Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported back to the House by 17 October 2016.

This bill represents the first phase of major and far-reaching changes to the legislative framework for the care, protection, and youth justice systems necessary to make positive changes to the lives of our most vulnerable children and young people. The bill includes a package of amendments to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989—the CYF Act—as well as some consequential amendments to other legislation. Later in the year I expect to introduce a further set of legislative changes to the House. These legislative changes are part of the wider programme to transform the care, protection, and youth justice systems in New Zealand.

We know that children and young people who come into contact with these systems are some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable people, and we know that this can be a complex and challenging system for them to deal with. Children and young people who have been in care are far more likely to die at a young age, leave school with few qualifications, receive a benefit, be convicted for criminal offending, and have children who also need care and protection support. Young people who have had experience in care before the age of 17 are 22 times more likely to have spent time in prison by the age of 21 than young people who have had no contact with Child, Youth and Family.

In April 2016 I released the Government’s response to the final report of the expert panel I appointed to lead a complete overhaul of the system. The report found a number of fundamental issues with the operating model for Child, Youth and Family. The current system does not place children at its centre. It does not meet the needs of vulnerable young people as they move into adulthood. It is fragmented, lacks clear accountability, and is not organised around a common purpose. In order to address these issues, this Government has committed to developing an operating model that is child-centred and responsive to children and young people’s views and needs. This bill is the first step to make this happen.

The bill has three main objectives: first, it extends the statutory age of care and protection to under 18, instead of under 17; second, it provides vulnerable children and young people with the support needed to express their views and have them heard, both at the individual and at the system level; and, third, it enables a broader range of professionals to identify and meet the needs of vulnerable children and young people.

This bill amends the definition of “young person” in the CYF Act to include young people who are 17 years old for care and protection purposes. It also consequentially amends the Vulnerable Children Act 2014, which refers to the definition given in the CYF Act. Including 17-year-olds within the scope of the youth justice system is being investigated. Leaving the care and protection system at the age of 17 can seriously impact a young person’s life. Young people who have spent time in care have spoken of their pronounced sense of vulnerability as they moved into adulthood. For these young people, the transition out of care often comes too early, too abruptly, and with little in the way of a safety net.

International evidence has shown that allowing young people to stay in care for longer has a range of benefits. A study in the United States found that an increased upper age for care and protection meant that young people who had been in care had better educational outcomes, had children later in life, and were less likely to become homeless. Young women who had been in care for longer were less likely to commit crime. Young people have told me that they are rarely given a chance to be involved in the decisions being made about them. We need to do more to ensure that children and young people are able to participate in these decisions.

To support the establishment of independent advocacy services, this bill places a duty on the chief executive to ensure that services are available for children and young people who are subject to an action or are receiving a service under the CYF Act. The services will support them to express their views about matters in relation to those actions or services that affect them, and more generally on improving processes and services delivered under the Act. The duty requires that particular consideration be given to the needs of children and young people in care. The bill also specifies that advocacy services should operate independently from other services provided under the Act. I want to note that work on the design of independent advocacy services is currently being carried out in partnership with the philanthropic sector. Any further changes to the legislation needed to underpin the advocacy services will, therefore, be included as part of the second stage of reforms.

This bill also includes duties to ensure that children and young people are encouraged and assisted to participate in any actions and decisions under the Act that may significantly affect them. These duties specify that any views expressed by the child or young person must be taken into account. The duties include that the child or young person be supported to express their views freely when they face any barriers, such as those relating to age, language, or disability. These duties will fall on the person responsible for the relevant proceeding or process under the Act, to either perform them or ensure another person has performed them.

The bill also includes a new duty on the chief executive to ensure that wherever possible children and young people’s views are considered as part of departmental policies and services. This includes views received through the advocacy services. The future operating model for the department will take a far more multidisciplinary approach to child protection work and decision-making, and will include a number of broadened functions.

The bill amends the CYF Act to vest functions and powers that currently sit with social workers in the chief executive. The chief executive will be able to delegate these functions and powers to employees in the department and elsewhere in the Public Service, and also to persons outside the Public Service with the appropriate Minister’s prior written approval. This amendment will provide the chief executive with a greater ability to delegate core roles to other professionals when they are equally or better placed to perform them. This change helps to ensure that a broader range of professionals are available to identify and meet the needs of children and young people.

I want to acknowledge that social workers will still be the main professionals responsible for carrying out many of the functions specified under the CYF Act. Therefore, when functions or powers are being delegated to anyone other than a social worker, the chief executive must be satisfied the person is appropriately qualified to exercise those powers or functions. The bill includes additional controls to make sure these functions and powers are exercised competently and transparently. These will cover the delegation of any of the chief executive’s existing powers under the Act. First, all delegations must be publicly notified on the department’s website while those delegations are current. Second, if delegating outside the State services, the chief executive must be satisfied that appropriate contractual arrangements are in place.

In summary, this bill represents the first stage of a broad and far-reaching set of changes of how the Government works with our most vulnerable children and young people. These changes will help to ensure our care, protection, and youth justice systems are child-centred and responsive to children and young people’s views and needs. These changes set a foundation for further legislative changes that I expect to introduce later this year. I commend this bill to the House.

I am pleased to rise in support of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill. As a party, Labour has generally given cautious support to the process that the Minister undertook when she introduced the expert advisory panel that carried out both an interim and final report setting out the reforms that it believed were needed for our child protection and child welfare system in New Zealand. We came into that process with an open mind because we ourselves had pushed for so long that changes were needed in order to improve the outcomes for children.

It was our view, however, that it was never fair to blame social workers for the situation that we had in New Zealand, given that we have not been properly resourcing and supporting those social workers for some time now. In fact, in the select committee today that was confirmed when we questioned the Minister over funding for Child, Youth and Family, and she admitted that over the past few years $52 million has been taken out of Child, Youth and Family in what has been called efficiency savings.

But what do those efficiency savings actually represent? These included the holding of vacancies—when social workers left jobs, they certainly were not replaced—the way that holiday pay was paid out, and whether or not programmes were indeed delivered; $52 million taken out of a department that could not afford it. And what is the proof that it could not afford it? The Minister, this Budget, put $36 million back in, in 1 year alone, because she has acknowledged that that was needed just to tread water. I make those comments because, although this bill is welcomed and we are pleased about it, we do need to acknowledge that in the here and now we do have a department that continues to be under considerable strain. How can we truly say it has failed when we never resource it to do the job properly in the first place?

On the specific provisions in this bill, though, there is one element in particular that I am really pleased to stand up in support of, and that is the raising of the age of care and protection. When we lost the last election, to stay sane as an Opposition member for another 3 years—

💬 Jono Naylor: Stay?

—I will defend my sanity—having already served 6 years, I wrote a bucket list. An Opposition bucket list: things that, despite not being in power, I wanted to see happen in my term in Opposition. At the top of the list was an increase in the age of care and protection. It never, ever seemed fair to me, when I first came into Parliament, that once a young person who is under the care of the chief executive—in foster care, in residence, in kinship care—that once they turn 17, once they have their 17th birthday, no one has responsibility for them, not one person. A parent would never do that to their child. A parent would never say on the 17th birthday of their child: “Pack your bags, leave the house, I have no responsibility for you any longer—no financial responsibility, no emotional responsibility, nothing.” Yet that is what we do to our young people who, you could argue, need more support than anyone else.

So we as a Labour Government—when we were in Government we were set to change this. We had a bill on the Order Paper, an amendment to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act to change the age of care and protection, but we lost. So when I came in, I remember, when I was the youth affairs spokesperson, every time a bill came up where I could make an amendment that might lift the age, I did—every time. Not only that, we ran a petition and tried to get public sympathy for this issue as well. ActionStation came on board and the petition grew. It seemed to have got some momentum, but none of it would have happened—and I want to acknowledge the work of Dingwall Trust, which works with these young people every single day. It was one of the first organisations that put a young person in front of me and had them tell me their story. Lifewise, another organisation working with the homeless, sees the other side, the repercussions of this policy. Those are just some of the organisations that did awesome work championing this issue, and, I believe, got it here today.

So I am pleased that we are ticking off an item that just so happens to be on my Opposition bucket list. But it would be remiss of me not to add that, on the flip side of that, unfortunately, we are now going to have a separate age for care and protection than we will for youth justice, and that is a lost opportunity. There is a reason that our care and protection age and our youth justice age are linked. It is because if you have a young person committing crime then you will often find that there are care and protection issues. In fact, this was confirmed by Judge Andrew Becroft, who, in a speech not too long ago, said that of the 1,982 offenders in the Youth Court last year, Child, Youth and Family had prior involvement in 67 percent of cases—in 67 percent of cases.

There is a reason that our Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act includes the youth justice provisions in it, so why are we raising only one element? It makes sense to have young people in the Youth Court for as long as possible, not only because of our United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child responsibilities, which we get whacked with every time because we have not raised the age, but because the Youth Court is a highly successful, interventionist, confrontational, personalised process.

I have heard much come from the community of late that the Youth Court does not hold young people to account. I have two challenges to that. I have never seen a process more confrontational than what I have seen, for instance, in the Youth and Rangatahi Courts—the young person is at the centre of the process. They cannot sit back and not take responsibility in the way that you see our adult system work, where they can almost be a bystander to the process. They are at the middle. The Youth Court has tools that enable it to cater the sentence to that young person. It could include a long stint in a residential facility, but it also can include wraparound services for the family that young person has come from and will go back to. It understands that their environment has played a role.

The other important point is that if the case is severe enough, the Youth Court can send it on to the adult court—the provision is there. The Youth Court is a gem in our justice system and we should be sending more young people to it. I really implore the Government, in the work that it is doing to assess whether or not that age should go up, to consider that positively.

I want to come to the two other provisions in this bill around advocacy—the ability of a young person to personally have their views heard and also the establishment of an advocacy service for young people in care. Absolutely. In Australia they have something similar, particularly for children in foster care. We have needed that for some time.

One point of caution though: we must resource that properly. Currently the Children’s Commissioner has that responsibility to be a voice for young people, but he has already said that that is one of the things that he has had to step back from because he has not been properly resourced, and his funding has remained static for the last 8 years. Whatever we do, we have to make sure we support it properly. The involvement of the philanthropic sector in designing this—my only question will be: is that a sustainable way to create what is going to be a piece of core service in legislation? If we design something with the philanthropic sector, are we then reliant on it to make sure it continues to be delivered? No young person should rely on their advocacy being funded out of goodwill. It needs to be more sure than that. Although I welcome the fact that people have an interest in this area and want to contribute, we must give it a stable footing.

The last point—and this is where our most significant reservations sit—is around enabling a wider role of professionals to have core responsibilities in discharging functions under the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act. There is a reason that we train our social workers comprehensively. There is a reason we are advocating that social workers must be registered. This is a professionalised sector that performs a very critical role. They make the decision to remove children from their families. It does not get much more serious than that, outside of incarcerating someone. It is a specific role that requires expertise. The delegation that we are talking here—we do not really have specificity around what is going to be delegated to other professionals. But the idea that the chief executive—not this Parliament, but the chief executive—can make that decision simply by putting a notice on a website does not sound like a robust check and balance to me. It does not sound robust enough. We will be questioning that at the select committee.

I rise to take a call in this first reading of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill. I look forward to this bill coming to the Social Services Committee and the work we will do. I see that this bill is quite critically important for the roles and responsibilities the Government has. In particular, this morning at our select committee we had our Minister for Social Development present, and one of the questions that was asked and responded to by the officials was about the reviews that have taken place. In fact, one of the officials said that since 2000 there have been 14 reviews, and in each review there has been a layer of complexity and also, too, more bureaucracy that has been added on to the department, which make it inefficient in being able to fulfil its role. I think that is quite critically important to this piece of legislation. This piece of legislation is a direct response to some of those critical issues, and I will talk about them in a moment.

The bill has three main objectives. The first objective inside the bill is to extend the statutory age of care and protection to those under 18, which was previously those under 17. As the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, spoke about, that is something that has been talked about by this Government. It is something we are actually enacting and initiating very clearly. One of the things I think is important is that I was present when in the 50th Parliament we had a presentation from the Dingwall Trust and a number of young people who were in care. They talked about the importance for them to have the age of entitlement and eligibility extended. A number of them talked about the challenges and the difficulty they had in order to transition at the age of 17, to be able to get into some training or some employment. For them, this is critically important. I hope those young people will hear that this Government is now actually taking on that responsibility and extending the age to 18.

The other thing I want to say, also, to give comfort to others who may be listening, is that although other people say 18 is maybe not enough and it could be higher, up to 19, 20, 21—well, it is clear that there is a provision, and it has always been there, that if the chief executive deems that, actually, there are critical issues of concern and vulnerability, then the chief executive can extend that age. It can even be extended up to the age of 25; that provision is currently there. That has not changed. What has changed and will change under this bill is the extension of that age of statutory care to the age of 18.

The second part that I think is really important inside the bill is around the voice of children being included. In August 2015 we had a report from the Children’s Commissioner that was a pretty damning report, if we want to be honest about it. Part of the statutory role of the Children’s Commissioner is to monitor the roles of responsibility for children, young persons, and their families. This August in the Children’s Commissioner’s report called State of Care 2015: What we learnt from Child, Youth and Family, Dr Russell Wills wrote a number of things. One of the things inside the report that was critical was the lack of ability for the voice of children and young people to be involved in the decision making of the department, in all of the decisions that actually reflect on the children themselves. That was quite clear. In fact, what that said was this: give them a choice in decisions about their care and, crucially, allow those voices to be a part of the implementation, which is quite critically important as well. I think that is quite critically important. The second provision in this bill is to ensure that the voice of children is included inside of that implementation, and I think that is quite critically important.

Also, if one reads inside the expert panel report, it says that on average there are about 60,000 children who are notified to Child, Youth and Family, and 4,900 of those children are actually in State care. What has actually come out of that is that the Minister has, in her wisdom, ensured we have those key stakeholders involved with the expert panel. What I want to read, which goes to the second part of the objectives of the bill, is what a young person wrote to the Minister in a particular letter as part of those key stakeholders. They said this: “Dear Hon Anne Tolley, when you read the final report over Christmas I would most like you to think about the importance of advocacy for children in State care.” It goes on to talk about their own experience, that being one in which they did not have the role of advocacy inside of it. The second part of the bill ensures and provides vulnerable children and young people with the support to express their views, to have them heard both at the individual and system level.

The last and third part of the objectives of this bill is to ensure that we enable a broader range of professionals who will also identify and meet the needs of vulnerable children. The previous speaker talked about the roles of the social worker, but also, too, what did come out of the Children’s Commissioner’s report is the fact that there was an issue around the capacity and capability of social workers, and the roles they play, as well. We are not criticising that. I think there are issues for us to be able to ensure that the burden of responsibility is not just put on the role of the social worker. The third portion of this bill ensures that there may be a broader range of specialists who have an ability to be able to meet some of those needs. That could be in the area of, for instance, mental health areas of need. That could be counselling and other forms of specialist support that could be offered, as well, and that is the third component of the objectives of this bill.

I look forward to this bill coming to our select committee and to the submissions that will be made. This is, again, the initiative of the Government to ensure that, as part of an overhaul, we look at the system to ensure that it does respond. It is fully inclusive of all the key stakeholders, and I think that that is critically important. I think that what we have done in this bill and what the Minister has done is critically important.

The last thing I want to say is around what comes from the expert panel in their consultation, right across, and it is that this part of the recommendations, which have now been factored into the bill, has factored in all of those key stakeholders who are involved. None have been left behind: the voice of families, the voice of children, the voice of young people, and also, too, the professional perspectives that have come from the social workers and counsellors, and also those who are policy makers. I think that the approach the bill is taking is thorough, and I think it is well considered. I look forward to this coming to the committee. I commend this bill to the House.

There are four key changes in this bill. It is extending the age of State care and protection to a young person’s 18th birthday; ensuring the views of children and young people are taken into account as part of decision making at an individual level and in the development of services and policy; supporting the establishment of an independent youth advocacy service; and enabling a broader range of professionals with specialist skills who will widen the expertise within the new model to perform some functions under the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act. Social workers will still be the main professionals responsible for carrying out these functions. I want to speak to those four key changes individually.

Firstly, on raising the age of care. We on this side of the House—and I know other political parties as well—have fought long and hard for the age of care to be raised. So it is good that in this bill we will be considering that. Before we left Government we had a bill on the Order Paper that would have seen the age of care increased. That was the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 6). That was, unfortunately, dumped by the succeeding Government. We are now at that point when we are reconsidering the age, but there was a time, some years back, when the Government could have done the right thing. We have then tried to use bills before Parliament to raise the age. These too have been defeated. Last year we instigated a petition alongside the likes of Lifewise and the Dingwall Trust to raise the age, so we are pleased that the Government has finally acted on these calls—it just took a little bit of time.

Currently, the law sets out that a young person remains under the care of the chief executive only until they turn 17. This creates a significant gap in support services. Young people at this age are ineligible for a Housing New Zealand house, for instance, and accessing a benefit at this age is incredibly difficult. Our disappointment with this bill is that the bill only raises the age for care and protection purposes, which will now mean we have a different age for care and protection than we have for youth justice. Youth justice provisions are set out in the Child, Young Persons, and Their Families Act. It makes sense to keep these ages linked, especially given the likelihood that offending at a young age is often an indication of wider care and protection issues. Of the 1,982 offenders in the Youth Court last year, Child, Youth and Family (CYF) had prior involvement in about 67 percent of all the cases. The UN has repeatedly raised our failure to meet our United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child obligations because we try 17-year-olds in our adult justice system. This was an opportunity to remedy that. Unfortunately, the Government has not taken that opportunity.

The Youth Court is not a light touch. It has the ability to apply tough parameters around a young person or to escalate a case to the adult system, if need be. It is often a much more confrontational environment for a young person who is placed at the centre of the process and directly held to account—rather than being a bystander, as often the case in the adult justice system. The Government is currently considering a lift in the jurisdiction of the Youth Court to include 18-year-olds; we would support this move. Just on considering the lift from 17 to 18—because there has been much discussion over whether it should be higher—my concern if it is left at 18 is that, actually, year 13 students are often in the middle of their year 13 year when they turn 18. So we still could have that dilemma where we have students who are in the middle of their compulsory schooling, in year 13, who all of a sudden are not eligible for care. We have heard from those who have made submissions, including the young people who came as part of the Dingwall Trust submission, that that just creates so much trauma for them when they are trying to complete their secondary schooling, and all of a sudden they have to find their own accommodation and they are no longer eligible to be considered as part of the care. So we will need to have conversations about that at the select committee.

On to the advocacy service: we support a change in legislation to embed the voice of young people in care into decision making. We support the independent operation of advocacy services, but will explore at the select committee what the responsibilities of the Ministry of Social Development and CYF will be in ensuring that the service is properly resourced. We are concerned that the advocacy and child voice role that the Children’s Commissioner has had, has been weakened in recent years due to a lack of funding. The bill’s introductory notes also state that the design of the independent advocacy service is being undertaken in partnership with the philanthropic sector, and we want to ensure that this is a suitable and sustainable model. If we move to enabling a wider roll of professionals to have core roles in discharging functions under the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services Act, we have some concerns about this section of the bill and will explore them in greater detail in the select committee. This amendment will also create greater flexibility in the delegation to other professionals to play a role in identifying the needs of vulnerable children. We are concerned that this is a significant step, and that Parliament will not retain oversight over how this delegation is managed. The bill sets out that the chief executive can, essentially, make the decision, and the delegation can extend beyond those outside State services, and they will simply need to ensure that there are contractual arrangements in place and that each delegation is notified on an internet site.

Going to the costs pressures within CYF, Labour has concerns regarding the overall ability of CYF to currently operate, even before these changes will be implemented. In 2016-17 CYF is forecasting a deficit of up to $38 million due to demand-driven costs. The new funding of $35 million allocated for CYF next year only barely covers its deficit, which includes the discontinuation of funding from a previous year. The Minister has also not been funding CYF to increase the number of social workers as required to by the Government. In fact, we know there is a shortage of social workers—a shortage of qualified and registered social workers. We see that with CYF, but we also see that in the Social Workers in Schools (SWIS) programme, where we have 183 decile 1 to decile 3 schools that should be—and are, actually—eligible for Social Workers in Schools, but cannot get them for a range of reasons. Mostly, it is the underfunding of the SWIS programme, but also the shortage of qualified and registered social workers.

CYF had a deficit of $7.7 million in 2014-15, underwritten by the Ministry of Social Development, and has an expected deficit for the current year, 2015-16, of $11.2 million, which includes approximately $18.8 million in cost pressures offset by $7.6 million of mostly one-off savings from within CYF budgets. CYF is currently forecasting a deficit in its budget for 2016-17 of between $28 million and $38 million. This is driven by the continuation of funding pressures from previous years, cessation of one-off funding in 2015-16, and additional wage and other cost pressures in 2016-17. The range reflects uncertainty about the offsetting savings that might be achieved both within CYF budgets and the Ministry of Social Development. Overall, the projected deficit of $38 million is driven by current demand pressure from client-related costs, accumulated remuneration pressures, unfunded past agreements to increase social worker resources, and continued costs of the implementation of changes to other pressures. This also currently excludes any estimate of future client-related demand increases or decreases, which are still being considered. So there is a lot there for the Minister to consider.

I will raise something that the Minister for Social Development brought up earlier, and has actually brought up time and time again, that she thinks that children need to be the focus of policy in relation to CYF. I just want to say to the Minister that, actually, children should be at the centre of all policy, including within her jurisdiction, Work and Income. We did raise, today, with the Minister that if she means that, then in the rewrite of the Social Security Act, she should be considering a change to the principles to ensure that we include in there a principle that says children should be at the centre of policy making. She said in the select committee that that will not actually be the case because not all social security legislation is about children, but can I just say that there is a principle in the Social Security Act around work—and not all social security is about work, particularly when we take into consideration superannuation, which makes up half the spend in Vote Social Development. I am hopeful that the Minister will actually take seriously her vow to ensure that children are put at the centre of policy.

It is an honour and a pleasure to rise in support of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill. I think that last speaker, Carmel Sepuloni, said it all—9 years in Opposition, and all they have got to say is: “Spend more money.” Spend more money—an Opposition that has got a litany of failed social policies. In 2008, those members’ last year in Government, the Salvation Army came out and said that with all their extra expenditure—they blew the budget—they did not even get social progress to increase by 1 percent. Nine years on the Opposition benches and all they can say is: “Spend more money.” That says it all.

On this side of the House, what we are looking to do is bring in reforms that will support vulnerable children and vulnerable young adults. We know with the feedback from the final report of the expert panel what it identified is that what we should be doing is ensuring all vulnerable children and young people who go through the care system come out with the opportunities that the average New Zealand child has. It is clear by the state of care that we are not providing that, and it is amazing to think that we could be taking vulnerable children and young people into a care system and not knowing whether we are harming them or doing them any better.

What this bill is based on is a very vulnerable cohort of young children and young people. We know from the regulatory impact statement, when you look at the statistics, that roughly 1 percent of young people who spend more than 3 months in Child, Youth and Family (CYF) at the age of 15 or 16—seven out of 10 of these will leave school with no qualifications. Eight in 10 will leave without National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 or equivalent; that is two times higher than the general population. Ninety percent will have been on a benefit before the age of 21; that is 2½ times higher than the general population. Four in 10 of the young women are on a benefit with a child by the age of 21; four times higher than the general female population. Six in 10 of the young men have a corrections sentence by the age of 21—5½ times higher than the general male population—and 21 percent have received a custodial sentence, a rate, shockingly, 11½ times higher than the general male population.

It is clear that over decades the care system has let young people down, and that is why this reform is much needed. That is why this Government is taking a social investment approach. It is not only about social funding; it is social investment, it is allocative efficiency—people on the street will know that—and it is how we spend money wisely, how we get it to where it needs to go, and how we get good bang for the buck. What we know is that for these vulnerable young children and young people who have been in care at the age of 15 and 16, future liability, by the age of 35, will be around half a million dollars for the Government. So we know, actually, that if we look at that future liability and we invest upfront then we can support these young children and young people to not only go on and be aspirational but to expect what the average New Zealand Kiwi kid expects in life opportunities. That is what this bill is supporting.

When we look at some of the outcomes of this bill, I am very much looking forward to being part of the Social Services Committee, ably led by the chair, Alfred Ngaro. We are going to kick the bill around, no doubt, with a range of submissions and really think about whether it is going to be fit for purpose for protecting our young children and young adults. We will be raising the age for statutory care and protection up to the 18th birthday. At the moment it is just before the 17th birthday. I have some sympathy with Opposition members who are talking about it needing to be higher. I agree. The next stage of reform will look at that. You could easily imagine some transitional service up to 21, and even, for complex young people, up to 25. What adolescence and being young people is about is transition. It is about moving from being a young person into adulthood, and we should be looking to support them so that they become productive members of New Zealand society. That is why I commend this bill to the House.

There are some bills that are more important than others in this House, and this should be one of those bills. I just want to start by acknowledging that I am sure, and I assume, that everyone in this House cares deeply for the children of this country, and that we all want to end child abuse, and that in the meantime we want to ensure that the children who are in our shared care are safe and have every opportunity in life. The Green Party certainly believes that and wants that for our children.

The Green Party supports, albeit with caveats, three provisions in this bill. But the fourth point, and the Government’s strategy, is of such concern to us that at this point we will be opposing this bill at this reading. We know that there are the numbers for it to go to a select committee, and we look forward to engaging with the community on the bill, but we believe it is important in our vote to reflect the concerns that have been raised with us. I hope that through the select committee process our concerns, and the concerns of people in the community, are abated to the point that we can support the bill.

Let me start by outlining the things that we do support. We do support extending the provisions of statutory care and protection to young people aged 17, at the very least. We advocated for this, along with other parties and many, many people in the community, when this House was considering the Vulnerable Children Bill about 3 years ago now. During that process we heard compelling and, I have to be honest, completely tear-jerking evidence from young people about their experiences of being aged out of care at 16, becoming homeless, ending up in trouble with the police, and having addiction problems that would never have happened if they had had the support of the State until they no longer needed it. We listened to them and wanted to make the change then. It was so sad that the Government chose not to actually acknowledge their needs at that point. However, 3 years on, here is the Government with this provision, and we will support it.

The Green Party also supports calls to have this bill cover youth justice, as well. Very often these are the same young people, so it really is a nonsense to have the age of 18 for care and protection and the age of 17 for justice, when often they are the same young people. Including care and protection with youth justice is important to ensure that our legislation is consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It would be a really good move, I think, ahead of the UN committee examining New Zealand in September, for us to get consistency on this minimal level.

The Green Party also supports the establishment of an independent advocacy service with a particular focus on children. I understand that this idea came from a hui of young people advocates in the philanthropic sector some time ago. It is wonderful, in this instance, to see the Government actually picking up on the innovation that is happening in our community, and putting some legislative support behind that innovation. We do have concerns, as some others have expressed, that although philanthropic funding can often go into seeding and developing ideas, it is often not the best model of funding for the long-term sustainability and assurance of something that is part of a legislative system, so we will be interrogating that aspect of it during the select committee process. This will be an advocacy service and it will be very important for enabling us to hear the voices of young people and for looking at ways that we as a society can include these young people more. However, that advocacy service will not have a monitoring role to ensure the safety of young people, and it is really important that we get that those things are distinct—that that safety monitoring role still fits with the Office of the Children’s Commissioner.

I do want to register, again, our deep, deep disappointment that the Government has failed to increase the funding for the Children’s Commissioner to fulfil that monitoring role when he has clearly told the country and this Parliament that he is unable to fulfil that duty properly because of a lack of resource. Although there are significant changes, as heralded by this Government, coming into force over the next period, that actually increases the risk for those young people. As change happens, people can fall between the cracks, so that monitoring role is actually critical at this very point. The fact that the Government has chosen to not increase the funding to enable the commissioner to fulfil that critical role actually sends a message that its priorities are wrong. Its priorities are not with ensuring the safety of our children as the first priority. That worries me deeply.

We also support the embedding of the views of children and young people at an individual and system level. That was clearly an intent of the 1989 legislation. The paramountcy of the child was there in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, and through cost pressures and political and ministerial risk aversion we lost it, in practice. It is good to see that that will now be built back into the system.

I would like to flag here, though, as well, that children exist in families. Actually, we heard from members on the other side that they had listened to service providers and social workers and children; we have not once heard a mention of families. The expert advisory group was very clear about telling stories, and every single member in this House will have heard harrowing stories from families who feel as if their children have been taken off them, where they have not been given support, where it was not in the best interests of their children. We hear this particularly from Māori, and we see this reflected in terms of the statistics. Almost 60 percent of children in Child, Youth and Family care and protection are Māori. That, I think, means that this system should be building in advocacy and support for the voice of parents. There are some amazing examples from overseas, actually, of that parental involvement coming in and advocacy sitting alongside the youth involvement, changing the whole system, the reduction in the need for children to come into care a result. The lesson out of that is that if you actually involve the parents, the children are better off, and we get sustained change. Sadly, we have not got that yet.

I do also want to raise some points now to get to our primary concern and what we cannot support in this bill: the single point of accountability being held with the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development, and the delegated authorities. The reason, to explain this, is that the single point of accountability takes accountability away from the social workers, where it is held at the moment. There is some confusion, and I do get that there are some tensions we need to work out in this, but having the accountability sitting with the social worker means that it is based on their judgment from analysing all of the different variables in every family situation. What we have seen over time with Child, Youth and Family—and nobody, I think, denies this—is that political risk aversion has resulted in really negative impacts on the practice of the social workers within Child, Youth and Family.

If we put the single point of accountability on the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development, who is directly responsible to the Minister, there is an absolute danger that we are going to increase that result and have very perverse outcomes. When we delegate the responsibilities out into the community, and have other people participating in the system rather than Child, Youth and Family social workers, that delegation and authority and accountability from the chief executive will apply to them. When the Minister talks about Māori being keen on this—if Māori are picking this up, they will still be under the chief executive of the ministry’s delegation. That is not tino rangatiratanga; that is colonisation. That will not represent the needs of Māori in their community and their ability to actually practise in a way that they believe in. It will, in effect, have them under the direction of the Minister, which is of deep concern to us.

I am privileged this evening to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Darroch Ball to speak to the first reading of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill.

The bill’s objective, as stated, is “to help achieve a child-centred system by—extending State responsibility for the care and protection of vulnerable young persons; ensuring that vulnerable children and young persons are able to express their views and have them considered as part of decision making in individual cases, and in the departmental services and policy; enabling enhanced access to appropriate specialist skills and expertise to respond to the needs of vulnerable children and young persons.”

New Zealand First supports the idea of children’s voices being heard—absolutely—but what we are nervous about is how this is going to happen within a framework of philanthropic funding. We support the idea of including other professionals. However, New Zealand First insists that professionals, no matter who they are, are given additional skills to deal with vulnerable children in care and protection. What New Zealand First is worried about is whether this bill is going to open the door to inviting outside—perhaps international—entities to come into New Zealand and provide contractual services to our vulnerable children and young persons. This we will not accept, hence our position to send this bill to a robust select committee process so that those concerns can be alleviated or diminished, such is the risk that this will open a door for the privatisation of our social services for our vulnerable children and young persons.

Just this morning I sat before Minister Tolley in the Social Services Committee. I listened to the justifications and rationale that sit behind where this National Government has spent taxpayer money tackling the poor record of how the State has parented our most vulnerable children. The Minister says that we must have a cultural shift in our thinking throughout society if we are to ever get it right. When we look at which model will best service the needs of our most vulnerable children and young persons, the Minister states that a suite of bills, including this bill and many others to follow, will let the voice of a child come first. To put children at the forefront, to let the child tell us what they need, is for adults and Governments, past and beyond, to understand what our vulnerable children need under State services.

I am going to break this bill down into three main areas: age settings, advocacy, and workplace settings. Regarding age settings, this bill proposes to extend the provisions of the statutory care and protection system to persons aged 17 to 25 years. Currently, it is 17, and then you are out. I have actually seen how detrimental this is to children. Just recently I was privileged to attend the L’Oréal foster care programme workshop and what it did was it gave these children the opportunity to dare to believe—to actually believe—that they can bust out of the stigma that society and people have placed them under. What these children learnt over the course of the weekend was that they can stand up and that they can be given a certain strategy and support to help them achieve and to be the best that they can be in their future.

I was really quite astounded by the concern from some of the children. Once their State service care ended at their age, they were actually quite anxious about what and where they would go to next because still—still—in some cases, their families were not appropriate to go back to, and often these children are left to fend for themselves. So New Zealand First agrees that this extension of care to include the up to 25-year-olds is paramount to helping these individuals journey into society with a more successful platform that includes the security of knowing, as they move from high school to tertiary education and then on to the workforce, that they will receive the real and actual support services needed for them to belong and move within our society, a society that does not take away the aspirations and dreams that every individual in this country deserves to have.

It is a tragedy and a blight on this and previous Governments that at the age of 17, children with such complex needs were simply dumped out on the street. This lack of engagement and understanding right down to key care arrangements has been occurring for over 30 years, and it must stop. We are pleased to note the extension of care from 17 years to 25 years.

With regard to advocacy, the bill proposes to embed “the views of children and young persons at an individual and a systemic level by strengthening obligations in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 (the CYPF Act) to support the participation of children and young persons:”. This bill supports “the establishment of independent advocacy services, with a particular focus on children and young persons in care, through a new duty imposed on the chief executive of the department administering the Act:”.

The Minister explained today that a chief executive will be put in charge who will set up multi-professional advice services and that that individual chief executive will then choose those service providers. This will include social workers, district health boards, the police, psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, and many more, who will get the chance to design this foolproof system that is meant to last a lifetime and where the voice of children will again be heard.

So, in other words, after today’s select committee discussion, it has been fleshed out that this Government may pour millions of tax dollars into all sorts of pilot programmes and hope like heck that, by some miracle, the various pilot programmes work and it will then roll them out nationally. This is based on blind faith, if I may say so, and if we think that is OK, then that is wrong. How can the Minister effectively ensure that the change made is a change made for good, for the betterment of children and young persons in this country? New Zealand First absolutely supports putting the voice of the child at the forefront of these decisions and, for once, we are grateful for Paula Rebstock for educating the National Government on this very basic premise, which should have always been there.

Finally, with regard to work settings, this bill aims to enable “a broader range of professionals to perform a wider set of functions under the CYPF Act to help identify and meet the needs of vulnerable children and young persons.” From reading the regulatory impact statement, we have been provided with an analysis of options for new workforce settings that enable professionals to perform a broader set of functions within the new operating model. It also considers the related objectives of providing appropriate flexibility for the agency to deliver services via strategic partners and of supporting the chief executive of the children’s agency as the single point of accountability for vulnerable children and young people.

If this Government truly believed in putting the voice of vulnerable children first, then this Government would also recognise the potential of the Children’s Commissioner to play an absolutely vital role working inside the advocacy space. Yet, despite the rhetoric, and despite what we call the lip service this Government has dished out to Dr Russell Wills and his team of two and a half staff at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, this Government has failed miserably to adequately resource what should have been the jewel in the crown.

It is noted that “The preferred option [by the Ministry of Social Development] is to amend the CYPF Act to vest the functions currently residing with social workers instead in the Chief Executive.” Here is where the legislation becomes unstuck: “that the Chief Executive would only be able to delegate functions to people who have the interpersonal skills, training, and experience to be suitably qualified to perform those functions; that if delegating outside the State sector, the Chief Executive be required by the legislation to have contractual requirements in place to support the appropriate exercise of the delegation and to enable the person with delegated authority to be held to account; that the legislation require those exercising delegated authority to have regard to any guidance issued by the Chief Executive; that the Chief Executive be required to maintain a publicly accessible register of delegations to assure transparency and clarity for the sector and for the public.”

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I was actually nearly at my conclusion before the dinner break, so I would like to finish with a summary of the fact that New Zealand First supports this bill to the select committee, where I know my colleague Darroch Ball will work very hard to ensure it is scrutinised in its whole entirety and brought back to the House to carry the voice of children as it is intended to do. New Zealand First will, however, review its position upon the findings of the select committee process. Thank you.

I would like to start my contribution by quoting a piece of work on this topic done by a guy by the name of George Benson, who said “I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride …”, etc. In all seriousness, this piece of legislation is about children. It is fundamentally about them. Before I go any further, I want to just ensure that the wonderful workforce that we have working on the frontlines of Child, Youth and Family across New Zealand, who are doing the best they can day in, day out, trying to do the best they can with the tools that they have got, are recognised. Because when we change legislation it is very easy to poke the borax at individual people and the work that they are doing, but we have got some good people out there who are working hard, and I just want to acknowledge the work that they are doing.

I also want to acknowledge Minister Anne Tolley, who, since taking on this portfolio, has worked tirelessly looking at the outcomes that we are achieving through our care and protection legislation and recognising, as has been outlined by a number of the speakers already, that the statistics and the outcomes for our young people in care, by and large, are simply not acceptable. We are not helping them to achieve what they should be achieving and so we need to take a long hard look. Because of the 14-odd reviews that have been done since the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act was first passed in 1989, another review was not going to cut it. So the Minister has taken the bull by the horns and has actually gone to some great lengths to put in place something that will be lasting and, hopefully, something that will actually be enduring and ensure that we get good outcomes.

Can I acknowledge two other groups of people as well: the expert panel that has put together, I think, a really comprehensive report outlining some of the issues that we have in our current care and protection arrangements but also outlining some ways forward that we might be able to do better; also, the panel of young people who helped contribute to what has been going on. I think it has been incredibly brave of them to tell their own stories. Again, as other speakers have said this evening, sitting on the Social Services Committee and hearing from some of those young people from the Dingwall Trust was incredibly moving and, I think, just strengthened our resolve to make sure that we do better for young people who are at risk in New Zealand and those who require the care of the State.

The original 1989 Act did have a clause in it that talked about the paramountcy of the child’s needs, but it appears that somewhere along the line the importance of that has been somewhat lost. We were heralded throughout the world, to be honest, on our Act in 1989. The introduction of youth justice family group conferences had the global social work field really talking about this innovative new way that New Zealanders were working with children and families at risk. But we will need to make sure that we do not sit on our laurels, and, actually, we have discovered now that that system is not necessarily delivering all that it could. So this legislation goes further than simply having a paramountcy principle within the Act but actually ensures that young people will have a voice not just in their own outcomes but in the actual guiding principles, legislation, and policies that will oversee their lives and the types of interventions that will take place.

We have also talked about the importance of shifting the age upwards. Again, I just want to reiterate the importance of us lifting this age. To be a 17-year-old and suddenly be faced with having to renegotiate your own board arrangements or otherwise simply is not good enough. This is a step in the right direction. I think that over time we will be able to explore how those transitions actually occur, as well, when children reach the age of 18, if they have been in care, as to how they transition into adult life. It is what most of us as parents would do for our own children, and I think it is beholden on the State to make sure that we do at least as good a job as regular parents would like to do for their own children.

I am encouraged by the support that this bill is receiving from right around the House. I think we are going to have a really robust time in the select committee looking over the finer points of it. I hope that we will get some good support as we seek to bring this through but that we will actually get some good comment from submitters. There are a lot of people out there who have had interactions with Child, Youth and Family over the years who, perhaps, have not had an ideal experience and who will be able to offer us some further insights into how we can improve.

As I said at the beginning of this contribution, children are our future. Children do need our support, and we need to continue to do everything that we can as the legislators of this country, as those people who provide the rules and the regulations about how we intervene when things are not going well for children, to do the very best that we can. I see this bill as a very positive step forward for those children and for our country. Thank you.

Marama Davidson—5-minute call.

Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise to take a call on this bill, the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill 2016. My colleague Jan Logie previously mentioned that we are not supporting this bill at this stage, the first reading. She highlighted some reasons.

In my contribution to the House, I want to focus specifically on my role as Māori affairs spokesperson, and mention that Māori children make up 25 percent of our population but are 60 percent of the children in Child, Youth and Family care. That reason alone, surely, should have mandated and demanded robust involvement, consultation, and consideration of Māori voices, Māori experiences, and Māori expertise at all levels of this review, and from the get-go it did not. It was not until some political pressure was placed on the Minister for Social Development that some involvement of a Māori perspective was included in this review. That cannot be acceptable. That cannot be acceptable in the way that we run and govern a country. It cannot be acceptable when we are trying to overhaul a system and a department that is responsible for dealing with so many of our Māori children. The other reason why there is that low level of involvement and engagement in proper partnership with Māori expertise is that this very overhaul is so relevant to the care of whakapapa of Māori whānau, hapū, and iwi.

So we have two things here: we have a department that is fully involved, influences, and holds power over a large proportion of Māori children, and we have a piece of legislation that holds incredible influence over whakapapa, Māori well-being, whānau, hapū, and iwi. I do want to remind this House that from colonisation over generations, we know that one of the biggest impacts on and fallouts of the harm to well-being for Māori families has been the disruption in whakapapa and the disruption of well-being in whakapapa. Here we have a piece of legislation that is fully, fully involved in that.

I also want to make the general point, in this first reading, that this is a bill that deals with the fallout. We need a review of the whole-of-Government systems that actually looks at the structures that contribute to all of our people falling into hardship, falling into poverty, and having it tough in the first place. To be clear: for example, Māori unemployment saw the biggest increase across all of the groups in unemployment. It rose by 2.2 percent recently, and is now up to 12.8 percent. I want to be clear that we have to keep in mind, through all reviews of this and any other legislation that has a huge impact on Māori families, that we cannot do reviews in isolation. We have to be mindful of all the other systems and all the other social, economic, justice, and cultural problems that need looking at as we are reviewing our legislation. That is called responsible and sustainable governance.

Just in closing, I want to again indicate that I cannot support such a low level of Māori expertise in this review of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act. I want to see how we can improve this, but this legislation is only dealing with the fallout, and we need to look at the structures. Thank you.

Kia orana, and thank you. I want to, in my short contribution, come from the perspective of having been a member of a community panel called the community child protection review panel, which is a panel that is put together from community members who have some expertise in the sector, who look at the notifications that come to Child, Youth and Family where the duty social worker has closed off the case. The panel is the community’s response, in order to ensure that no child gets left behind or that there are no issues that have not been addressed by the social worker in the passage of that notification through the Child, Youth and Family site. In that regard, I want to refer to a public statement that the Minister for Social Development made on 1 June with regard to this particular bill, because I think that that statement and the subsequent notes that I have read have caused me to ask more questions than I have answers to. I think this is the appropriate forum, as this bill goes to a select committee, to put on record those questions that I think need to be addressed.

Firstly, I want to say that the Minister made the statement that it will be “a new child-centred operating model with a single point of accountability [that] will be in place by the end of March 2017, focused on prevention, intensive intervention, care support services, transition support and preventing youth offending and reoffending.” The single point of accountability is the first point I want to ask a question about, because does that not currently occur when a child who is notified to Child, Youth and Family, for example, has a social worker—a social worker who is no doubt part of a team, but who is a single person—charged with the care and protection issues of that particular child? How is this issue of a single point of accountability different from current practice, and what resources, what model, is going to be in place?

The other issue that I am concerned about is the fact that in the Minister’s statement she talked about prevention and care support services in the same sentence as she talked about preventing youth offending and reoffending. We all know that the current model of Child, Youth and Family is under review, and that we have care and protection services and we have youth offending services. Some of the discussion tonight has been about the age of eligibility being raised to 18 for care and protection being out of line with youth offending. It might be a little bit of a stretch, but one of the questions that I want to ask is why youth offending and reoffending are included in the same sentence as care support services. Does this mean that we are looking at a model of service that covers both streams of work? That would seem to be out of line with what is best practice, and it is a question I would like the select committee to examine.

The role of the community child protection review panel, which is a community panel set up of local experts, is one that I am hoping they keep after the overall review of Child, Youth and Family, because its specific role is to ensure that outside experts are brought in to scrutinise the notifications that come through to Child, Youth and Family. I say that because the Minister said in her statement that one of the four main aspects of this particular piece of legislation—one of the key aspects—is enabling a “broader range of professionals with specialist skills who will widen the expertise within the new model to perform some functions under the Act. Social workers would still be the main professionals responsible”, but this legislation is actually looking at bringing other people in. I say again: how is that different to what is currently in place, and what, of the model that is currently in place, will remain? I am really hopeful—and I would want the select committee to examine—that community involvement through these community child protection review panels, which were set up out of an environment where there were children being harmed and also losing their lives while in the care of Child, Youth and Family, remains.

There are aspects of this bill that we are really encouraged to see, including increasing the age of care to 18. As Jacinda Ardern said in her earlier contribution, she has been lobbying for that for a long time. I just want to echo what other members have said about the contribution from the Dingwall Trust: it would be great if we could extend that age to 25 in certain cases where it is warranted. Thank you for the call.

Thank you for the opportunity to take this call on the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill in its first reading. I am taking a short call to support this bill. This is a huge step in a positive direction to improve the lives of children and young people who come into State care. It is not acceptable for it to continue the way it is because the outcomes that we are getting for children and young people who come into State care are terrible. We are bringing these children into State care from their families because their families are unable to look after them, but there are some statistics that made my heart sink.

The first is that the average age of children who come into contact with Child, Youth and Family is 7 to 8 years, and by this age some of these children have already gone through a number of placements. I believe that children of that age should just be thinking about studying or playing, not thinking about the next family they will be placed into. There is no certainty for them, there is no stability for them, and there is no family to bond with.

The second statistic is that 64 percent of 61,000 notifications to Child, Youth and Family are repeat notifications. So we are not able to get the results that we want for these children, and that is why they keep coming back to Child, Youth and Family. There was a study done on children born in the 12 months to 1991, and this study was done when they were 21 years old. This study found that 90 percent of these people were on a benefit—we are talking about children who were put into placement care—and out of this, 25 percent of them were on a benefit with a child.

The same study found that almost 80 percent of them did not have a National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 qualification, 30 percent of them had a youth justice referral by the age of 18, and 40 percent of them had gone through a community sentence. We are taking these children from their families and into State care, and what we end up doing for them is putting them on a benefit, getting a low education outcome for them, and referring them to the youth justice or the corrections system. So I am really happy to see that the Minister is taking charge of this situation.

This bill will reform the current system so that we can have that long-term view and the kind of support we need for getting the desired outcomes for children who come into State care. There is no quick fix, but we cannot continue the way we are doing it at the moment, because we cannot get better results by just continuing the way we are doing it. I am looking forward to working on this bill in the select committee process. I support and commend this bill. Thank you.

Kia ora e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute in this, the first reading of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill 2016. I am not a member of the Social Services Committee but I am Labour’s youth affairs spokesperson, so I take particular interest in this piece of legislation.

I immediately want to focus on one of the main features of the bill, which is about extending the age of State care and protection to a young person’s 18th birthday. There are some questions that I have already. It seems that in increasing the age to 18 there has been a lot of discussion about what that age should be. Some people think it should be 21; some people think it should be 25. I found a piece of research that is associated with ActionStation and its petition, which is currently wanting to increase the age of foster care to 21 years. It is interesting to note that one of the key findings was actually “Why 21?”, because, actually, when we look at young people today, on average, they stay at home until they are 23.

Young people today actually need the continued support of their parents, and so it is one of the rationales from ActionStation and its campaign partners—and I want to list them all: Dingwall Trust, Lifewise, Youthline, Child Poverty Action Group, Wesley Community Action, Christchurch Methodist Mission—for why they are currently engaging in a public process to say that the age should be 21. So I do want to say to the Government that moving the age up to their 18th birthday, which I guess, technically, is when a person stops being a child and becomes an adult, is a step in the right direction. I can understand some of the rationale for that particular age, but, actually, when we look at the specific cohort of young people, I think that we should already seriously start looking at that age. From the perspective of a lot of organisations involved in the care and protection of our children, they think that that age should be 21.

One of the other questions I have in relation to that first point is why the age is increased only in respect of children in care and protection. Why does that particular statutory responsibility on the State not extend to young people in the youth justice sector? It has been really baffling to try to determine why the Government has chosen to do this. The bill states that its purpose is “reforming the system of services for responding to the needs of vulnerable children and young persons,”. So what do you do when you get a purpose like that—actually look at definitions? Well, I do. The definition of “vulnerable” is “People who are in need of special care, support, or protection because of risk of abuse and neglect.”

So you start working through a process about why the Government would have excluded young people in our youth justice system when they are going to be providing for young people in our care and protection system. Then you actually look at the Modernising Child, Youth and Family Expert Panel: Interim Report. Its vision for New Zealand children is “that New Zealand values the wellbeing of our children above all else.” When it states the role of the State in caring for children, it says: “The purpose of the care, protection and youth justice system is to ensure children and young people are in loving families and communities where they can be safe, strong and flourish.” When you look at the principles that drove the Government’s expert panel, they said that the place of the child or young person had to be at the centre of everything they did.

This piece of legislative reform is supposed to meet the needs of the most vulnerable young people who are in our Child, Youth, and Family Services (CYFS) system. They are either in our care and protection system or they are encapsulated within our youth justice system. So it is interesting or baffling as to why children in the youth justice sector are not included—and explicitly—in this piece of legislation. One can only assume that there is some political issue about including young people in the youth justice system that possibly means that the Government is going to be soft on crime. Who knows? But we are hoping that some of that motivation for excluding young people actually comes to the fore, and that we can actually understand what this Government is trying to do. On the face of it, it is contradicting recommendations from its expert panel. For somebody who is incredibly interested in this piece of legislation, I will be trying to determine, like the rest of the country, why that is the case.

The other two points that I want to make are around the Government’s rationale for the bill being to ensure that the views of children and young people are taken into account as part of decision making at an individual level and in the development of services and policies. What I want to note is that, actually, in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989, section 21, it states that it must “give effect to the wishes of the child’s or young person’s family, whānau”. Already engrained in the current Act is a commitment to listening to children and ensuring that the voices of the whānau are incorporated in any care planning, so I find it, again, interesting that we have chosen to ensure that the views of children and young people are taken into account, because they already should have been. The fact they have not been beggars the question about how the new processes and the new systems are going to ensure that not only the young person’s voice is going to be heard and be paramount but also the communities’ voices.

Those communities are actually the communities of interest associated with the child who is in care and protection, and, I contend, in youth justice facilities. Specifically, any formation of advocacy groups or any input has to, at the core of it, ensure that Māori voices are front and centre, because the appalling statistic that we all have to face is that 57 percent of the 3,844 children in care are tangata whenua. That is not a random phenomenon. It has happened because over consecutive years the system has failed to meet the needs of Māori. The intergenerational transmission of children in care is actually something that we should all be—what is the word—committed to addressing. The only way we can address it is if we have Māori around the table—and many Māori, not one Māori. In fact, if we look at the beginning of this process there were no Māori, and so I question the integrity of this whole process, given Māori have not had many more seats around the table when trying to look at the system that has continued to create and generate a situation where Māori children have been encapsulated in our CYFS, youth justice, and care and protection system.

I cannot not mention the wonderful Judge Mick Brown in my contribution. It was Judge Mick Brown through his work as the first Principal Youth Court Judge who actually brought in family group conferences. He ensured that whānau were intimately involved in trying to deal with youth offending. As a second principle, they did make a concerted effort to not charge our youth offenders unless there was a public interest required. I think, if you look at the legacy of Judge Mick Brown, what he tried to introduce was actually about recidivism—to nip it at the bud—so that we could actually assist those whānau to assist the young people and ensure that they got all the services that they required to address the actual context of some of the behaviour from our young people.

I think that is where we have failed, actually. We have failed to give our young people and our families the support that they need to provide them with different opportunities in life, different pathways, different visions, different—I guess—life outcomes. So when we look at this piece of legislation, I will be scrutinising how involved Māori will be in this process, how involved our young people will be, because if we end up, again, like last night, creating a prescriptive system that is going to tell our young people and families what to do, then we already know that that will fail. I hope that, on this side of the House, we will think of some amendments to this particular piece of legislation that will make it work for all of our young people. Kia ora.

What a pleasure it is to stand and speak in support of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce and Age Settings) Amendment Bill 2016. What a great privilege it is to be a member of the National Party, and to be here to witness this historic and radical change to the way we respond to the needs of our most vulnerable young people and their families.

This bill will amend the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989, and enables the first step in the overhaul of the current system. The main objective of this bill is to make the system child-centred. It ensures that young people’s views are taken into account when decisions are being made about their care. No longer will State care be done to them; it will be done with them. This Government is absolutely committed to the new operating study. We understand and accept the findings in the report of the expert panel that was appointed to lead this overhaul of the care and protection system, and we welcome the reforms ahead of us. I have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House. Thank you.

on behalf of the Minister for Social Development: I move, That the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill be reported to the House on or before 17 October 2016.

Motion agreed to.