Ardern Jacinda: Vulnerable Children Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Vulnerable Children Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13385. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): Thank you Minister for Social Development for outlining the rationale behind what is a bill with many many elements to it and one for which I hope the Social Services Committee will have enough time and space available for both ourselves and the public to give due consideration to the bill. I also want to acknowledge Minister that there has been a long process in reaching this final stage for the Vulnerable Children Bill beginning with the green paper. It is correct that at the time the green paper was first brought into the public domain it was Labour’s view that enough evidence already existed around what we needed to do collectively to address the challenge of not only child protection issues but wider child well-being issues. But there is no doubt that since the green paper process began there has been unprecedented engagement both by the general public and also by those who work in the children’s sector more generally. From the green paper process to the white paper process then finally through to the action plan I think there have been two very clear messages that have come through.The first has been the desire that Parliament—but particularly the Government—brought in its perspective around the issue of vulnerability. It is a plea that Labour has made continually—that if you want to look at well-being for children generally if you want to take a preventative approach to child protection issues we do need to look at issues like child poverty. It is one of the single biggest determinants for child well-being if you look at all of the research and evidence that exist. There are small glimmers in this bill around the action plan that the Minister intends for Government departments to come on board with where we could use that action plan to ensure that a family’s economic well-being is a key consideration for the Government. I will come to that. But we must make sure that that is what happens and at the moment it is a bit of an openquestion. So that would be Labour’s first plea: let us broaden the perspective that we take on child well-being; let us consider child poverty. Let us act on it.We agree with the Minister that we must work together. There was a strong message that the public wanted a cross-party approach that goes beyond electoral cycles when it comes to child protection issues. I agree with the Minister that we should be able to take the politics out of it and it should come down to a simple matter of an evidence base. In fact that has been Labour’s hope from the beginning. We made the offer to work collaboratively in October 2009 we made it again in July 2011 and I made it again in January 2012. It is an offer I make again today.Hon Paula Bennett: Respond to my letter then.JACINDA ARDERN: I also responded to the Minister today on her broader question around the Children’s Action Plan and more specifically the Children’s Teams. Labour gives its pledge that in Government we will continue with the broad framework that has been set out by the Minister. We maintain our right however to review the action plan based on evidence continue what is working and revise what is not. We maintain our position that we have severe concerns with the risk predictor model and as I have stated that we wish to broaden generally the view of child well-being and be much more holistic. But we believe we would be doing a disservice to the sector and the public who have engaged in this process if we were to dump the plan as a whole. There are good elements to this plan. We acknowledge that. That is the pledge that Labour gives today to the sector and to the Government.I want to go through some of the key elements of this particular bill though to highlight some of the areas that we will be looking atat the select committee. As the Minister has highlighted one key element of this bill actually brings together something that Labour has been advocating for some time via our Child Poverty Reduction and Eradication Bill and that this to have a cross-government plan for children’s well-being. Probably where there is one main point of difference though is that Labour wants to see the Government commit to targets to reduce child poverty. At the moment we have a general framework but we have no specific targets. We think it is much easier to hold the Government to account whichever party happens to be in Government if we are very specific about what we hope to achieve. So that is something that we will be asking questions about at the select committee.We also want assurances from the Government that the one note in the bill about the action plan the Vulnerable Children’s Plan can include improving children’s economic and social well-being. We want to see what specifically that means and whether it means we will be looking directly at child poverty. Otherwise this element of the bill very closely mirrors the Labour member’s bill that is in my name and we are pleased to see that this element is going to progress more quickly in this form. But like I said we will be seeking a bit more meat on the bones when it comes to that plan which is a bit of a hollow plan at the moment.The second element of the bill is to require State services to have policies in place containing provisions on the identification and reporting of child abuse and neglect. This provision has been called pseudo-mandatory reporting. I understand the Minister’s rationale for not going as far as having mandatory reporting. We ourselves have said that we think that before mandatory reporting comes into place you need to have two elements. You need to have appropriate training for front-line workers who are required to identify child abuse and neglect. Otherwise you run the risk of over-reporting and as a result either Child Youth and Family being overwhelmed with reports of child abuse that are false reports or those most significant reports getting swamped and not addressed in a timely manner. So we will be seeking at the select committee some assurances and some evidence that training will be occurring because it is not containedin this bill. The work that groups like Child Matters does should be happening across the board. If we are requiring some form of plan for reporting we should be requiring that that training goes alongside it. We also want to ensure that Child Youth and Family is appropriately resourced to deal with any increase in reporting. At the moment we are continually expressing our concern that it is under-resourced at present. That will be an issue that we will continue to raise in this House and at the select committee.The third element is the new standard safety checks for employees. There are a number of issues that we would like to get into. I believe that the Ministry of Education has been heavily involved in these provisions. One question I will raise now though is why alongside this we still have not made the step of mandatory registration for social workers. If we are seeking these kinds of safety checks for employees surely we would finally take that step. I know that the registration board has been seeking that move for some time. Labour has been seeking that move for some time. We will want to explore at the select committee why we have not taken that step.Probably one of the most controversial elements of this bill though is allowing for new civil orders the child harm prevention orders. Labour has said from the outset that of course we want to support measures that protect children from harm but we will be seeking evidence at the select committee that that is what these orders will do particularly because this is such a significant change and because of the threshold around the burden required to impose a significant order. The regulatory impact statement by the Ministry of Justice tries to liken these orders to those in overseas jurisdictions but in fact I have not seen any evidence of any overseas jurisdiction that allows an order to be in place where there has not been a criminal conviction. So that is a considerable change in the threshold. We accept that the Minister is still setting a bar that has to be reached via the justice system but still it is on the balance of evidence rather than a criminal conviction. That deserves significant scrutiny at the select committee and we have already expressed our concerns. Our spokesperson on justice Andrew Little will speak further to that point in his contribution to this House.I want to commend the fact that the Minister has heard concerns about children in foster care and their need for care to go beyond the age of 17. That is something I absolutely agree with. I believe that it should be legislated. I would like to see how far that support will go. I believe that it needs to go into pastoral care and not just financial care and that is something that I look forward to discussing at the select committee. Equally there is merit in reversing the onus of proof where parents have already proven that they have failed in their responsibility to care for their current children and where they look to have further children. I do believe that there is justification for reversing the onus as the Minister has done.Overall as I have said Labour supports measures that evidence shows will protect children. We absolutely agree that children need to be at the centre of everything we do. We will bring in a Minister for Children. We will have a Ministry for Children. We will give greater support to the Children’s Commissioner to be independent. We will make sure that children are indeed at the heart of everything we do but we will also make sure that there is continuity of policy.