Sepuloni Carmel; Williams PotoHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): I thought following the last committee stage session in the House that I'd go away and then look at any questions that were asked that I didn't get the opportunity to respond to and take this time to actually respond to those questions that were asked in our last session. So I thought I'd just do that now. There are lots of areas that I think we've traversed enough but let me respond to the questions that were asked that I didn't get an opportunity to respond to last time. Simon O'Connor asked a question saying he understood that registered social worker" has been repealed but the definition of "particular condition" raises a question for him and he wanted to know why that had been removed and whether that was absolutely necessary. Just in response to that the introduction of scopes of practice resulted in many consequential amendments in Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 187. There are numerous but minor amendments that shift the provision for putting conditions on a social worker's annual practising certificate to instead be on an individual social worker's scope of practice. In the SOP drafting it was considered that the distinction of "particular conditions" was no longer needed because the power to put conditions on an individual social worker's scope of practice in the SOP was sufficient. Another question asked by Simon O'Connor was the question about a qualification-setting ability or mandate or delegation of the board or whether or not there was going to be a reliance on that as with just about other qualifications through the NZQA. Section 5B in new Part 1A requires the board to prescribe which qualifications are needed so that a social worker having obtained the qualifications will be considered competent to practise as a social worker within a scope of practice and is therefore entitled to register. The board has a close and collaborative working relationship with NZQA which has been demonstrated in the board's current function in section 99(1)(f) to recognise educational qualifications for the purposes of the Act. The board is able to draw on advice from and/or involve the NZQA in carrying its new function in section 5B. So hopefully that responds to that question.Another question asked by Simon O'Connor in relation to the social work profession—"1 or more social work services performed by the social work profession". He was asking basically about the scopes of practice again and wanted to know from me whether I as Minister would be—sorry it's just quite hard for me to understand what the question was that was put forward. OK let's just go. Basically the question is about the definition of scope of practice in clause 5A(3) of this SOP and we're quite comfortable with the language in the definition of scope of practice. It simply refers to social work services that people in the social work profession are permitted to perform. The words "perform" and "services" which he raised concerns about are commonly used alongside each other in legislation so there's no anomaly there or anything to be concerned about with regards to the use of language as it's a common occurrence that that's used in legislation. I was asked by Dan Bidois whether or not I'd spoken to organisations that had a vested interest in scopes of practice. I did list them last week and I also just wanted to mention that I've met with representatives from the social work sector and I've had regular meetings with the board and they're all supportive of including scopes of practice. The Social Work Alliance is a broad grouping of organisations with quite diverse perspectives and has really provided a useful vehicle for ensuring different views have been present during the development of the SOP and informing the advice of the Ministry of Social Development. In fact we're not aware of any organisations opposing the scopes of practice. There are some individuals who have been recently expressing concerns about how they may be used but I need to state that for some time there will only be a general scope of practice that all social workers will need to be registered within. This will be broad by its general nature.Can I refer to another question that came up last time by Maureen Pugh. She said "Are we going to have subsets of a main set or a main scope of practice? Will there be a specialist perhaps—scopes of practice for specialist social workers?" She asked you know perhaps maybe for senior mental health maybe youth maybe disability and the question was basically the extent of what the scopes might extend to. The SOP follows modern legislative practice in providing a framework for the Social Workers Registration Board to develop scopes of practice. Scopes of practice will themselves not be part of this Act. So that gives us the flexibility that we talked about last week for scopes of practice to be changed and updated as time goes by without needing them to be returned to Parliament. So again the legislation provides for there to be scopes of practice but doesn't outline specifically what they are as we didn't think it needed to be in the legislation because we did need that flexibility. We had a question about the word "may" being a noncommittal word. I think that was the member Maureen Pugh again and that word being used in section 5A(2) of new Part 1A. Can I just say that we're quite comfortable—we've gone back and checked. In terms of the context in which that word is used it's usual practice; there's nothing that sets it apart from how it might be used in any other piece of legislation. There are a few other questions that I feel like we traversed well enough last week so I'll leave it there for now and we will continue with this debate. CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Before I call the Hon Louise Upston I just have to let you know that you're on your last call for this Part."