Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Kia orana and thank you. I want to in my short contribution come from the perspective of having been a member of a community panel called the community child protection review panel which is a panel that is put together from community members who have some expertise in the sector who look at the notifications that come to Child Youth and Family where the duty social worker has closed off the case. The panel is the community's response in order to ensure that no child gets left behind or that there are no issues that have not been addressed by the social worker in the passage of that notification through the Child Youth and Family site. In that regard I want to refer to a public statement that the Minister for Social Development made on 1 June with regard to this particular bill because I think that that statement and the subsequent notes that I have read have caused me to ask more questions than I have answers to. I think this is the appropriate forum as this bill goes to a select committee to put on record those questions that I think need to be addressed.Firstly I want to say that the Minister made the statement that it will be a new child-centred operating model with a single point of accountability [that] will be in place by the end of March 2017 focused on prevention intensive intervention care support services transition support and preventing youth offending and reoffending." The single point of accountability is the first point I want to ask a question about because does that not currently occur when a child who is notified to Child Youth and Family for example has a social worker—a social worker who is no doubt part of a team but who is a single person—charged with the care and protection issues of that particular child? How is this issue of a single point of accountability different from current practice and what resources what model is going to be in place?The other issue that I am concerned about is the fact that in the Minister's statement she talked about prevention and care support services in the same sentence as she talked about preventing youth offending and reoffending. We all know that the current model of Child Youth and Family is under review and that we have care and protection services and we have youth offending services. Some of the discussion tonight has been about the age of eligibility being raised to 18 for care and protection being out of line with youth offending. It might be a little bit of a stretch but one of the questions that I want to ask is why youth offending and reoffending are included in the same sentence as care support services. Does this mean that we are looking at a model of service that covers both streams of work? That would seem to be out of line with what is best practice and it is a question I would like the select committee to examine.The role of the community child protection review panel which is a community panel set up of local experts is one that I am hoping they keep after the overall review of Child Youth and Family because its specific role is to ensure that outside experts are brought in to scrutinise the notifications that come through to Child Youth and Family. I say that because the Minister said in her statement that one of the four main aspects of this particular piece of legislation—one of the key aspects—is enabling a "broader range of professionals with specialist skills who will widen the expertise within the new model to perform some functions under the Act. Social workers would still be the main professionals responsible" but this legislation is actually looking at bringing other people in. I say again: how is that different to what is currently in place and what of the model that is currently in place will remain? I am really hopeful—and I would want the select committee to examine—that community involvement through these community child protection review panels which were set up out of an environment where there were children being harmed and also losing their lives while in the care of Child Youth and Family remains.There are aspects of this bill that we are really encouraged to see including increasing the age of care to 18. As Jacinda Ardern said in her earlier contribution she has been lobbying for that for a long time. I just want to echo what other members have said about the contribution from the Dingwall Trust: it would be great if we could extend that age to 25 in certain cases where it is warranted. Thank you for the call."