Naylor Jono: Urgent Debates — Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015ReportText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNaylor Jono: Urgent Debates — Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015Report[Sitting date: 27 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6275. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONO NAYLOR (National): I perhaps will pick up a little bit on where my colleague Matt Doocey just left off but firstly I just want to say that this report is the whole reason why we have a Children’s Commissioner. It is important that we have somebody who sits externally to the system who can provide some commentary on the system can provide some advocacy and can provide some autonomous accountability in terms of the plight of children in New Zealand. That is the role of the Children’s Commissioner and that is what this report has done.In some sense there is no new news here. These are things that have already been identified I guess but it is useful when you have a report like this to put them all in the one place and then to be able to move on. It is I think a really difficult thing for us to address. It is a difficult thing for us to realise all of us who are involved in the Government or Parliament who are ultimately responsible for the way the Child Youth and Family system works and how it is treating our most vulnerable young people.This report is I guess very confrontational in terms of the things that we need to address but I think it will ultimately provide a better outcome. I think it has again been highlighted today that this is something that the Minister for Social Development has already been identifying. It confirms that she is on the right track with establishing her Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty and with establishing her Youth Advisory Group. If this were simple to solve 14 reviews would have solved it in the past. Any one of those 14 reviews surely would have identified a simple answer had it been available but these are deep and long-entrenched issues that we need to address.The Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989—I think it was just the Children and Young Persons Act originally—was groundbreaking in its time but it is certainly time that we look at a complete overhaul as to the way that we do this. I spent a short period of my time as a Child Youth and Family social worker. I can recall a particular instance in 1997 effectively with eight social workers and two police in a scene that I could describe only as storming somebody’s house and uplifting four children aged 5 to 12 from their mother and stepfather a week before Christmas while they were sitting around in front of their Christmas tree. The images of that scene are etched firmly in my mind 20 years later and I can only begin to imagine how firmly they are etched in the minds of those children as to what happened. There were good sound social work reasons for us to take that action. All the evidence pointed towards us taking that action but to this day I am not entirely convinced whether the emotional harm that we inflicted on those young people in dragging them out of their house in the way that we did was any less than perhaps what they might have experienced had they remained in that household.The difficulty is that our social workers as Mr Hipkins said earlier are in a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation. If they do not act and something happens you can bet your bottom dollar there would be another snap debate in this House and there would be a big public outcry and then when they do take action people say they are over the top. We have got to make sure that we protect young people and children to the best of our ability. We also need to make sure that we give those dedicated social workers the very best system to work within that we can so they can do the very best that they can.The biggest protective factor for young people that I have ever identified in probably 20 years of youth and social work is that they feel connected to something that is bigger than themselves whether it be their family a sports team a drama club—whatever it is. When we bring children into the care of the State for their own protection that is the hardest thing for us to replicate because we have a bureaucracy because we have structures and because we have a certain way of doing things in order to provide appropriate I must say accountabilities. I have full confidence in this Minister and I have full confidence in this Government to do this overhaul of the Child Youth and Family to ensure that we will do the very best for these young people.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.