Bennett Paula: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett Paula: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4343. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the estimates for Vote Social Development. There is no doubt about it that this is a big year for social development. If you look across what we are doing as far as the progression and the work in this portfolio you cannot go further than I think three main areas of work and probably counting from there. The main areas would certainly be in welfare reform. We have already seen welfare reform phase one go through. They would certainly be around the white paper and the changes within Child Youth and Family and the developments there and also investing in services for outcomes which relates to changes in how we are contracting with NGOs in particular but also I think wider than that in the work that we are doing in communities. 
Added to that of course is the work that we are doing with youth which has been a huge focus for us and along with the Associate Ministers in this portfolio we have made a substantial difference. I know that Minister Borrows with his Associate Minister hat on would take the opportunity to talk a lot about youth offending and the progress that we have seen there in the changes to not just sentencing I think but more the preventive work that is being done in community organisations and with the police as well. That investment which we made years ago is certainly paying off but I will leave that to him. 
I thought it was opportune because we have certainly had questions around it today. Today we released the summary of the green paper and the submissions that were made on that in the writing of the white paper. So it is an opportune time to sort of look at where we are at and what we are doing when it comes to Child Youth and Family and the notifications there. On average at the moment we are getting around 150000 to 155000 notifications of which around 55000 are deemed to need follow-up. And from there we have about 22000 substantiated cases of abuse or neglect. When you look at the figures in the areas of physical abuse and sexual abuse they are not actually increasing. They have been fairly stable if you like over a long period of time in this country. Where you see a huge increase is in emotional abuse and how that is categorised. So in one respect you can sort of say that it is horrific that any level of abuse is going up but I think if you looked at it from a different angle you would say that at least we are identifying it now as what it is and in many cases taking it a bit more seriously. That was under Labour quite frankly so I am not standing here to say that that has particularly changed there. What we have seen is most certainly an increase and then changes in how we approach it. 
Differential response within Child Youth and Family is making a big difference. You see that in the estimates as to where we put that kind of funding. That is where we have community organisations dealing with the lower levels of abuse and neglect of these children and that makes a difference. Community organisations are at times able to get into people’s homes differently from quite frankly how social workers or police can. They can work with them in a different way and at times get different results from perhaps that social worker who is seen as being statutory. That does not mean of course that social workers are not stepping in and unfortunately doing far too much of their share of this work—hence why we have put 96 more social workers in: 16 supervisors with 80 more. Fifty-seven have now been appointed which I am absolutely thrilled about. They are in positions training up and getting to know the system. 
What we also need to do is look carefully at whom Child Youth and Family is working with. I know that the Opposition has expressed interest in this and I think it really is an area that we are constantly looking at—whether there is any filtering done by police for example who make up something like from memory 76 percent of the notifications that are coming through. At the moment if there is a child in the house—they do not even need to witness violence or anything else—the police pass that notification directly on to Child Youth and Family. We need to actually have that discussion and that debate as to whether or not there should be a little more filtering done at the police end because at the end of the day you have social workers then spreading themselves across the board and perhaps working on cases that they do not need to and as a consequence you get a number of false positives. 
Certainly what you see coming out of submissions is the debate around targeting. You have universal services that cross across health education and of course social development but equally you then need to look at whom you are targeting. So if there is anything in that work that you are doing within Child Youth and Family to prevent some of these children from being abused and neglected it is looking at who they are and where they are and then working it out and making sure we have got the absolute right service delivery from the right professionals around them. 
This is a substantial portfolio—you could say with a substantial Minister I suppose if you had a sense of humour—so what it needs is that concerted vision and approach to it from all directions—