Hutchison Paul: Social Workers Registration Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Social Workers Registration Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4858] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 National is supporting the Social Workers Registration Bill very much because we want to ensure that there are high standards of professionalism amongst social workers. I do note that Minister Maharey pointed out that the genesis of this bill has taken in the order of 20 to 25 years and I too would like to pay tribute to social workers who face enormous challenges in their everyday work. 
I note that in the 2001 census there were 10401 social workers in New Zealand. But what I observe as I go about my electorate work is that there seems to be a tremendous range of qualifications for social workers. I have certainly seen incidents in my electorate particularly around Huntly where situations unfortunately have not been well handled—very very difficult situations requiring huge levels of skill and huge levels of professionalism. I will cite just two examples. One was a situation where a woman’s husband was found molesting the children. He was sent to jail and unfortunately those children were sent to another family despite the woman exhorting the department to allow her to keep the children. They were sent to another family a caretaker family where they were molested. 
On the other side of the coin I have heard of situations where foster parents who have very high levels of professionalism and great levels of sincerity have taken in children from the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and they have not been given the full information about those children. The children then have turned round and accused the foster parents of molesting them and those parents have gone through the horrendous situation of clearing their names. That sort of situation is absolutely a great worry and explains the huge need for this Social Workers Registration Bill. 
I note that of the 37 submissions the three main concerns were lack of explicit reference to the Treaty of Waitangi the voluntary nature of the registration system and the lack of recognition of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers. I would like to concentrate a little on mandatory registration but before I do so I want to point out that in March 2000 Judge Mick Brown was asked by the Minister of Social Welfare and Employment to undertake reviews into Department of Child Youth and Family Services procedures. In his report he noted particularly that he had great concerns about the professionalism of social workers with particular reference to issues of training qualification and supervision. It was observed that only 44 percent of front-line staff and only 55 percent of new staff had a B-level social work qualification and that there could be difficulties in staff being released for training. He also noted the very high turnover rates. 
The report included a variety of recommendations one of them being that the introduction of social worker registration be given urgency. Here we are 2½ years later and if this is urgency in the Minister’s terms I do not know what urgency is. It has taken 2½ years to start finally implementing the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown. 
The second point he made was that by mid-2002 social workers should not be able to exercise statutory powers except when co-working with registered social workers or members of the police. I hope the Minister will be able to assure the House that that is the case. I fear that it is not the case and the situations that I cited in and around Huntly were such instances. They absolutely illustrate the need to implement the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown which I am afraid this Minister has sadly neglected. 
The third recommendation was that the department must set an agreed percentage of registered staff as a goal that must be realised by mid-2002. Once again I hope the Minister will give an explanation why he has failed in achieving that recommendation. 
After the Judge Mick Brown report the Ministry of Social Policy published a discussion paper on the registration of social workers. Written submissions were received on that policy paper focus groups were held etc. and a summary report was published. The report notes that there is general support for a registration system for social workers. All written respondents considered that registration should be compulsory for statutory Government social workers. Again I ask the Minister what he is doing about that. How far as he got in achieving it? This is a hugely important matter for solving the everyday practical problems that we see hit the newspapers in New Zealand from time to time. I suggest that the Minister has again failed to achieve the very simple basic recommendations that Judge Mick Brown submitted almost over 2½ years ago. 
With regard to mandatory registration the bill provides for voluntary registration of social workers. Only registered social workers will have the right to practice under that title but the bill will not stop people from practising social work. I note that the submitters were concerned that non-registered social workers will not be subject to the complaints and disciplinary processes that will be applied to registered social workers. Again particularly in the statutory area it is of huge importance that unqualified social workers will not be subjected to the disciplinary processes that we would absolutely expect them to be subject to. I note that the select committee agreed that all social workers should meet a set standard of practice. I also note that one of the great absences in this bill is that it does not mention supervision or supervised practice nor continued professional education. If ever there was an area for continuous quality assurance for peer review and for quality-improvement activities it must be within the high-risk area of social work. The bill does nothing to address that. I think that is a huge gap and I hope the Minister will take that huge gap very seriously. 
I note that one of the difficulties not sorted out by the bill is that for registration to be made mandatory the term “social worker” would need to be defined. We have over 10000 so-called social workers in New Zealand and despite a genesis of 25 years for this bill to come about again the Minister has failed to grapple with the fundamental question of what is a social worker. Surely once we get into the high-risk area it is absolutely vital that they are appropriately mandatorily registered in order to ensure that there are high standards and to ensure that the public is appropriately safeguarded. 
I also note that the board is required by clause 102 to review the operation of the Act 3 years after full enactment. Again I think that is absolutely important. It behoves the Minister at the time to do so. It may well not be Minister Maharey because in 3 years’ time we will have a National Government. We will be ensuring that there is a review of this Act. I have said that we will support it at this stage of events but this lazy Labour Minister who has failed to achieve the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown will fortunately not be around to do the quite proper thing that clause 102 suggests which is a review of the Act. 
The last thing I want to talk about briefly relates to the Treaty of Waitangi and ethnic representation. I note that a common criticism by submitters was that the bill does not contain special reference to the treaty. Submitters argued that the treaty is the basis from which social work practice is developed. They say that including explicit reference to the treaty would give recognition to the position of Maori as tangata whenua and to the right that comes with that position for Maori to determine their own social work processes. I am afraid that I cannot entirely agree with that but we certainly do support the bill.