Prasad Rajen: Vulnerable Children Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Vulnerable Children Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17880. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Bula vinaka Mr Chairman. I want to talk about Part 3 of the Vulnerable Children Bill and share with the Committee a number of concerns I have and work my way through to talking about Supplementary Order Paper 437 which is in my name. I accept that this part of the bill is a sincere attempt to alter the practice around vulnerable children so as such it is to be taken seriously and as my colleague Jacinda Ardern said Labour supports this bill and we support explicitlythe kinds of provisions that this section is about. I want to go through those and end by saying that there is a critical element missing. Let me say that for me as a professional social worker and a practitioner in this field for a long time this is probably the most serious amendment that I would seek. It is one that the profession has required for a long time but one that successive parliaments and successive Ministers have not been able to address and I am suggesting that the time has come to address that.This is the part of the bill that suggests some very very serious changes. Clause 102 talks about taking a holistic approach. These are words that we hear very often both in the social work field and in others as well but when applied to social work and social work practice these words carry a particular meaning. Clause 102 takes the real sense of holistic. It is really saying that the approach taken in decisions affecting children has to be holistic. That means that all of the factors that impact on a vulnerable child must be taken into account. To do that requires access to a whole lot of knowledge and that is often missing in the thinking practice and behaviour of many who use terms like “holistic approach”. A whole library is written about the holistic approach in social work practice. Very little of that translates into those who tell us that they are practising using a holistic approach because it simply does not happen.These are critical tests about what holistic is what its components are and how theoretical ideas research ideas and research findings dovetail with the ability to do the work the ability to use your skills to get the point at which you are able to assess or analyse the particular situation for a vulnerable child. That is a particular one. So in order for that clause to be satisfied requires a particular kind of practitioner—one whom currently we have no guarantee is regularly available not just in the State sector but in the voluntary sector as well.There is another clause clause 104 that actually requires that when a person who has been found guilty of abusing children has subsequent children they have to be carefully assessed “to the satisfaction of a social worker”. The amended legislation is silent on what kind of social worker that is so it could be anybody. I think this Parliament ought to seek guarantees that the social worker who is to be satisfied that a parent who has a subsequent child will be disabled from having that child must be a person who demonstrates his or her skills awareness knowledge and attributes to the satisfaction of some external authority. But there is nothing in this particular bill or in the current policy surrounding social work in New Zealand that will actually give us that guarantee. The assessment of parents of subsequent children is a very serious holistic assessment and the person or the group of people doing that must be able to demonstrate a particular set of attributes.As to clause 110 I say to the Minister for Social Development that in the end I would like her to respond to my Supplementary Order Paper and the change it recommends because if there are strong reasons as to why the Minister is not going down that track then I think this Committee ought to be given that explanation. The family group conferences are also being redeveloped by clause 110. To develop plans and plans that will list the kinds of changes an individual or a family would have to go through to satisfy in respect of the vulnerability of another child is no longer an issue. In order to do that the practice more often than not is to bring a group of people together who then out of their own experiences suggest the kinds of changes that a family would be required to go through and often that is not even vetted by those who have expertise through training and the professionalism to do this. Yet to meet this particular requirement the Minister requires very skilled interventions and we are not guaranteed that.The same applies to courts requiring a report from a social worker before making certain orders of the type that Jacinda Ardern was talking about earlier. What kind ofsocial worker what kind of report and what are the attributes of that social worker? What my Supplementary Order Paper says is that social workers will within a 5-year period be required to be registered. Five years is enough time; in fact it is too long. The Social Workers Registration Board and the training institutions tell me that to get social workers professionally trained and registered can be done in a far shorter time. This Supplementary Order Paper says we should start that process. I ask the Minister to be bold and accept that because it is simply saying that in 5 years’ time this will happen and the process can start. We do have the training institutions. There are not many but they are very variable. What they produce is very variable: some good some bad some indifferent. There are many others that are not.If we look at the figures within Child Youth and Family of the 1337 total staff 856 are registered and of those 228 are supervisors so that means there is still a significant number of front-line social workers who are untrained and here is a risk. To satisfy the provisions of Part 3 this bill requires well-trained social workers who are held to a particular standard. The registration holds them to that standard and we can improve on that as well. This Supplementary Order Paper does that and I really urge the Minister to think about that and to accept it and I hope that her party will support this. I know that this Supplementary Order Paper has been to Cabinet and been put aside. The White Paper for Vulnerable Children the vulnerable children programme was supposed to be addressing all of this but it is not. The kinds of requirements that are contained in Part 3 are serious and they require a much higher level of skill than those currently guaranteed across the board.If there are reasons as to why it is not the time to require social workers to be registered I ask the Minister to explain what those reasons are. The Supplementary Order Paper was designed with some thought. These are comments that I have made elsewhere. These are comments that others have made. These are requirements the profession has and I think that Parliament should now move on that with some urgency. The time frame is there. Five years is plenty of time to develop our courses to take our social workers through to the level of this provision. I think that even those within Child Youth and Family who are currently untrained and not registered but doing very very serious work will get to meet the standards far more quickly. In the past Child Youth and Family has fought against these kinds of standards and it will not get itself there. It has to be this Parliament that requires it to get to that point. If that happens then I think there is a good chance that the higher requirement of Part 3 of this bill the interests of vulnerable children might be satisfied.I really would like to hear the Minister on these particular concerns that I have raised and on this particular Supplementary Order Paper and on the reasons for not supporting these kinds of provisions which I trust—