered questions on and was quite positive about before the whole Department of Corrections debacle occurred. So that is one of the concerns from New Zealand First, also.

I have also got a statement here from the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development. What this shows is a chronic underfunding of the social services sector. This is just a manifestation of its underfunding. It states here—this was on 27 May 2014—that he said that “We’ve seen a six-fold increase in notifications into Child, Youth and Family in recent years. … The pressure of this demand is considerable and right now Child, Youth and Family holds the lion’s share of responsibility for what happens to these kids.”

The reaction from the Minister to that statement from chief executive Brendan Boyle was to come up with an idea called the children’s teams. I have asked the Minister in the Social Services Committee what extra funding these children’s teams will have, and the answer is zero. The Minister said that there would be no extra work for the NGOs involved in these children’s teams, so I actually went out and asked the NGOs themselves what they thought of the proposed children’s teams.

The thing that they said to me was that the only thing it was going to achieve was to have more hoops to jump through and more bureaucracy, and that will act as limitation. It will act as a limitation to what their job already is. It is not accounting for any more work that they could do, for example, with children. All it does is it shifts, and if it shifts that means that it leaves some children out.

I just want to finish this by reiterating what New Zealand First’s concerns are. This has been happening, and occurring, and a problem, and an issue for this country for years. The Government cannot sit there, and the Minister cannot sit there, and say: “This is the saviour. This is the solution. We are doing a good thing for the country.” when it has taken 7 years for this Government—which has been in power—to react. It has taken too long.

I rise to take a call in this urgent debate in regard to the State of Care 2015 report by the Children’s Commissioner, and one of the things I would like to declare is my conflict of interest in the sense that I have previously been part of many of those reviews. So when they have talked about 14 reviews, I have actually been part of some of those 14 reviews, all the way back to Pūao-te-ata-tū. We also know about the baseline review. There were many—the Mick Brown report—that talked about the sector.

So I want to just say that out of that whole speech, Mr Ball, the one point that I absolutely agree with you on is that this has been happening for a very long time. Let us not take away from that fact. This is not a new issue. The issue of abuse and neglect of our children, whether in custody or in care, has been an issue for some time. It has perplexed and challenged many Governments and many institutions, so I do not think it is the right thing to turn round and to actually blame just this Government for what it has been doing. I think the challenge is, however, the responsibility of whoever is in Government to be actually held to account for what it is that they are doing. That is absolutely right, and that is the right thing for us to be able to do. So this report, the Children’s Commissioner’s report, does that.

But in particular, I want to say that the focus of this report is around children, young persons, and their families. The reason I make that point is that we have just had some comments from the previous speaker, Darroch Ball, about the green paper, the White Paper for Vulnerable Children, and all of the initiatives that have come out of that. Those forms of consultation and engagement with the whole of the sector were for the whole sector. Those initiatives, if the member wants to look through them, were about not just engaging; they were statutory roles and responsibilities—that is, children, young persons, and their families. It is about those who are community providers, it is about those in local government, and it is about those who are actually in the community delivering services. It is the whole of the community and the whole of the sector, so those still stand as initiatives, so that all of the issues of concern are raised by the whole sector.

So I do not think it is appropriate to actually bring those initiatives up to hold us to account. They hold us to account at the moment. The green paper, the White Paper—the actions that have come out of those are the Vulnerable Children Act and also the children’s teams. We know that those initiatives are currently in play as we speak, at this moment. So those are put to the side. What I will address, then, is the issue in this report, which is to hold to account the statutory roles and responsibilities that are part of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act.

The first thing that I want to state, as has been stated by the Minister, is that we welcome this report. We do not shy away from it, we do not turn round and hide from it; in fact, it is this sort of report that is important because it will hold us to account as to the direction and the vision of both the Minister and of the Government and our intent to address this very key issue.

One of the points that was put up by Jan Logie was about the sense of urgency about this. In fact, she attacked the Government, saying there was not enough urgency about this and, in particular, about some of those recommendations. It is quite clear that when we talk about the current report—people keep using it as a review. We know that there have been 14 different reviews. At the moment there is not a review that has been commissioned and initiated by the Minister or by the Government; it is called an overhaul. Here is the difference: a review is when you will go out and you survey, you will research, you will talk about things, and you will come back and you will look at some recommendations. An overhaul—and, coming from a trade, OK, it is like when you want to overhaul a car, right? You do not just turn around and sit and talk about it and analyse it; you get on with the business of taking it apart and putting it back together so that it actually works as it has been intended to. That is what an overhaul is about.

What this Government is doing and what this Minister is doing is commissioning an overhaul. It started, by the way, in 2014—last year. The conversation began then. Then it was sent to Cabinet to get approval and was initiated at the beginning of this year, prior to this report. So I can actually, absolutely, say with confidence that this Minister and this Government have commissioned that initiative—not of a review; not another one to add to the 14 and make it 15. It is called an overhaul. It is a practical application to look at how we need to fix what has been put wrong. We know that is what is happening there, so we think that is absolutely important as well.

The other point that I want to talk about is the seven recommendations. There are seven recommendations here. Again, I want to reiterate that, actually, these recommendations have already been taken up and have already been addressed by the expert independent panel. This expert independent panel has already been looking at these. So what the report does is it actually validates the initiative, the conversation, and also the recommendations that are already coming out of the independent panel work that is happening at the moment.

In the report, when one looks at the opening remarks, there is a whakataukī that has been quoted by the Children’s Commissioner, Dr Russell Wills. He simply states this: “This whakatauki urges us to let the uniqueness of the child guide our work.” In other words, it is the voice of the children, the concerns of the children, and the thoughts of the children, so that they would be included. Again, I want to state that the Minister has already had an independent youth panel of children and young people from the ages of 15 to 23, who are already out there looking at the way that we engage in the panel and in the organisation of the Child, Youth and Family Service—that is already happening. So what we want to say is that we welcome this report because it confirms the direction and the initiation of things that are happening.

Here is one of the things that came out of those conversations with those young people: what do they desire most? They most desire being someone in a place of belonging, where they have a connection and a sense of safety and well-being. That is what they desire most. The whakataukī here from Dr Russell Wills is leading and guiding the direction of the work that is already happening—again, it is not a review, but an overhaul of the system—so it truly does meet the concerns that have been raised. We think that is really important.

I also just want to engage in regard to the investment in this. There were some comments that were made by Mr Ball in regard to the fact that we are not putting in enough money. Can I say this: having been part of the system previously—as I have declared, my conflict of interest—having been a practitioner in an NGO service that provided the very services, whether they were parenting or family services, and having worked in areas of abuse and with the vulnerable in our community, I say that the issues are not just about more resources. Actually, it is not just about more money. The resource issue is important, but what is just as important is the ability of those who are practitioners at the front line and the ability to allow the system to be flexible enough to deal with the complexities of the issues that are there. Those are just as important.

Just to prove to that member Darroch Ball and others out there who may say that this Government and this Minister is not taking this matter urgently—and again, this was in the 2015 Budget—prior to this report, $90 million of extra funds were put in; $90 million.

💬 Darroch Ball: Why wasn’t it in the 2009 Budget, then?

Mr Ball, you may want to hear this. In fact, I could even actually give you the Budget. You may not have read the Budget, Mr Ball, but I guarantee to the public who are out there listening to this debate that they can have confidence that there has been an extra $90 million that was put into the baseline funding to ensure that those services are also adequately resourced for what they need to have.

So let us summarise that. First of all, we have got an overhaul of the system happening. We think that is important. Secondly, we know that seven of the recommendations—in fact, there are only seven; but all seven of those recommendations—have already been taken up by the independent review panel. Thirdly, we know that the voice of the children is factored into this whole process. Why? Because there is a youth panel. It is not just talk; there is actually a youth panel of 15 to 23-year-olds who have been factored into this report. And, finally, we also have an extra resource of $90 million. Prior to this report, that resource had already been invested to ensure that our children and our young people are cared for.

We do take this seriously, in answer to what Mr Ball said. We do take this seriously and we know that this is not just words; this is about actions. I want to remind the House of this: this is not a day to turn round and to blame the Government; this is about taking action out of concern for the issues that are here. I commend the actions of the Minister and I commend the vision of this Government to ensure that we address and deal with the most vulnerable.

It gives me great pleasure to be able to make a contribution to this particular debate. I join with other members of Parliament in congratulating the Children’s Commissioner on releasing a very sobering report about the state of care in New Zealand. I do not think that any family or community is immune from knowing some of the most difficult and challenging issues confronting some of the most vulnerable families in our country, but it was not until I got to this part of the report that I got a real sense of how desperate the need is to do something more with Child, Youth and Family and with the legislation that it operates under, and, more important, to enable communities to respond in a real way that can address those most difficult issues. When the commissioner said today that we do not know whether children are better off as a result of State intervention but that the implications are not good, how can we but sit up and say that more must be done?

I absolutely agree with the Minister: there are no quick fixes; this will take some time. But what are the critical things that could happen now that could make a fundamental difference? We understand that those children in care deserve our attention now to ensure that they do not get sucked through the pipeline that will mean that they will end up in youth justice facilities, that will mean that they will end up without an education, and that will mean that they will end up in our prison system with no hope at all. We cannot let that happen, so there are some immediate priorities that must be addressed, recognising that a review is taking place and recognising that the Minister is trying to initiate some change at the grassroots level. Here is where the rubber hits the road for many community service organisations that are in this space now and that are trying to ensure that no more children get into a system that is already broken—get into a system that is already broken.

I do not accept that this issue is not about resource, because I hazard a guess that the Minister has a number of contracts that are actually operating in this particular space on her desk right now ready to be renewed or turned over. The challenge at a community level is whether we have got the networks of support right to be able to intervene in the vulnerable risk end of the spectrum, where intervention is needed now. I am not sure whether or not the Ministry of Social Development is providing the type of advice that could help those decisions to prevent children getting into the system so that the major amount of attention can go into fixing what we know is broken—Child, Youth and Family. I am concerned about that.

The other thing is that we did hear a number of members in the House talking about the ministerial decisions that are currently under way. We all know that when services are picking up vulnerable children, it is actually through the way that they are able to share information so that you are able to red flag all the way through the system that things are happening here. When Plunket goes into a household and recognises something, does that particular service have the ability to red flag across a range of providers that there is something happening in this family? They are not saying that it requires legislative intervention, but they are saying that there is something happening—“Five Eyes”. All the reports that I hear back from good social service providers say that although they are picking up vulnerabilities, the ability to share critical information so that other interventions can take place is a little bit clunky, and in order to ensure that it can happen, we really have got to put some attention there, because the legislative obligation of Child, Youth and Family actually makes it far more difficult to have the type of necessary preventive responsive support for those who are most vulnerable.

How do I know this? Because I have sat in on family group conferences. Oh my gosh! You know, when families are asked “What is the solution here? What can we do?”, often in some communities there is not actually the service provision supports able to direct families into areas. The other thing is that I have been in a situation where a grandparent has intervened and has picked children from their wider whānau because they do not want their mokopuna sucked into the system. But do you know what? Once those children transfer over to the grandparents, Child, Youth and Family steps back, and the grandparents are trying to scramble with the Ministry of Social Development, saying: “Well, what am I entitled to to be able to look after these mokopuna?”. They do not want them to go into the State system. They want to be able to look after them, but all they have got is the pension. And what is happening with these kids? These are some real-time examples, Minister, that I know that you are aware of, but I know that the system does not allow for the level of responsiveness that is required if we want to ensure that more children are in whānau care.

It is a worry to me, Minister, that 58 percent of children in care and 68 percent of young people in Child, Youth and Family residences are Māori. It tells a very chilling story. Many of us in the House know how complicated whānau lives are at the moment. There are a lot of whānau living in blended situations—multiple relationships, with a number of children in the household. There are a number of sole-parent households, a number of households where one of the parents is incarcerated, and a number of households where the impact of financial problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and all of that cause all these vulnerabilities that start to impact on those most vulnerable in our society—the children. And who picks it up? The schools. They will know pretty quickly whether or not there are some things happening at home that need to be addressed. Nothing can happen in terms of the learning environment of a child unless all of those other vulnerabilities are responded to. Social Workers in Schools helped to make some of the change, but the Minister said herself that more dynamic settings are required in today’s society, with all these complexities, to be able to respond to the needs of children. I agree with that, and I do believe that schools are a place to start. However, again, not enough is happening. Not enough is happening for these particular children.

I want to pick up on a point that Alfred Ngaro raised with regard to Pūao-te-ata-tū. That really sits on and is underpinned by the cultural responsiveness recommendation path that the Children’s Commissioner is, I think, leading the Minister for Social Development’s thoughts down. If iwi are in a position to be able to provide an integrated support system that can work alongside the providers, the schools, the kōhanga reo, and the early childhood centres, as well as those State agencies, to be able to ensure that children do not get sucked into “the system” and are able to lead full and positive lives within their whānau setting, then actually that should be embraced. That should be supported. The question I have, which I have asked before of the Minister, is: what type of alignment is being envisaged with regard to Whānau Ora? Some of the very best elements of Whānau Ora that are working have got good integrated models here. I am a little bit concerned that perhaps the situation is that Whānau Ora is operating in isolation from some of the very necessary work that is happening in this particular space.

Minister, there does need to be legislative change—there does need to be legislative change to the extent that will ensure that more of the focus goes into the preventative end, and then the statutory end is for only those most severe cases, knowing that we are trying to stem the pipeline of actually opening the doors of kids getting in to Child, Youth and Family. It concerns me so much when I hear in neonatal intensive care unit centres—certainly in my own area—that there is an absolute fear of young parents who are having children. Then they get somebody snooping around to say: “Oh, gosh. Here is a young Māori parent. They are vulnerable. They might get reported and their kid might get picked up.” It concerns me that that type of culture could be something that is more the norm than is not, but I have heard that it is the case. Again, if this is what the legislative mechanism is creating, it is a real fear amongst people who want to be parents but are really fearful of how the legislation might actually go over the top of them, and that is not going to be the way to go either.

Finally, can I say that there are a number of service providers, social workers, and community and voluntary organisations that know this space better than any one of us in this House. What they are saying is that, sadly, yes, it is, actually, about resources. It is about a bit more fluidity in the system. It is about ensuring that the legislative mechanism actually defers to the well-being of the child and the reintegration of children back into their whānau and about ensuring that those supports are measured and monitored or looked at along the way until the child is in a good place of care. We cannot have them in prisons. We need to do more.

I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.

I think it is unfortunate that I have got only 5 minutes to speak, because there is so much to talk about in response to the Children’s Commissioner’s report. I am grateful for the opportunity that this debate has brought to the House and for the wisdom of the Speaker to allow us to have this debate at this time. I have three papers here and a Facebook feed, because there are whānau sitting at home watching this who have been sending me messages saying “Marama, we need to do more.” What they are saying to me is that, actually, this is not just a whole-of-Government approach that needs to happen. This is not all on the shoulders of just our Minister for Social Development. This is on the shoulders of this nation. Darroch Ball was correct: it is our shame, the shame of this country, because there is a group of people who have historical claims of abuse while in State care. There are 900—and more—historical claims still to be listened to.

I have messages here from Mate Tangitū, who is a voluntary worker for the advocacy group known as Te Roopu Haurongo in Ngāti Awa. It sits in Te Kooti Rangatahi and provides advocacy and support. She has given me her top five priorities, and I would like to share them with you. First, acceptance of why this is happening to our tamariki and mokopuna—our whānau need to also step up. Second, education—we get trapped into these cycles of abuse, and they continue from parent to child and parent to child. That education will help us get out of that. Third, counselling and other services need to be implemented, because mothers have been victims, she is saying. Fourth, money is not the only answer here. She does this for nothing. She is a voluntary worker, and there are many parents and grandparents, as Nanaia has pointed out, who take up the slack when our children are being victimised and abused. Fifth, we need to strive for independence from, not codependency on, the State. I take all of her points to heart, because I think she makes some valid points.

I am very concerned from this paper about the levels of Māori who are being subject to abuse in our system. Twenty-two percent of New Zealand’s young people under the age of 20 are Māori, and 58 percent of the children in Child, Youth and Family’s care are Māori. This has a huge impact on our people, and we need to do something. We have been trying, with previous Governments and with this Government, to interact, as the Minister pointed out in question time today, through iwi and cultural involvement, because our young people need to be secure in their language, culture, and identity. It helps them grow independent and strong and face up to some of the issues that they struggle with.

The report Pūao te ata tū – Daybreak, which came out in 1998, actually said—and I am just going to quote from this, actually, because I think this is fundamental—“funding should be directed to the Maatua Whangai so that they can channel direct to the families rather than going through the rigmarole of going from one section of Social Welfare to another.”, and “If the programme is to get the support of the people then it must come back to the whanau base, and when I say that, it must come back with all accountability.” That was a quote from the group who put Pūao te ata tū – Daybreak together. They had a major influence in the development of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act in 1989 and they made a whole lot of recommendations. The children and young person’s family, whānau, hapū, or iwi group should participate in making the decisions. More and more we have seen over recent times that that is no longer happening; that actually has been taken off the marae. Our young people and our families who are most vulnerable are being separated from their cultural connection. We need to ensure that that continues to happen. Some developments have occurred within the welfare system to increase responsiveness to Māori. Whānau Ora provides a unique opportunity to do that. I welcome the engagement with the Minister that she has offered, to ensure that that continues and grows. Kia ora.

I call Chris Hipkins—5 minutes.

Normally I would say that I welcome the opportunity to participate in a debate. I have to say that today I do not particularly welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate, because I think that every one of the children whom we are talking about, every one of the cases that we are talking about, is a personal and individual tragedy. I want to begin with a quote from the Minister for Social Development herself, who said: “If the state takes them into their care then they have the responsibility to make sure those kids live better lives and I don’t see the evidence and the Children’s Commissioner report doesn’t see the evidence that this is happening.” That is a damning indictment on the system. I do want to compliment the Minister on her candour and on being so abrupt and honest about the situation, because, as I said, this is an absolute tragedy for all of those children and we all have a responsibility to do something about that. I want to also acknowledge the enormous weight of burden that we place on the people who work at Child, Youth and Family. I have come into contact with them on multiple occasions, as just about every member of Parliament will have, and I can say that they deal with the most difficult, complex, heart-wrenching situations that you could possibly imagine. They often find themselves in situations where no matter which way they turn, they are confronted with problems. I want to really acknowledge that and say that I think, by and large, they work so hard and they try to do such a good job, and it is very, very complex and very, very difficult.

I want to also acknowledge, though, that we need to look at alternatives in some cases. I think particularly of the debate that we had several years ago around special residential schools. Many of the kids who attended those schools had been in Child, Youth and Family care or went into Child, Youth and Family care at the end of it, and I tell you what: I went into that with a view that those schools would not have a place in the future of the education system. I visited them and I came out with a completely opposite view. I spoke to many of those kids, and, you know, the thing that struck me about it was that they got in there and they were allowed to be kids. They were allowed to play. They were allowed to learn. They had the freedom to actually grow up and to be kids and to be loved, and it was the most supportive and nurturing environment that I could imagine for them. Many of them had never had that outside of that special residential school environment, and now only two of those schools are left. I think that there is a place for that kind of intervention in the system, and we need to rethink whether the closure of those types of facilities was the right thing to do. I actually think that they do provide an alternative to foster care for some of those very vulnerable children, and they did have, by and large, a good track record in recent history. I know that there were historical issues, but in recent history they had a very good track record, and I think we need to re-examine whether, in fact, there is a greater role for those sorts of organisations and those sorts of facilities.

The other point that I want to make is that Child, Youth and Family deals in a space that is still incredibly disjointed, and many of those kids and families find themselves coming under the jurisdiction of and being subject to probing by multiple Government agencies, whether it is Child, Youth and Family; the police; various health services, including mental health; and it is simply that those families get lost. Often in cases of child abuse, yes, there will be a perpetrator, but there will often be other victims, including the children, and it is such a horrific experience often for families to navigate their way through that system, and we must do a better job of supporting those vulnerable children and families through the system so that we can get better outcomes. It is not just about Child, Youth and Family; it is about actually getting all of the agencies involved in dealing with these vulnerable children to work more collaboratively together to get better outcomes. A number of times when I talk to a parent of a child who is involved with Child, Youth and Family—and often they will not be the parent who has caused the child to be involved with Child, Youth and Family—they will talk about speaking to Child, Youth and Family and being told: “Well, you’ll have to talk to the police about that.”; speaking to the police, who say: “Well, you’ve got to talk to Child, Youth and Family about that.”; speaking to mental health services, who say: “Well, you’ve got to talk to someone else.”, and they just get lost in the system. That is how kids fall through the cracks. We have to do a lot more about that.

Finally, I want to say that sometimes we think that this is about other people, that these are other people’s children. I can say that no one is immune from this. No one knows when they are going to come into contact with someone who ends up being involved in these kinds of situations. We should all care about this. These are all going to be kids who are going to enter into our community. We should care about this. We have to get it right.

The next call is a split call. Matt Doocey—5 minutes.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the State of Care 2015: What we learnt from monitoring Child, Youth and Family report. When I look at the numbers for such a small country, the care and protection process summary in this report outlining the numbers, there are reports of concern at 63,000; further action at 43,000; substantiated abuse findings at 16,000—emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual and physical violence abuse at 16,000. At any given time we have 5,000 children and young people in care, and 2,000 go into care each year. It is amazing when we hear a statement that we do not know whether these vulnerable children are better off because of the State care they receive.

I had the privilege of working in the mental health field before I took up this new role, and I had the opportunity to work with many young people in care. Working with these very vulnerable people is very complex and challenging. There is a range of ways of working with these young people in a therapeutic context, whether it be motivational interviewing or cognitive behavioural therapy. The one that I took most heart from, in working with these young people, was solution-based therapy. It was working with young people who had been through a lot in their life and saying: “Actually, describe your perfect day—what would that look like?” That is not about diminishing the experiences and the harm they have been through, but it is looking to the future about the way people want to live and want to move forward.

I acknowledge the stance that the Minister has taken on this report and I urge everyone, all New Zealanders, to think about the future and where we want to go with this modernisation of Child, Youth and Family. At the end of the day, it is about standing up for the ideas we believe in, debating the ideas. Yes, we can debate the past and debate the politics of what has happened, but it is the ideas that will drive Child, Youth and Family forward to take the action to support young people now and young people in the future, because the reality is that it is adults who have let these young people down. Then they go into care, and it is the adults in care who again let these young people down. What we need to do is advocate for and focus on prevention and early intervention. Yes, we need to focus on what happens in care, but let us remember that we should be working to ensure that young people, children, do not go into care.

I had the ability and the opportunity to talk to the Chief Social Worker, who outlined some clear areas in the family environment that contribute to a young person or child going into care. It was the dangerous combination of mental health problems, violence, alcohol, and drugs. I think we all have a responsibility in New Zealand to focus on those areas to prevent those young people going into care. I acknowledge the work that the Government is doing in setting up Children’s Teams to focus on these children at risk before they go into care. We know that children and young adults are at an important part of their life course—in the developmental stage.

We also need to be progressive. We need to modernise. When I worked with young people in care in London I had the fortunate experience of being part of a programme about reclaiming social work. We need to free up social workers to not just care plan, not just write bits of paper, and not just do administrative functions. We need to embrace and we need to upskill our workforce to provide therapy to these vulnerable, complex, and challenging young people—therapy that will change behaviours and therapy that will move them on to go on to be productive people in New Zealand. Thank you very much.

I call Jono Naylor—5 minutes.

I perhaps will pick up a little bit on where my colleague Matt Doocey just left off, but, firstly, I just want to say that this report is the whole reason why we have a Children’s Commissioner. It is important that we have somebody who sits externally to the system who can provide some commentary on the system, can provide some advocacy, and can provide some autonomous accountability in terms of the plight of children in New Zealand. That is the role of the Children’s Commissioner, and that is what this report has done.

In some sense there is no new news here. These are things that have already been identified, I guess, but it is useful, when you have a report like this, to put them all in the one place and then to be able to move on. It is, I think, a really difficult thing for us to address. It is a difficult thing for us to realise, all of us who are involved in the Government or Parliament, who are ultimately responsible for the way the Child, Youth and Family system works and how it is treating our most vulnerable young people.

This report is, I guess, very confrontational in terms of the things that we need to address, but I think it will, ultimately, provide a better outcome. I think it has again been highlighted today that this is something that the Minister for Social Development has already been identifying. It confirms that she is on the right track with establishing her Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty and with establishing her Youth Advisory Group. If this were simple to solve, 14 reviews would have solved it in the past. Any one of those 14 reviews surely would have identified a simple answer had it been available, but these are deep and long-entrenched issues that we need to address.

The Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989—I think it was just the Children and Young Persons Act originally—was groundbreaking in its time, but it is certainly time that we look at a complete overhaul as to the way that we do this. I spent a short period of my time as a Child, Youth and Family social worker. I can recall a particular instance in 1997, effectively, with eight social workers and two police in a scene that I could describe only as storming somebody’s house and uplifting four children aged 5 to 12 from their mother and stepfather a week before Christmas while they were sitting around in front of their Christmas tree. The images of that scene are etched firmly in my mind 20 years later, and I can only begin to imagine how firmly they are etched in the minds of those children as to what happened. There were good, sound social work reasons for us to take that action. All the evidence pointed towards us taking that action, but to this day I am not entirely convinced whether the emotional harm that we inflicted on those young people in dragging them out of their house in the way that we did was any less than perhaps what they might have experienced had they remained in that household.

The difficulty is that our social workers, as Mr Hipkins said earlier, are in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. If they do not act and something happens, you can bet your bottom dollar there would be another snap debate in this House and there would be a big public outcry, and then when they do take action people say they are over the top. We have got to make sure that we protect young people and children to the best of our ability. We also need to make sure that we give those dedicated social workers the very best system to work within that we can, so they can do the very best that they can.

The biggest protective factor for young people that I have ever identified in probably 20 years of youth and social work is that they feel connected to something that is bigger than themselves, whether it be their family, a sports team, a drama club—whatever it is. When we bring children into the care of the State for their own protection, that is the hardest thing for us to replicate, because we have a bureaucracy, because we have structures, and because we have a certain way of doing things in order to provide appropriate, I must say, accountabilities. I have full confidence in this Minister and I have full confidence in this Government to do this overhaul of the Child, Youth and Family to ensure that we will do the very best for these young people.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.