Williams Poto: Vulnerable Children Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Vulnerable Children Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17882. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Meitaki Mr Chairman. I was hoping to speak on Part 1 of the Vulnerable Children Bill last night but the opportunity did not happen so thank you for the opportunity to speak on Part 3.I want to talk about how excited we were in the community family violence sector to be given the chance to make submissions on the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children—the process that kick-started the development of this bill. The organisation that I was with at the time worked really hard in partnership with many agencies in the community to ensure that we had as many people as possible who had the opportunity to present their ideas on the paper. We even co-hosted the Minister for Social Development on one of her roadshows and I recall thanking the Minister at the time for providing us with the opportunity to work on what I thought was going to be the most important children’s legislation for many years.It does seem at this point to be a bit of a wasted opportunity. There were over 8000 submissions made and all of the ones that I read clearly stated that it was impossible to make a worthwhile submission without a working definition of vulnerability rather than targeting universality of services which was with the preferred option and that we should define and measure the outcomes we wanted for our children. The sector was clear. We should set out our bottom lines for children: warm dry housing access to medical care food to eat decent education and being safe. You can say that that is what we want for all of our kids. But when you make a statement about what you want for your kids you need to be brave enough to measure your work against it. You need to be brave and ambitious for our kids.Specifically in Part 3 there are a couple of parts I want to talk about: family group conferences and Home for Life. Although I support the intent that every child deserves to be in a stable home environment and that the responsible caregivers and that child benefit from the formalisation of this agreement that permits the carers to carry out their duties lawfully I worry about the number of children who have been harmed while in the care of those carers.The intent of this bill is to protect children from harm but so many have actually been harmed while in the care of the State-supported caregiver. Let us face it the Government has been a bad and neglectful parent. Although I express concern at this aspect I must also from personal experience tell you that I am not comfortable with the ministry’s ability to assess and monitor those people whom we entrust our children to. I do not in any way want to diminish the work of our Child Youth and Family social workers. They have extraordinary workloads and they do the very best that they can but they have way too much to do. The Minister herself said in the House yesterday that the number of notifications and investigations was increasing and there was an ever-increasing burden on the teams of social work staff to get the job done and done properly.I have through very dear friends of mine some knowledge of when this can go wrong. My friends are a lovely couple who at the time had a 10-year-old and they became caregivers. They wanted to share their home with another child so they filled in the application submitted to the police vetting attended a couple of meetings and were part-way through the vetting process as it was not completed by the ministry only to get a request for a placement to be made with them. A very troubled 16-year-old boy was placed in their care. Why was this boy placed in their care before they had completed the proper security clearances? Because the ministry is desperate for somewhere to place our children.It is not just him. There is an extraordinary amount of pressure on the staff to find suitable placements and often as in this case there is not enough time to complete all the processes. There is just a child needing a placement and the staff acting in the best way that they can to get the job done. In the case of my friends it did not go well. It could have gone better. When the boy who was placed with them started acting out in a sexually inappropriate way towards their 10-year-old son they had to call Child Youth and Family to take him back. They could not continue to put their own child at risk.This situation speaks to me of the woeful lack of support the ministry has for its placement teams. It has to rush through prospective caregivers without proper checking in order to fill placements for kids and they do not match the placements well. Mismatched placements do not make for successful placements.I have to say from my dealings with Child Youth and Family that there are significant staffing resource pressures in every area of social work. The Minister confirmed it yesterday when she said that notifications and investigations were increasing and yet this bill which could have delivered so much as my colleague saidyesterday to stop the children from falling in the stream is not delivering enough. If we want to ensure the safety of our children in a Home for Life placement we need to ensure that we are doing everything we can to make that placement safe for all involved.I also welcome the intent to strengthen the family group conference process. Family group conferences are a great mechanism to gain the support of the child’s wider community be they grandparents aunts and uncles and other people who are keen on ensuring the child does well such as teachers social workers and the like. I know having sat in on a few of these conferences that they are staff resource - heavy and as the process of engagement is set out in legislation it must be followed accurately in order to comply. In this regard I support any measure that makes the process easier on the child and the family while retaining its robust character. I do worry that the increasing use of the family whānau agreements which are not binding will increase as the level of resourcing for family group conferences is high in comparison.I mention my concern for the staffing resources available to Child Youth and Family to conduct their core businesses as I have seen firsthand how hard they work but when they are required to do more and more investigations and respond to increasing levels of notification I worry that they are only able to give these cases the most cursory attention.I want to pick up on a comment that Jan Logie made yesterday regarding family violence about the incidence of family violence as a factor of vulnerability for children. You are absolutely right. The Chief Social Worker Paul Nixon talks about the unholy trinity in relation to the top three indicators of vulnerability for children who come to the notice of Child Youth and Family and those indicators are when the parent is impacted by mental illness problematic substance abuse and family violence. The unholy trinity and vulnerability for kids is a big concern. Family violence being a factor in that child’s home is not an automatic criterion for Child Youth and Family to investigate the safety in that child’s life.It is not widely known but family violence in the home does not meet the threshold for which Child Youth and Family is required to investigate. It is only when family violence is a repeated issue in that child’s life. How much trauma must a child experience before our Child Youth and Family social workers will be permitted to investigate and intervene? It is astonishing and it is very wrong. It is so not in keeping with the intent of this bill which is to make our most vulnerable children safer.If Child Youth and Family do not as a matter of right investigate when family violence is a feature in a child’s life until that harm is well and truly done then what can be done for that child? There are too many kids impacted by family violence for the social workers to deal with. We have a bill called the Vulnerable Children Bill with no working definition of vulnerability where the Chief Social Worker’s definition of vulnerability includes family violence and we do not intervene when family violence is present. Are you confused? I certainly am. Thank you.