Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure actually to speak on this the second reading of the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Advocacy Workforce and Age Settings) Amendment Bill and I would like to acknowledge all members of the Social Services Committee who have had to hear submissions. I know that in this space a lot of trauma would have been spoken about so I want to acknowledge the work that the committee has done and I specifically want to acknowledge my colleague Carmel Sepuloni who is our leader on that select committee and also Jacinda Ardern who is our spokesperson for children. I am going to read something that has been produced in terms of our support: This bill contains the change we have pushed extremely hard for and that is a raise in the age of care and protection. It is something we believe passionately in and was the basis of our support for this bill in every stage—till this point. This is also the reason we will support this bill at second reading." I also want to note that we disagree with the bill's move to separate care and protection from the age of the youth justice system; this should be 18 years of age too. I want to highlight the main issue that we in the Opposition have to this piece of legislation. This bill also contains: "The massive regressive and dangerous set of provisions that will allow the chief executive to delegate powers that can currently only be performed by Child Youth and Family social workers … There is no ability for Parliament to have oversight of these powers and almost no checks and balances in the way they will be delegated. We cannot support this provision when it could allow any professionals at the whim of the chief executive to hold powers like the removal of children. For our support of this bill to continue we will be seeking significant changes to these provisions at committee stages." I read that because I want that noted for the record. I want to highlight from the commentary that the select committee produced in respect of this bill that the aims are to achieve a child-centred system so I thought it was really important that we define what "child-centred" is. "Child-centred" is actually an application within the field of child development and what it does is it allows the child to make their own choices and to establish their own ideas towards promoting competent communication and learning. It is also a concept that allows more freedom to the child giving them the ability to use their own individual approaches to explore their interests and to ask their own questions. If we are going to say that this legislation is all about a child-centred system I think that we should understand what that means. It is about promoting a child's personal qualities a child's needs and best interests their care support and well-being how they attach to caring adults and what impacts on their ability to grow and develop into caring adults. When I was looking at definitions of "child-centred approach" I found a definition on the Child Youth and Family (CYF) Practice centre website under a heading "Child-centred perspective". It says: "Requires that we become familiar with adoption outcome research that helps us to understand children and their needs so that we can work in their best interests." Under "Child-centred perspective" on the CYF website it promotes adoption outcomes. So what does that naturally assume? We assume that removing children from their families is the best approach. I find that really bizarre. I then looked at adoption—where it came from and when we started using it. It was actually formerly used in the early 1900s generally when children were born out of wedlock and families could not take care of their children. The origins of adoption were to protect the child from growing up with the stigma due to the circumstances of their birth and we also realised that it was about protecting the mother and the birth family from this stigma. So that is where the history of adoption comes from. What we know about adoption research is that it creates emotional and psychological problems for the child. We know that children experience a sense of abandonment and cope either by clinging on to people in relationships in an unconscious attempt to prevent others from abandoning them or by pushing people away because it is better not to care because they are anticipating all the time that people are going to leave them and that when they leave them they will be hurt by them. I find it incredible that that is what we are promoting. I guess my questions of this child-centred system are: will children get to choose whether they live with their biological parent or not—is that what this piece of legislation is promoting; will they live with and be raised by their biological parents; will they know who their family is; will they receive their medical history; and what will they be able to decide? I am presuming given we are creating this child-centred system that we are going to actually ask children. We are going to say "Do you want to be removed from your parents or do you want to stay with your parents?" and then we are going to listen to them. So if the children say "We want to stay with our parents." then actually the system is going to allow the children to do that. Then what the system should be doing obviously is supporting those families who through a number of circumstances—we have already talked tonight about families or individuals who have addictions and what we as a society are going to do to help people who have addictions. We are going to support them and provide them with all the support that they need to be able to I guess have treatment and rehabilitation so that they are not addicted to drugs and alcohol—right? We are going to do that. Are we going to do that for the families of these children? If we have a child-centred system then actually that is exactly what we should be doing. So I kind of find it incredibly interesting when we talk about child-centred systems that we have not defined what they mean or been explicit in confirming that whatever children say they want we are going to actually be able to meet their needs. One of the other issues that this piece of legislation has highlighted is that we will encourage children and young people in decisions that significantly affect them we will ensure that the policies and services have regard to the views of young people we will support the setting up of all these independent advocacy services with a particular focus on children and young people and we will allow a broader range of professionals to perform a wider set of tasks to help identify and meet the needs of vulnerable children and young people. Well I think therein lies some of the issues that we have about this piece of legislation because it says a whole lot about the needs aspirations and voices of young people but I think we know that this bill has no intention of doing that at all. I think the Government has signalled that kinship care is a problem. Rather than supporting families to build resilience so that they are in the best possible position to meet the needs and aspirations of their children the solution that the Government is proposing is just to rip those children out of their families and give them to somebody else so that they do not have to worry about the needs of the families that these children come from. I would like to quote from Associate Professor Mike O'Brien who is the Child Poverty Action Group social security spokesperson. He said within the context of this bill "The Bill will only be effective if it is well-resourced and if there is a commitment to providing the best possible opportunities for all children. We need well-resourced social services with high quality social workers as a vital part of a comprehensive approach to children. The test for the Bill lies in whether Government provides the budget to ensure that all children are properly provided for and well-protected." Because at the end of the day if we are not going to do that if we are not going to provide the resources that not only the children need to thrive but the families from which those children come need to thrive—because they do not have a random relationship with those families; they have a concrete relationship with those families—and if the solution is to take children out of their families so they have no ongoing relationship with the child as adoption research has proven it is not actually in the best interests of children. Kia ora."