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 second time. This Government has committed to major State-care reforms and a complete overhaul of our care, protection, and youth justice systems to improve the long-term outcomes of our most vulnerable children and young people. We know that the current system does not place children at its centre and is not meeting the needs of vulnerable young people as they move into adulthood. This bill represents the first step in major and far-reaching legislative reforms to enable a foundation for a child-centred system. I expect to introduce a further set of legislative reforms to the House later in the year.

This bill includes a set of amendments to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 and will make some consequential amendments to other legislation. The bill extends the statutory age of care and protection to include all young people under 18. This enables vulnerable young people aged 17 to remain in State care for an additional year and, if necessary, to have access to interventions under the Act to protect them from maltreatment.

Ensuring that the voices of children and young people are heard is critical if we want a system that is truly child-centred. This bill introduces a number of changes to make this happen. First, it will support the establishment of independent advocacy services with a particular focus on children and young people in care, through a new duty on the chief executive. Second, it strengthens obligations to support children and young people to participate in decisions made about them under the Act and to have their views considered. Third, a new duty will be placed on the chief executive to ensure that policies and services of the department have regard to the views of children and young people.

The new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki will take a more multi-disciplinary approach to child protection work and decision making. I want to acknowledge that social workers will still be the main professionals responsible for carrying out many of the functions specified under the Act; however, drawing on a wider range of professionals is expected to be necessary in the new ministry. This is a significant shift from the status quo. The bill enables this change by vesting functions and powers that currently sit with social workers in the chief executive. The chief executive will then be able to delegate these functions and powers to social workers and to other appropriately qualified individuals. I have to say that as I have been talking with social workers around the country, they have been overwhelmingly supportive of the fact that the new operating model acknowledges that they cannot do everything. They do need the support of their colleagues from Health and Education, in particular, to address the increasingly complex needs of children.

I would like to commend the Social Services Committee for its consideration of the bill. I would also like to acknowledge the members of the public who committed their time to consider and submit on the bill. The committee received 22 written submissions from organisations and individuals; 11 of these submitters made oral submissions. It was encouraging to see how many submitters supported the intent of the bill and to see how strongly people supported giving children and young people a greater voice in the system. I note the overwhelming support for raising the upper age of care and protection to include 17-year-olds. The need to make a positive difference in the lives of our most vulnerable children and young people came through strongly.

The committee has recommended a number of amendments that will provide greater clarity in order to give effect to the intent of the bill. The committee recommended two minor changes to the provisions covering the participation of children and young persons in the decisions that affect them. The committee has recommended that the bill clarify that participation of children and young people at family group conferences includes not only the conferences themselves but also the preparation for them. This will explicitly recognise that there are a number of decision points during the preparation for a family group conference where children and young people should be able to express their views.

The bill requires that support must be provided to children or young people who face barriers to expressing their views or being understood. Such barriers could include, for example, age, language, or disability. The committee has recommended an amendment to allow a person supporting a child or young person to express views or to be understood to be present at the proceedings or processes under the Act in order to continue to provide that support, except where this is impracticable or inappropriate.

The bill enables the chief executive to delegate powers and functions to a wider range of professionals. To ensure that delegated functions and powers are exercised competently and transparently, the bill requires that the chief executive must be satisfied that the potential delegate who is not a social worker is appropriately qualified to perform the function or power. For ease of operation, the committee has recommended that this “appropriately qualified” requirement not apply where the chief executive is delegating a functional power to a person in a management position who would not be performing the task themselves but would then sub-delegate to other persons under their management.

For consistency and to ensure alignment with the policy intent, the bill has been amended to require that all persons who are sub-delegating functions and powers to persons other than a social worker must be satisfied that a potential sub-delegate is appropriately qualified to perform the task. The bill requires that information relating to delegations be made available online. For greater transparency, the committee has recommended that this extend to sub-delegations as well. To improve the accessibility of this information, the committee has also recommended that the publication of delegations must be available for inspection free of charge at the head office of the department.

The committee has recommended a consequential amendment to the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. This Act sets out who may exercise powers under different legislation. A minor change is required to reflect that certain sections in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act relating to search powers will shift from social workers to the chief executive.

In relation to provisions to enable a wider range of professionals to perform functions under the Act, the committee recommended a number of minor technical drafting changes to better reflect the policy intent.

The final change recommended by the committee is that the commencement date be amended from 31 March 2017 to 1 April 2017. This will ensure that the commencement of this bill aligns with the date that the new ministry will be in place.

To conclude, this Government is determined to make a positive difference in the lives of the vulnerable children and young people who come into contact with New Zealand’s State care, protection, and youth justice systems. These legislative changes form just one part of the wider programme of transformational work to completely reform these systems. This bill marks a fundamental shift toward creating a legislative framework that is child-centred, and sets a strong foundation for the further legislative reforms I expect to introduce later in the year. I commend the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill to the House.

I want to begin by reflecting on some of the provisions we chose to highlight as a party in the first reading of this bill. As I put on the record then, and as my colleagues did as well, this bill brings to fruition something that Labour has campaigned hard for—not just as an Opposition party but actually as something we had on the agenda as the Government. So we are talking about a time, over 8 years ago now, when Labour drew a line in the sand and said absolutely that the age of care and protection in this country needs to be lifted—and not just the age of care and protection. We did not view young people as people we should treat differently if they are in care and protection rather than in in our youth justice system.

Our view was that if you are 18 or under, you are a child—and that is not just our view; it is an international view. That is the international standard. It is the standard we have signed up to in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. If we take the view that you are a child when you are in the care of the State, then you are a child if you ever come before a court in this land. We took that view over 8 years ago, and we have pushed for it ever since. We have run petitions, we have had amendments in this House, we have campaigned hard alongside organisations like the Dingwall Trust—and I acknowledge the huge work, not just by the people who work within Dingwall but by the young people in its care who have been at the forefront of this debate. I acknowledge that they have put their stories out in the public to see this come to fruition.

So our support of that provision, even though it is just for care and protection, has been unwavering—unwavering. That was the basis, fundamentally, on which we gave our support to this bill at its first reading. That strength of feeling should highlight equally, on the flip side, our strength of feeling now and why we are putting our support under a condition. This bill includes not just an increase in the age of care and protection, which is fundamental; it also includes what the Minister has broadly brushed over as some cursory delegation of powers away from social workers. These are not just cursory delegations, and I want to spend a little bit of time talking today about what clause 7 of this bill does, because it was really only when we fully canvassed this bill at the select committee that we saw the gravity of what this bill was proposing.

Social workers in this country hold a number of statutory powers, which are, literally, shared only between them and police officers. There is a good reason for that: they are some of the most powerful, potentially damaging—if used incorrectly—powers that the State has. The ability to remove a child from a family is an overwhelming power and one that should be treated with accountability, transparency, and a huge level of regard for the professionals who are asked to execute that power.

At the moment, we have partitioned off in our laws that we believe that those warrants should be exercised involving only the courts, police officers, and social workers. What this bill does is allow those powers to be transferred to the chief executive, who can then delegate those powers to any professional whom the chief executive deems it necessary to delegate those powers to.

Let me just reference exactly the way that it is articulated. New section 7D, inserted by clause 7, states—basically this is the process that has to be gone through—“(1) The delegations referred to [in this bill] and a subdelegation … must be publicly notified, and information about all delegations and subdelegations must be made available on an Internet site maintained by the department and be available for inspection at the head office of the department, free of charge, until, in any case, the delegation or subdelegation is revoked.” The only other requirements on the chief executive in making this delegation to a person who is not a social worker, as set out in new section 7C(2), in clause 7, is that the chief executive must be satisfied that the person is appropriately qualified to perform the function, and if the person is outside the States services, and therefore not a professional employed by the State, the person must have a contract; some contractual obligations.

There is nothing in here that stipulates what an appropriately qualified person must be—nothing. It is simply for the chief executive to decide. If they are not, for instance, someone working with the State—not, for instance, a medical professional employed by a district health board—they simply have to be bound by a contract. Well, we have a number of organisations bound by contracts in this country. A number of them have had contracts removed from them simply because they have not exercised them properly. Serco is one that comes to mind. Some might think that in referencing Serco I am simply being inflammatory, but I want to talk about what the delegations that we are talking about at the moment, which are just numbers in a bill, actually allow these unknown professionals to do.

The bill sets out in new section 7BA(1), in clause 7, that “The chief executive may delegate his or her functions and powers under all or any of sections 39, 40, 122, 157, 181, 205, 386 …” of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act—they are just numbers. It feels meaningless, perhaps. What harm could be done by a few clauses? Let me tell you. Section 39 of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act is the place of safety warrants. Those are the provisions that say that any District Court judge can issue a warrant to an officer, under the Search and Surveillance Act, if they are satisfied on reasonable grounds for suspecting that a child or young person is suffering, or is likely to suffer ill-treatment, neglect, or deprivation. They can issue a warrant to a constable or a social worker that then allows them to enter and search by force any dwelling, any building, any vehicle, any premises. If that person—a constable or a social worker—believes on reasonable grounds that the child or young person has suffered or is likely to suffer ill-treatment or serious harm, they can remove or detain, by force if necessary, the child or young person from the place where they are and place them in the custody of the chief executive.

Removing a child by force, because they have used their professional discretion that a child is at risk of harm is something that we must enforce vigorously and ensure that no one other than a qualified professional is able to make that decision. Who is it that the Minister is proposing will have the “professional” or contractual arrangement to adequately do that job? If you cannot tell me now in this House, with a good rationale and justification, who that person is, then we will not sign our name to it. Tell us who it is, because otherwise we will lob claims across the other side of this House that it is potentially a Serco or an Armourguard, or any number of contractors that this Government has deemed fit to enact similar provisions for in our Corrections laws. If you cannot tell me who it is, what faith can we have that that person is qualified to exercise that power? That is just one of them. That is just section 39.

Let us read out section 40, “Warrant to remove child or young person”. It states: “(1) Where an application or declaration under section 67 has been made in respect of a child or young person, any District Court Judge … [or] any issuing officer … may … where there are reasonable grounds for believing that a young people or child is—(a) suffering, or is likely to suffer, ill-treatment, serious neglect, abuse, serious deprivation, or serious or harm; … issue a warrant authorising any constable or a social worker, … to search for the child or young person.” So then we have got search powers, and I go on. That is just sections 39 and 40.

Section 122 is about the power of enforcement of access rights to take possession of a child and enforce an access order to say that some other caregiver should have access to that child—to uplift a child and take them to the person who has that access order. Section 157 is about ensuring that a child is physically at a hearing. Section 181 relates to psychiatric care. Section 386 relates to search warrants and recovering a child who has absconded. The examples I keep hearing from the Government around the kinds of professionals it wants engaged in these delegations of powers are people like paediatricians. You are not telling me that a paediatrician is going to search out a child who has absconded—of course they will not. So who are these powers for?

Today I am informing this House that unless we have significant reform of these powers, the removal of the delegation—or at least the removal of any delegation that allows a child to be removed by any professional other than a constable or social worker—then we are going to have to remove our support of this bill. It is with a heavy heart that I say that, given how important lifting the age of care and protection is to the Labour Party. But that is the choice National has given us.

It is a pleasure to rise in support, at the second reading, of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill. I think, as deputy chair of the Social Services Committee, that this is a good bill that is coming back from the select committee stage. We are bringing in a range of amendments, basically, to bring this bill in, to support the framework for the Government’s new Ministry for Vulnerable Children.

I think it was very clearly laid out by the Minister what the reasons were behind this bill. The issues preceding this bill, the recommendations made by the expert panel, and the history behind it have been well traversed, so I will not be covering much of that—just to say that we talk about modernising Child, Youth and Family, but this is very much a major root-and-branch review and a root-and-branch reform, ultimately supporting some of the most vulnerable young people we have in New Zealand.

When I thought about the expert panel’s recommendations, one phrase sprung out at me. There was a comment made that we did not know whether we were causing more harm by removing the young person from their family and putting them in care; we did not know whether we were causing them less harm. I think that is something that resonated quite strongly with me.

When you look at these vulnerable children and young people, the statistics are that seven out of 10 young people in care will leave school with no qualifications. Eight in 10 leave without NCEA level 2 or equivalent, and that is two times higher than for the general population. Ninety percent of these young people in care will go on to be on the benefit by age 21—that is 2½ times higher than for the general population. Four in 10 young women will be on a benefit with a child by the age of 21—that is four times higher than for the general female population. For young men, six in 10 young men will have a corrections sentence by the age of 21—5½ times higher than for the general male population. With young people, young men in care, a staggering 21 percent will have received a custodial sentence—that is 11½ times higher than for the general male population.

I just want to acknowledge the work of our very efficient and effective select committee chair, Alfred Ngaro, who, I think, has steered this bill through the submissions process. But I do want to acknowledge all the select committee members, across parties, from around the House. I think that the time in the select committee, hearing the submissions, was very collaborative, it was very productive, and it ultimately brings this bill back into the House—with a few amendments—in good shape.

We received 22 submissions—not a lot of submissions. I think that demonstrates the overall support for this bill from the people of New Zealand. Sixteen of the submissions were from organisations, six of them were from individuals, and 11 submissions were heard orally. Every submission was in favour of the intent of this bill. There was not one submission that was not in favour of the intent. So that is a good place to be, and it is a good place to bring this bill back, with some minor amendment.

I want to touch on three amendments in this second reading. The first one was to change the date of commencement from 31 March next year to 1 April 2017. That is just to align this bill with the new operating model in place for the Government’s new Ministry for Vulnerable Children. The second amendment is going to allow greater participation for young people and provide better clarity. We talk of young people being involved in some of their care meetings and family group conferences. The replaced section 11, inserted by clause 8, will allow and provide for children and young people to be involved in the preparation and planning meetings as well, so they can voice their concerns, their interest, and their intent at the planning and preparation meetings for their family group conference.

The replaced section 11 will give greater clarity for support workers to be involved in those preparation meetings. They will be for young people for whom, because of their age, there might be a barrier to understanding the process. It might be around the translation services, with languages involved, or a disability.

Finally, we are going to amend section 7 around sub-delegation, as the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, spoke about. Part of this bill is talking about the delegation of the chief executive to an appropriate professional. That might end up being a manager who will not be undertaking that activity, so the bill will now allow a sub-delegation to an appropriate qualified professional. That will need to be publicised publicly, as well as be freely available in the chief executive’s office. So, overall, this is a great bill that lands in a good place with the amendments and sets up for the Government’s new vulnerable children’s ministry. Thank you.

I am just going to start out by saying that this bill does contain a change that we have pushed extremely hard for, and that is a raise in the age of care and protection. It is something we believe passionately in, and it was the basis for our support of this bill at every stage—until this point. This is also the reason we will support the bill at second reading.

But I want to go to what Mr Doocey said. He was saying that every submitter supported the provisions of this bill and was supportive of this bill. I think he has overlooked one thing, and that is that many of the submitters were not supportive of the delegation of powers that this bill enables. In fact, I think maybe he was not there for submissions and he missed that part. That is the part that we have issues with. The massive, regressive, and dangerous set of provisions that will allow the chief executive to delegate powers that can currently be performed only by Child, Youth and Family (CYF) social workers is concerning to us. There is no ability for Parliament to have oversight of these powers and almost no checks and balances on the way they will be delegated. We cannot support this provision when it could allow any professionals, at the whim of the chief executive, to hold powers like the removal of children.

My colleague Jacinda Ardern made it very clear in her speech that our support for this bill will be based on the changes that we seek at the Committee stage in respect of this provision. We can support it for now, but we will be pushing for changes at the Committee stage in respect of that. Some of the concerns that were raised around this were just the risk of privatisation and what this could mean in terms of delegating very important responsibilities. In fact, some people have been referring to this section of the bill as the “Serco section” or the “Serco provision”. I think that is where the concern lies, and so we need to be very straight up in respect of what our intention is with the bill and what our concerns are.

It is important to note that before we left Government, we had a bill on the Order Paper that would have seen the age of care increased, in the Children, Young Persons and their Families Amendment Bill (No 6), and it really is unfortunate that that bill, 8 years ago, was dumped by that National Government. 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 Dingwall Trust to raise the age, and we are pleased that the Government has finally acted on these calls. It would have been very difficult not to, particularly given the submissions by the young people who have been affected by the current law, who, at 17 years old, were, basically, dumped by the State—very emotional submissions that all of us on the select committee had the privilege of hearing. If that was not going to inform change, then I cannot imagine what would have. So it is good that finally the National Government has caught up, 8 years later, but it has caught up.

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. What we saw were young people who were in State care trying to undertake things like exams—really still not even near the completion of their schooling, with at least another year to go—and then all of a sudden finding themselves homeless and without anyone to care for them.

We are, however, disappointed that the bill raises the age only for care and protection purposes, which will now mean we a have a different age for care and protection than we will for youth justice. Youth justice provisions are set out in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, and it makes sense to keep those ages linked, especially given the likelihood that offending at a young age—as the previous speaker, Matt Doocey, has pointed out—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 had prior involvement in about 67 percent of 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.

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 is often the case in the adult justice system. As the Children’s Commissioner and past Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft pointed out, “the change half-step, and not full step, to include youth justice seems to us to be burdensome, and it will add administrative complexity”, and that came up time and time again with the submissions when this particular mismatch was being discussed. So we do, obviously, support the raising of age care, we do also support the establishment of an independent youth advocacy service, we do of course want to see the views of children and young people taken into account as part of the decision making at an individual level, and in the development of services and policy, but it is this issue with respect to the delegation of powers that I just want to spend a little bit more time talking to.

We are strongly opposed to those new sections under clause 7 of the bill, which vests powers currently held by social workers with the chief executive. This will, essentially, allow the chief executive to delegate these powers to other professionals, with very few checks and balances and without the oversight of Parliament, and we believe that is wrong. The bill sets out that the chief executive can, essentially, make the decision, and the delegation can extend beyond those outside of 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.

Social workers are trained professionals. Like the police, they carry out certain weighty functions set out in legislation and, as such, are able to be held to account—functions like the removal of children. These roles and responsibilities cannot and should not be taken lightly. We fully acknowledge that the differential response model already allows CYFS to delegate caseloads to social workers operating outside CYFS, but the idea that powers contained in legislation could simply be handed over at the discretion of the chief executive is a line that we do not believe should be crossed. As I said, a number of submitters shared this view, and even those who may potentially be recipients of these powers spoke out against this amendment. Many argued that the collaboration across professions that work with children is already possible without such a huge legislative change. Others argued that the ability to work effectively with families could, in fact, be undermined by delegating these statutory powers. Overall, we believe that these changes could well lead to poor outcomes for children and their whānau, so we cannot support them.

There were other issues that have come up throughout the duration of considering this bill, particularly in respect of cost pressures with CYFS, and I want to raise those, because those have been raised by submitters, raised by the media, raised by the general public. So we have concerns regarding the overall ability of CYFS to currently operate, even before these changes will be implemented. In 2016-17, CYFS is forecasting a deficit of up to $38 million due to demand-driven costs. The new funding of $35 million allocated for CYFS next year, which included the discontinuation of funding from the previous year, barely covers its deficit alone. The Minister has also not been funding CYFS to increase the number of social workers, as required to by the Government. And, actually, while we are on the social workers issue, the Government had set a target for this year, to make sure that every single social worker working for CYFS would be a registered, qualified social worker, and even that target has not been met.

So we do have to wonder at times how seriously the Government is taking some of these really, really important targets. CYFS had a deficit of $7.7 million in 2014-15, underwritten by the Ministry of Social Development, and it has an unexpected deficit for the current year of $11.2 million. So, essentially, just looking at those figures, we can see really clearly that the CYFS department is incredibly under-resourced, and so it is really difficult at times to reconcile the rhetoric that we hear from the Minister in respect of wanting to put children at the centre of all policy decisions and wanting to ensure the best for them and ensure that there is a focus when, actually, the funding is not following.

We do support the intention of this bill, but, as my colleague and now I have pointed out, there will need to be a major change at the Committee stage in respect of the section on the delegation of powers for us to be able to support this bill. Thank you very much.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. It is an important and a significant bill in that it is bringing in some very important and timely changes to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act.

When the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act was brought into being in 1989, it was a groundbreaking and world-renowned piece of legislation. People from all around the world looked at what we were doing in New Zealand and thought there were some initiatives taken at that time that were really significant. Of course, we cannot just sort of sit back and look at what was done then and say “That’s enough.”, and so, over the course of time, there have been 14 different reviews of the Child, Youth and Family service and the various names it has been called over those years. But up until now there have not been, as a result of any of the Governments that have been in place since 1989, any actual steps finally taken to increase the level of age, and so that is what we are doing here, primarily, this evening.

When we were on the Social Services Committee, we had some presentations from some young people from the Dingwall Trust, and that has been mentioned already by a number of speakers this evening. But I particularly, again, just want to acknowledge those young people who were brave enough to talk to us, to share their stories. I think in particular of one young woman who talked about turning 17 part-way through her NCEA level 2 exams at the end of year 12, and the fact that she was going to be leaving Child, Youth and Family’s care, and it was then beholden on her to have to try to negotiate with her caregivers what the ongoing living arrangements, care relationship, and boarding relationship would be going forward. I think, as we all sat and watched that, we all thought that, actually, that was not an acceptable thing to be expecting of a 17-year-old—to be facing exams and having to negotiate their own living arrangements with the family they have been living with.

So it is timely and it is appropriate that we actually move forward and we lift the age. I also welcome announcements from the Minister that this is, in fact, only the first step and that potentially, going forward, we are going to have other legislation that will see the possibility for the level of care being extended beyond the age of 18 as well. But this is a very important first step. There are other factors in this bill that have been discussed already, and I take great pleasure in endorsing it to the House.

It is with a real sense of frustration that I rise on behalf of the Green Party to oppose this piece of legislation aimed at improving our child protection and youth justice service. The Greens and I are passionate about the care of our children and about creating a society that strengthens all of our families so that the children in our care can grow and thrive, and it is gutting, actually, to be given a piece of legislation that is supposed to achieve that end but takes us further away from that goal.

That said, I want to be clear that this piece of legislation is not a black and white issue for us. We support, albeit with qualifications, three provisions in this bill, and would vote for legislation with just these changes. However, we deeply, deeply oppose the changes to enable wholesale delegation of core Child, Youth and Family powers, and we also oppose the token involvement of Māori in the development of this legislation when it is so central to their well-being and future. So we find ourselves unable to support it.

To be clear, in our opposition, we are in no way arguing for the status quo, and our opposition must not be interpreted in that way. We are arguing for a strong, functioning society that cares for our children, and for a care and protection system and a youth justice system that protect our children and the aspirations of Māori and of all our communities.

We support the raising of the age of care and protection to 18. I think it is a brilliant idea—it has been asked for for a long time—though we do agree with submitters that it does not actually make sense to raise the care and protection age and not the youth justice age. Most of these young people in the youth justice system are in care and protection—they are the same young people. So to say that you are a child until you are 18 in terms of care and protection but that you are an adult at this age if it is youth justice, when it is the same kid—how are they half adult, half child? It does not make sense. As the Office of the Children’s Commissioner said, it will create an administratively burdensome and inefficient system, not to mention that it will continue to breach our commitments to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is, frankly, embarrassing that New Zealand is one of the last countries in the world still treating children as adults in our justice system.

The Green Party, though, also supports the establishment of the new youth advocacy service in this legislation. That will support young people to express their views on matters that are important to them and will allow the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social Development to listen to their views on the operation and effectiveness of services provided under the Act—great. However, again, it could go further. We agreed with the submitters that international best practice would also have the role of that organisation being to connect children in care, to advocate for individual children in care—which is a core function that is missing from our system at the moment, and it is a check on the functioning of the system—and to empower children in care, supporting them to speak up and investing in training and development to grow their leadership. So it is a shame to us that this legislation is missing the opportunity to do that.

We also support embedding the views of children and young people in the new operating model, with the slight concern that we should not see children in isolation from families and that, actually, it needs to be supporting those families as well. But we do support new section 11(2)(c), which requires suitable supports to be provided for children who may have difficulties with expressing their view. That has been a glaring omission in our child protection and youth justice systems up to this point, and we are very pleased with that provision. However, we again support the view of, and the concern raised by, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner that it is not specific enough. Within the existing legislation, we have actually got a provision that says that the child’s views are supposed to be taken into account, but because there is not any detail in the legislation, it is not happening. So we supported those submitters who were asking for more detail so that, actually, the intent of the legislation would have more chance of being realised. Those are our areas of support, and they are significant things that we do support.

However, driving our opposition are those two major things, which cannot be avoided and which, for us, ruin this entire piece of legislation. To speak first to the monocultural design of this process, leading to the development of this legislation, initially, the expert panel that started all of this process off did not have one Māori member on it. It was only later, further on in the process when there was a stink about that, that the Minister for Social Development appointed one Māori member to that panel. The panel, in terms of its wide consultation, did not consult with Te Puni Kōkiri (TPK) or any iwi social service provider.

When you recognise that 60 percent of children in care at the moment are Māori and, historically, child protection and uplifting of children has been an absolute tool of colonisation—and this Government did not consider it necessary to consult with TPK or iwi social service providers. Of all the people it consulted, only 7 percent of them were Māori. They are 60 percent of the kids in care, and 7 percent of the people it talked to. It is a perpetuation of that monocultural design, and we are not going to get it right until we go back to the people who are affected—the people who know what works. On that basis alone, we cannot support this legislation.

Then, on top of that, this bill introduces wholesale delegation of powers. I think that Jacinda Ardern articulated really clearly in her speech why we are concerned about that, because this is the power to uplift children from their homes. That power is being taken away from social workers and police officers, who are specifically trained—and we have concerns about some of the limitations of that training at times—and given to, who knows who? We do not know who. As was said by the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services in its submission, it felt it could not even comment on this provision in the bill because, actually, nobody knows who these powers are going to be given to. You cannot even sensibly respond, because it is so broad that it could be any power given to almost anyone. That is not responsible lawmaking.

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner was quite tactful in its criticism, noting that the legislative process seemed to have outstripped the policy process—i.e., we are passing legislation without knowing what we are doing. Social Service Providers Aotearoa also pointed out—quite significantly, I believe—that the guidance provided by the State Services Commission clearly says that a delegation outside the Public Service should clearly specify which services or functions are to be delegated. This bill does not do that.

The Green Party would protect the independent relationship of NGOs with families and explicitly restrict coercive powers to the statutory sector. This bill does not do that. It risks fragmenting an already deeply fragmented system, which will put our children further at risk. We will not support legislation that could lead to the role of uplifting children being delegated to people outside the Public Service. We will not support legislation that could lead to profit-making organisations such as Serco playing an increased role in youth justice or in care and protection. We know that Serco is doing this currently in the United Kingdom. It has experience, but not the kind of experience we want. We have seen what has happened by giving Serco control of our prisons. Do we really—really—want to pass legislation that would enable if not this Minister then another Minister in the future to give it a role with our most vulnerable children? The Green Party does not.

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill. At this stage, we will be supporting this bill.

We agree with the majority of the bill. However, we do have some reservations, a few questions, and a few issues that we would like to address. Some of them are highlighted in the departmental report. Some of the evidence and the submissions were given during the Social Services Committee process, and a couple have actually already been mentioned and spoken about by a couple of the other parties earlier on tonight.

Of the five aims of this bill that we have heard about today, we agree with four of them in their entirety and we have some concerns with one of them. The first aim that we, obviously, agree with is the fact that this legislation extends the State’s responsibility for care and protection to a person’s 18th birthday. We agree with that. It also encourages the participation of children and young people in decisions that could significantly affect them. It ensures that, whenever possible, policies and services have regard to the views of children and young people, and we agree with that. It supports the set-up of independent advocacy services, with a particular focus on children and young people in care. We also agree with that.

The fifth one, which has been mentioned by the Opposition already today, is the fact that one of the aims is to allow a broader range of professionals to perform a wider set of tasks to help identify and meet the needs of vulnerable children and young people. Unfortunately, the detail that the Government has there, in that aim—in that one sentence—is probably the extent of the detail and the clarity in that legislation. One of the problems New Zealand First has is that it is so ambiguous and so wide ranging and so wide sweeping. The Minister for Social Development can stand up and talk about the help to the social workers, which they will get from professionals, such as from the education sector or the health sector, but the problem is that it is a double-edged sword, because what the Opposition is trying to highlight is the fact that it could be anybody. It could be the entire slippery slope or the first step down the privatisation pathway, and that is exactly what New Zealand First and the Opposition are disagreeing with.

I would just like to read a sentence that is in the introduction of the commentary on the bill. It says: “The bill seeks to achieve this last point”—which is the point I was just mentioning, about allowing a broader range of professionals—“by making the chief executive responsible for many tasks that social workers are currently responsible for.” What the Minister was actually trying to imply was that the chief executive would be supplementing the social workers’ tasks and not replacing them. But the fact is that in that sentence it says that the chief executive would be responsible for many tasks that social workers are currently responsible for. That is a direct replacement of what the social workers’ tasks are, not a supplement.

In fact, that comes in total contradiction to the mandatory registration rhetoric that the Government and the Minister are wanting. The Government, on the one hand, says that we need mandatory registration of social workers because it maintains standards, safety, qualifications, security, and robust regulations. But then within this legislation it actually disregards that entirely. What it does is it obviously highlights the once again overarching social investment approach that this legislation will be encouraged by.

I was not going to speak for too long on it, but it has been mentioned by Labour and the Green Party—the issues that they have with the age of the youth justice system not matching the lifting of the age of care and protection. It is quite frustrating to hear a lot of ideology and rhetoric, but not a lot of facts and data and research to back it up. Unfortunately, in the Labour Party’s minority report it states that it disagrees with the bill’s move to separate care and protection from the age of the youth justice system. The question that I put to the Labour Party is: now you have got youth advocacy groups, like JustSpeak, that want to increase the age of care and protection to 21, is the Labour Party saying that it would want to back the youth justice system age to 21? Because that is exactly what the first sentence says in the minority report.

Labour also says—and the Greens say it as well—that we are breaching UN conventions. That is absolutely not true. When we signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, we signed it with reservations. We signed it with reservations. I can quote it. It says that “The Government of New Zealand reserves the right not to apply article 37 (c) …”, which I have mentioned in this House previously. That article 37 (c) has got to do with the youth justice age and the mixing of children with adults. It states it right there. It is not hard to do the research.

The second point, and the major point, that the Labour Party and the Green Party are wanting to make about the youth justice age is that it is going to—what did they say—present practical difficulties and administrative complexity. Well, where is the evidence that that is going to happen. Where is the evidence that that is going to happen? The fact of the matter is that I specifically asked the officials in the select committee whether this would create the bureaucratic burden or the bureaucratic nightmare that the Labour Party and the Green Party have been espousing, and they said no. They said that a difference between the ages of the youth justice system and the age of State care and protection would not create any administrative issues. It would not create any administrative issues.

One of the other things—just lastly on this point before I move on—is the fact that the Greens said that it did not hear any arguments to justify continuing the lower age for youth justice. How about the fact that the youth justice system is failing quite demonstrably, and the fact that the Government has had to fork out a billion dollars to extend the number of prison beds? The fact is that half of all the current adult prison population has gone through the youth justice system. If the youth justice system was actually working, then we would not have the need to extend it and spend a billion dollars on extra prison beds. It is that simple. I could go on, on that point, for the rest of my time and longer, but I just want to quickly mention a couple of the issues that we have with the delegated powers.

Actually, the Public Service Association was the one that stated it the best, with regard to the stance that New Zealand First has with this. It said that “the core and unique role of social workers will be gradually eroded over time, with social workers gradually being replaced by a range of professionals untrained in statutory child protection work. This will lead to a tremendous loss of knowledge, skill and experience.” If we have a look at the legislation itself—like I stated right at the start—the way that the legislation is written is very vague, it is very ambiguous, and it is a double-edged sword.

I would just like to highlight new section 7C, in clause 7, which states the requirements for delegation to persons who are not social workers. This is when the delegation is given to people who are not qualified social workers. Before making a delegation to a person who is not a social worker, the chief executive must be satisfied that the person is appropriately qualified to perform the function or exercise the power, taking into account the person’s training, experience, and interpersonal skills. Then, however, it goes on to say that the chief executive may make a delegation to a person who does not meet the requirement in new section (2)(a), which I have just read out, if the delegation is made for the sole purpose of that delegate sub-delegating the function or power to a person who works under the management or supervision of the delegate.

What the provision, which is new section 7C(2), states right at the start, about the need for a person to be suitable even though they are not qualified for that role—it goes on to say that if that delegation is sub-delegated, then it is totally irrelevant. So we have got a few questions about the way in which the legislation is written. We have got a few concerns with the fact that this could be the slippery slope down the pathway of privatisation. We have heard Serco mentioned. We have got serious concerns and issues with that.

We have also got our strong views on the youth justice system and the age remaining the same. New Zealand First has the view, with regard to the youth justice system age, that we will not be entertaining any sort of conversation that wants to extend that when the system itself is failing in the first place. We will continue to support this bill at this stage, but we would like to have our questions and concerns answered throughout the rest of the process. Thank you.

It is with pleasure that I stand to support the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill in its second reading here tonight.

This bill is a first step in the reform of services for responding to the needs of vulnerable children, young people, and their families. This is a new system, and it will deliver a more child-centred system through a range of new initiatives, including extending the State’s responsibility for the care and protection of vulnerable young people until they turn 18. Vulnerable children and young people will have their voices heard when decisions are being made about issues that affect them. There will be an independent advocacy service established, and there will be a broader range of professionals enabled to deliver core functions and powers.

This bill is a significant shift from the status quo, and it is necessary because we know that children and young people who have been in care are far more likely to die at a young age, to leave school with fewer qualifications, to receive a benefit, to be convicted for criminal offending, and possibly to have children themselves who need care and protection support.

This is an important first step. We are going to do better. I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. Peeni Henare—5 minutes. Tēnā koe.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for this opportunity. I think the views of the Labour Party and the Green Party have been articulated quite well on this particular bill, the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill.

One of the pressing issues that come into my office in Tāmaki-makau-rau is around supporting families with issues they have with Child, Youth and Family—children who have been lost to State custody, grandparents who are seeking a role in the lives of their mokopuna—and I want to pick up and commend the point made by the member Jan Logie about Māori engagement in this particular process. The statistics are overwhelmingly clear. This Government prides itself on data and research; well, the numbers and the statistics are there. They say that 61 percent of children in State care are of Māori descent. My research tells me that an overwhelming number of them actually are from Tāmaki-makau-rau, live in Tāmaki-makau-rau, or find themselves placed in Tāmaki-makau-rau. So it is important that the services for our rangatahi, for our tamariki, are best advised and informed by the very people who are affected by them.

I want to commend Jan Logie’s comments about Māori participation, because we do support, in this particular bill, the youth voice being heard. We support that. I think that is a great commitment by this Government to allow the youth voice to be heard in deliberations on policy matters regarding children, young persons, and their families. I think that is an important part. I also think it is important to have an advocacy service to work alongside the likes of our out-of-Parliament offices to help and assist families in advocacy for children’s rights and services. I think that is a good thing.

But I want to touch on the point raised by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni about the funding, about the kinds of resources that this service will receive, and about whether or not that support and that funding is in line with the actual demand that is out there. The evidence is overwhelming, as far as I am concerned, about the number of tamariki—the number of children—who are involved with State services. Many of those families come into our offices, and the evidence is there. Just like most other bills—around policing, around advocacy—that are passed through this House, we are really concerned that the funding and support will not be there to make sure that the bills are actually meaningful, that the services fulfil the duties placed upon them or expected of them through bills like this. That is of serious concern to us.

My colleague Jacinda Ardern articulated very well the reason why we believe this bill is failing. That reason has already been canvassed well by this side of the House: the chief executive’s powers of delegation, where the powers of delegation go to, and who these people are that they will be giving such significant powers to in order to remove tamariki from family. That is of serious concern to us—serious concern—because what is being missed in a lot of the conversation from this particular Government is that, actually, quite often the State is the issue in these matters. The State is the actual issue in these matters, and, sadly, what is not being considered when we give such powers to the chief executive is the continued role of the State in that particular child’s life. Those are serious concerns. There is ambiguity around it—where are those powers going to go? Whom are those powers going to be given to? Those are serious questions that we—the Labour Party and the Green Party—have on this side of the House, and they are of real concern to us.

One of the other points that I thought was a bit strange from New Zealand First was about age settings. We like that the age of State care and protection will be shifted up to 18. We think that is a good thing. It does bring it in line with a few other things out there. In a conversation with my 20-year-old son as he was navigating the treacherous waters of teenage years—what is a rite of passage? How do you know the law is going to affect you? You get a licence at a different age to when you can join the army. Once upon a time that was out of step with when you could have a drink. It was out of step with State care and protection. We think that that is a sensible step, moving forward—to move it up to 18, to bring it in line with a lot of the other eligibility criteria for State services that young people are entitled to. We think that that is a step in the right direction.

But in spite of all of the support and all of the good things we see in this, like that particular part around the age of 18, like advocacy powers, and like youth involvement in the policy decision-making process, or certainly, in the informing of the policy decision-making process—we think those are all good things—the hurdle that is just too hard to get above is the delegate powers given to the chief executive. We want to know that, at the end of the day, the responsibility for such important decisions is a collective decision made by this House, something that we all agree on—not necessarily something that is just given to one individual, omnipotent.

I am also rather concerned that in this particular part of the bill we have not heard from the Māori Party. We have not heard from the Māori Party. We have spoken about the Māori involvement in this—a Māori watchful eye over this particular bill—and we are concerned that the voice of the Māori Party, the voice that claims to represent Māori interests at the Government table, is not being heard on this very important matter. That is of concern to us here in the Labour Party and on this side of the House. It is such an important issue—such an important issue.

I note an interesting comment from Mr Doocey regarding the 22 submitters, who, according to that member, had sort of a general agreement with the intention of the bill. As pointed out by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni, sure, there was agreement from many of the submitters on parts of the bill, but the devil is in the detail, and it was overwhelming from those submitters that the issue and the barrier that stands in front of the Labour Party’s and the Green Party’s support for this particular bill are insurmountable. Submitters’ issues relating to that particular part around the chief executive’s powers of delegation are still very evident. Their voices need to be heard, and we can guarantee this House that the Labour Party will certainly be challenging this all the way through the entire process, to make sure that there is not a lopsided approach in working with our families, in working with whānau, and in working with tamariki who, sadly, may have to come into State care.

Children and tamariki welfare is a very complex issue. We do not pretend to know everything, which is why it is important to listen to submitters—why it is important to take on advice and experiences from those who have been through the system and from those who work with the system. They are the people who are working with our whānau and our tamariki, and it is important to listen to them. I would hate for their voices to be silenced on such an important issue around the powers of delegation by the chief executive. We have canvassed quite well on this side, in the Labour Party, our particular areas of support, and those we will not be supporting. That is enough from me. Kia ora tātou.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill in this, its second reading.

The bill will extend the State’s responsibility for the care and protection of young people. It follows on from and is, in fact, the Government’s response to the Modernising Child, Youth and Family Expert Panel’s final report, released on 7 April. It is important to note that this represents the first steps in the actions the Government will take to reform a system and set of services that are in much need of reform—a system that currently does not place the child and the child’s needs at the centre of what it does and how it goes about doing the things it is set to do.

What the bill will do is it will extend State responsibility for the care and protection of vulnerable young people until they reach their 18th birthday. Importantly, it will ensure that those vulnerable young people are able to express their views and to have those views considered as part of decision making not only in their individual cases but also in the development of departmental services and of policy. It will establish a youth advocacy service, and it will permit a broader range of professionals to carry out functions under the Act.

The reason this, as a set of first steps, comes about is that the review and the report have shown that the system we have had for some years fails in that it has, we believe, the wrong focus. It does not have those vulnerable children at the heart of the perspectives it takes, the decisions it makes, and the actions that flow from that. It simply does not meet the needs of vulnerable children as they move into adulthood. It is fragmented, it lacks clear accountability, and it is not organised around that common purpose of the child at the centre. This represents a set of first steps to change that. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure, actually, to speak on this, the second reading of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill, and I would like to acknowledge all members of the Social Services Committee, who have had to hear submissions. I know that in this space a lot of trauma would have been spoken about, so I want to acknowledge the work that the committee has done, and I specifically want to acknowledge my colleague Carmel Sepuloni, who is our leader on that select committee, and also Jacinda Ardern, who is our spokesperson for children.

I am going to read something that has been produced, in terms of our support: “This bill contains the change we have pushed extremely hard for, and that is a raise in the age of care and protection. It is something we believe passionately in, and was the basis of our support for this bill in every stage—till this point. This is also the reason we will support this bill at second reading.” I also want to note that we disagree with the bill’s move to separate care and protection from the age of the youth justice system; this should be 18 years of age too.

I want to highlight the main issue that we in the Opposition have to this piece of legislation. This bill also contains: “The massive, regressive, and dangerous set of provisions, that will allow the chief executive to delegate powers that can currently only be performed by Child, Youth and Family social workers … There is no ability for Parliament to have oversight of these powers and almost no checks and balances in the way they will be delegated. We cannot support this provision when it could allow any professionals, at the whim of the chief executive, to hold powers like the removal of children. For our support of this bill to continue, we will be seeking significant changes to these provisions at committee stages.” I read that because I want that noted for the record.

I want to highlight, from the commentary that the select committee produced in respect of this bill, that the aims are to achieve a child-centred system, so I thought it was really important that we define what “child-centred” is. “Child-centred” is actually an application within the field of child development, and what it does is it allows the child to make their own choices and to establish their own ideas towards promoting competent communication and learning. It is also a concept that allows more freedom to the child, giving them the ability to use their own individual approaches, to explore their interests, and to ask their own questions. If we are going to say that this legislation is all about a child-centred system, I think that we should understand what that means. It is about promoting a child’s personal qualities, a child’s needs and best interests, their care, support, and well-being, how they attach to caring adults, and what impacts on their ability to grow and develop into caring adults.

When I was looking at definitions of “child-centred approach”, I found a definition on the Child, Youth and Family (CYF) Practice centre website, under a heading “Child-centred perspective”. It says: “Requires that we become familiar with adoption outcome research that helps us to understand children and their needs so that we can work in their best interests.” Under “Child-centred perspective” on the CYF website, it promotes adoption outcomes. So what does that naturally assume? We assume that removing children from their families is the best approach. I find that really bizarre. I then looked at adoption—where it came from and when we started using it. It was actually formerly used in the early 1900s, generally when children were born out of wedlock and families could not take care of their children. The origins of adoption were to protect the child from growing up with the stigma due to the circumstances of their birth, and we also realised that it was about protecting the mother and the birth family from this stigma. So that is where the history of adoption comes from.

What we know about adoption research is that it creates emotional and psychological problems for the child. We know that children experience a sense of abandonment and cope either by clinging on to people in relationships in an unconscious attempt to prevent others from abandoning them or by pushing people away because it is better not to care, because they are anticipating, all the time, that people are going to leave them and that when they leave them, they will be hurt by them. I find it incredible that that is what we are promoting. I guess my questions of this child-centred system are: will children get to choose whether they live with their biological parent or not—is that what this piece of legislation is promoting; will they live with and be raised by their biological parents; will they know who their family is; will they receive their medical history; and what will they be able to decide?

I am presuming, given we are creating this child-centred system, that we are going to actually ask children. We are going to say “Do you want to be removed from your parents or do you want to stay with your parents?” and then we are going to listen to them. So if the children say “We want to stay with our parents.”, then, actually, the system is going to allow the children to do that. Then, what the system should be doing, obviously, is supporting those families who, through a number of circumstances—we have already talked tonight about families or individuals who have addictions, and what we as a society are going to do to help people who have addictions. We are going to support them and provide them with all the support that they need to be able to, I guess, have treatment and rehabilitation so that they are not addicted to drugs and alcohol—right? We are going to do that. Are we going to do that for the families of these children? If we have a child-centred system, then, actually, that is exactly what we should be doing. So I kind of find it incredibly interesting, when we talk about child-centred systems, that we have not defined what they mean or been explicit in confirming that whatever children say they want, we are going to actually be able to meet their needs.

One of the other issues that this piece of legislation has highlighted is that we will encourage children and young people in decisions that significantly affect them, we will ensure that the policies and services have regard to the views of young people, we will support the setting up of all these independent advocacy services with a particular focus on children and young people, and we will allow a broader range of professionals to perform a wider set of tasks to help identify and meet the needs of vulnerable children and young people. Well, I think therein lies some of the issues that we have about this piece of legislation, because it says a whole lot about the needs, aspirations, and voices of young people, but I think we know that this bill has no intention of doing that at all. I think the Government has signalled that kinship care is a problem. Rather than supporting families to build resilience so that they are in the best possible position to meet the needs and aspirations of their children, the solution that the Government is proposing is just to rip those children out of their families and give them to somebody else so that they do not have to worry about the needs of the families that these children come from.

I would like to quote from Associate Professor Mike O’Brien, who is the Child Poverty Action Group social security spokesperson. He said, within the context of this bill, “The Bill will only be effective if it is well-resourced and if there is a commitment to providing the best possible opportunities for all children. We need well-resourced social services with high quality social workers as a vital part of a comprehensive approach to children. The test for the Bill lies in whether Government provides the budget to ensure that all children are properly provided for and well-protected.” Because, at the end of the day, if we are not going to do that, if we are not going to provide the resources that not only the children need to thrive but the families from which those children come need to thrive—because they do not have a random relationship with those families; they have a concrete relationship with those families—and if the solution is to take children out of their families so they have no ongoing relationship with the child, as adoption research has proven, it is not actually in the best interests of children. Kia ora.

Before I begin, could I just acknowledge the announcement today from the Hon David Cunliffe that he will be retiring at the election and acknowledge that he has been a long-serving member of this House. He has filled a number of important roles, and I wish him all the very best for the future.

At the heart of this Government’s philosophy has been its real determination to lift standards, to lift aspirations, and to lift the means of support for those who are most vulnerable in our society. In many respects, it is encapsulated in the social investment approach. It is something that I am incredibly proud of, because we all know that if we can help those who are most at risk in our society, then we have a real opportunity not only to change their lives for all time but also to improve the quality of our society overall.

Whether it has been tackling our alcohol laws, our drug laws, raising achievement and putting more resources into schools, particularly for those in low-decile areas—and I commend the incredible work of the Hon Hekia Parata in that respect—or the outstanding work that the Hon Anne Tolley is doing at the moment to ensure that our vulnerable children are protected, that we raise the age of State care not just to 18, as the previous speaker was mentioning, but where necessary to 21, maybe even to 25, these are all great things, as is the outstanding work that the Minister of Justice is doing with the number of initiatives that the Hon Amy Adams is putting forward. All of these in totality add up to a really significant package of reforms. I believe that they will make an enormous difference.

I am fully in support of this bill. I thank all members who have contributed to a thoughtful debate, and I really look forward to seeing these initiatives in action.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Social Services Committee by majority be agreed to.