Wall Louisa: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 19 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18744. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa):Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this third reading of the legislation arising from the Vulnerable Children Bill. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues Rajen Prasad and Jacinda Ardern who are not here and who have worked diligently prior to my becoming a member of the Social Services Committee on the passage of this legislation.I want to commend the Minister for Social Development for taking responsibility for a cohort of New Zealand children who are within her area of responsibility. I can see the rationale for highlighting and ensuring that our most vulnerable children—our children who are encapsulated for whatever reason particularly within our Child Youth and Family system—are being targeted and highlighted and the rationale for us supporting and protecting their positive health and well-being.I want to start with a few comments based on the Minister’s introduction about what a society should do and guarantee for all our young children. I believe a society should ensure that all young people who are born in New Zealand have access to the clinical services that are going to ensure that when they arrive in the world here that they have access to doctors to midwives and to all the services that will ensure their positive health and development.I believe that our children should expect a free education system here in New Zealand which starts with early childhood education. I think that the prioritisation however from our perspective needs to occur before our children are born. From this side’s perspective we think that issues related to housing provision the quality of that housing provision and making sure that families have an adequate income to make sure that they can have a wage relative to the cost of living in this country is a context that cannot be denied and it cannot be underestimated in terms of that framework around which this whole focus on vulnerable children comes from.Unless we address the symptoms of society unless we address why we are having over 150000 Child Youth and Family notifications every year when nearly 30000 of those notifications are actually substantiated this will continue just to be either window dressing or putting band-aids on problems. My contribution is going to focus on I guess another prioritisation and another set of things that we could be doing as a Government as a society to make sure that we do not produce children who are going to end up in our care system.The reality of this piece of legislation and what we are talking about is that it is a bill that essentially is about children who will be encapsulated within the State. These are the children who are vulnerable to neglect and to abuse because they live in circumstances where their parents have got problems. They have got alcohol problems. They have got drug problems. They have got housing problems. We are going to assist these children who are in State care but I would prefer and our side would prefer that we focus on ensuring our kids do not end up in the State system.We would prioritise for example some of the solutions that the group led by Professor Jonathan Boston and put together by our Office of the Children’s Commissioner focused on. Their whole mandate was about Solutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand: Evidence for Action. Some of our prioritisation would be about how we prevent kids from getting in. We prevent kids from getting in—and they have given us the solutions. There are six things that we could do immediately that would make sure that our kids get the best start in life and that we support those who are the most vulnerable.Recommendation No. 1 is that child support payments should be made to sole parents. That was the primary recommendation. We know that children growing up in sole parent households are vulnerable. That would be their No. 1 priority. The second priority is to ensure a warrant of fitness for all rental properties. Unless our families are within a quality warm dry home it means they are living in unstable circumstances; they are living in circumstances where their needs cannot be met.The third priority was a public-private partnership around microfinancing. Too many of our vulnerable families are living in debt so they need help in terms of budgeting and they need help in terms of financial literacy but at the end of the day if the money that they are receiving even if it is a benefit is not enough to pay for the rent to pay for the power to pay for food on the table there is nothing that that family can do to get out of that circumstance.They also recommended food in schools because the reality is that a lot of our children are hungry. In terms of the Minister’s responsibility yes she is responsible for nearly 30000 kids in Child Youth and Family care but she is also responsible for 180000 children who are the children of parents who are on a benefit. That is the greater context that we should be talking about. In addition to the Fonterra and the Sanitarium KickStart Breakfast programme in schools we should be having hot meals. That is the sad reality in New Zealand today: our children are hungry and we need to feed them.The fifth priority was about young people—young parents. They should be supported because we know that education is a resilience that they need so we need a continuation of our teen parent units. Whilst I was in Invercargill last week I visited a teen parent unit. The wonderful thing about these teen parent units is that young parents can come together. They can learn to be good parents but they can also learn together and actually have some dreams and aspirations about getting National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and then transitioning on to higher education. That is what those teen parent units provide for these young kids. It is actually a stable support system which means they learn to be good parents their children go to the local early childhood education centre and they are also on a pathway to a better life for themselves and their children.The final one was about community hubs. The whole focus on community hubs was about ensuring we have access to those services that the Minister talked about earlier—health services education services and social services. In terms of a couple of big deliberations and debates we had within the select committee there was one about the requirement of safety checking of people who are paid to work with children. Essentially this bill is going to check people who are paid by the Government to work with children. What it does not do is check people who are working with children and who are either voluntary or who are working with Scout groups or sports groups or other groups because of the compliance costs.There was a huge debate within the select committee about whether or not all people who work with children should be required to go through some sort of police checking. This legislation in addition to identifying the children at risk supporting them and protecting them was also about identifying abusers. That was what this legislation was about. We identify the abusers and then we make sure that we know where they are so we can monitor any form of engagement they have with our kids.I have not got much longer to contribute to this debate. What I want to finish on is a story from my own electorate and it is relevant to Melissa Lee’s contribution about poverty not being the primary reason for child abuse. I would agree with that but people who live in poverty live in stress. My local police commander told me a story about what they did over the Christmas period. They identified the 50 families with whom they have had the greatest family violence interactions. What they did was visit those families before Christmas and they gave them a food parcel. They visited those families after Christmas and they gave them a food parcel. They said to those families: “If you need help call us. Don’t call us after the family violence incident; call us beforehand and we will come and we will support you.” Of those 50 families they had only one incident over the Christmas - New Year period.So what that means is that poverty actually does contribute to how stressful families are. It does contribute to how adults interact with each other. It does contribute to the consumption in some instances of alcohol. So for people to dismiss poverty as one of the underlying reasons why our children are vulnerable actually means that they are not in the reality of the children whom we are here to protect. Thank you.