Copeland Gordon: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Copeland Gordon: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7566. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 Last week the Hon Ruth Dyson the Minister with responsibility for Child Youth and Family acknowledged during question time that the department is responding to United Future’s call for a complaints authority to provide a place of recourse for adults dealing with her department. Although United Future is thrilled to hear that a work stream is developing on this issue we want to make it perfectly clear exactly what it is we are asking the Government to consider. Our call has been for an independent complaints authority with independence similar to that of the Police Complaints Authority. The independence of such an authority is necessary for two reasons. Firstly it is necessary because of the statutory powers that Child Youth and Family has to execute serious interventions into families based on a lower burden of proof than is required by the police seeking an arrest warrant. United Future understands and supports the need for this lesser burden of proof due to the very private and highly confidential nature of abuse within family contexts. However this necessarily liberal approach to legal interventions only strengthens our insistence that decisions should be subject to independent scrutiny if and when a family member believes he or she has been wrongly judged and/or dealt with in an unfair manner. 
The second reason we believe that this complaints authority should be independent is that we want complainants to have faith in the process. A complaints department at the local Child Youth and Family office for example is far too much self-referral for a department that has such immense and wide-reaching powers. United Future does not see the outcome of such an authority as being punitive. Identifying systemic weaknesses and poor practice should be for the purpose of correction and continuous improvement. Quality assurance activities should be the normal response to a complaint being upheld either fully or partly. United Future’s suggestion is that if in the opinion of the proposed complaints authority serious misconduct by a social worker has occurred then it is the social worker’s registration body not the authority that should decide that person’s fate. 
What then could this new authority look like and what could it be in practice? United Future notes that the Police Complaints Authority receives approximately 2000 complaints a year and about 13 percent are upheld. This works out to be about 343 complainants. Most complaints are resolved through mediation. About six or seven staff work there and it costs around $1.5 million to $2 million a year. This is a small outlay for the credibility it gives to police work in New Zealand and a similar situation could apply to the independent complaints authority for Child Youth and Family that we are proposing. 
When families feel so backed into a corner that they join forces with others to name and shame Child Youth and Family workers on a website then the best action this Government could take to protect its staff is to provide an independent complaints authority so that issues can be fairly investigated and addressed. United Future is not proposing a “shame and blame” authority but an open and transparent investigative process that gives both complainants and Child Youth and Family staff the chance to appropriately articulate their position in a way that is helpful and able to bring closure to a dispute. In short we believe that this independent complaints authority would be a vast improvement on the current situation. It would allow people who feel that they have been wrongly dealt with some recourse and it should result in a far better system for the all-important goal of the complaints authority which is of course to protect on an ongoing basis the best interests of the beautiful children of New Zealand.