Ardern Jacinda: Vulnerable Children Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Vulnerable Children Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17889. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is with great sadness that I rise after my Supplementary Order Paper 436 has been defeated but we now come to the point—the summary debate in a sense—around the Vulnerable Children Bill and whether or not itis appropriately titled through the fact that it is indeed called the Vulnerable Children Bill. I think my colleague Poto Williams really summed up some of the issues around the problematic nature of trying to partition off who is vulnerable and who is not when you are referring to children. It was a really significant debate amongst the children’s workforce and the children’s sector when the first green paper went out. I think that in particular she has raised an important point around family violence and the fact that technically if you are taking a definition of vulnerable children in the way that Child Youth and Family currently behaves being exposed to family violence is not by default what it tends to be treating as a vulnerability. The fact is that you are not automatically brought within the remit of work of Child Youth and Family simply by witnessing family violence. I do not think that that is because the evidence does not stack up for that—to the contrary the evidence absolutely does—but simply because the scale of cases faced by Child Youth and Family means I think that it is unable to do so. That needs to change. That absolutely needs to change.I became even more convinced of that some time ago now after I read every coroners report from the past few years that involved the death of a child in the care of Child Youth and Family—every one. The thing that struck me the most was not the similarities between the cases or how devastating each and every one of them was but the number of cases where children and young people had harmed themselves. It was not necessarily because they had been subjected to direct child abuse or because they had had violence against them but in every single one of those cases where that child or young person had harmed themselves there had been significant family violence in their home—significant family violence. There was one case in particular that still stays in my mind. It reminded me of how important it is that we recognise the impact that family violence has on a child and the vulnerability that flows from that. The fact that there is no default support or counselling even for those children is a significant issue let alone the fact that there is no default position that Child Youth and Family takes heed of when children are exposed to family violence. We heard from the Children’s Commissioner some time ago that there was a move to try to move away from the default of police referring family violence cases to Child Youth and Family because it was simply being overwhelmed with cases. We must be mindful of the impact that family violence has on vulnerability.When you use the words “vulnerable children” as well—and again I refer to whether or not it is an appropriate title for this bill—this actually should be about vulnerable children and young people. As my colleague Sue Moroney has said we have sought and will continue to seek for the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act to take into its auspices 18-year-olds. The care of the State should not cut out at the time a child turns 17. That point was made so strongly by the Dingwall Trust in the magnificent submission from a young person there. But on behalf of young people there was a written submission from Robin who is 20 years old. She said: “The average age of leaving parental care in New Zealand is 23 so why does the care system relinquish all responsibility for us when legally we are not deemed adults? Why are we taken out of care when we cannot legally sign for papers such as tenancy housing bill payments let alone vote. We don’t need the added stress. Picture your average teenager dealing with emotional hormonal or physical changes to the body with the added strain from school exams peer pressure all while trying to fit in and develop their own identities. The difference between this teenager and a teen in care is that at age 17 your average teen is not expected to do this on their own. At 17 your average teen has emotional support from family. We do not. Financial support from family. We do not. Has a place to fall back on we do not. We are alone. We’re alone.” I think that completelysummarises what needs to change in the care and protection system for those young people.Yes the Minister for Social Development has put in provisions particularly in Part 3 where if a young person who is over the age of 17 and in need of additional support is referred to the chief executive the chief executive “must provide or arrange the provision of such advice and non-financial assistance as the chief executive in his or her discretion considers necessary to enable the person to achieve independence;”. So around the notion of vulnerability we still have a high level of discretion and that is where it becomes problematic. So we wanted to take out some of that discretion. We wanted some of those places where it says “may” to become “must” particularly when the bill talks about financial assistance. Currently in this bill the chief executive is able to make a judgment and “may provide or arrange the provision of such financial assistance … in his or her discretion”. There is also no obligation for them to provide for housing and that is probably the biggest gap we have.This bill applies presumably to vulnerable children but also to young people because special guardianship orders for instance can apply to an 18-year-old and yet the additional arrangements under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act apply only to 17-year-olds so already we have a bit of a gap there. But when we are talking about the vulnerability of children we are putting children out of State care at 17 without having adequate housing arrangements for that small little gap of young people. If you are 18 Housing New Zealand can suddenly take an interest in you; if you are 17 it will not. I have seen examples of that. I visited a youth services provider once and heard the story of a young person who had gone to it for housing help. They were no longer under the care of Child Youth and Family. The only place the youth services provider could refer them to was the women’s refuge. That was the only place the provider was able to find shelter for that young person. So we have an absolute gap that would be fixed simply by moving the obligation of Child Youth and Family so that it continues to have a responsibility to a child who has been put under the care of the State until they turn 18.Granted the Minister has said in the debate on this bill that up until the age of 20 we want to make some options available for their transition to independence. But there is just a bit too much discretion around that. It is very much an optional thing. Sure some young people will not want to continue to be in residential care but let us keep the option open for them and let us put the onus on the State to provide that if that is what they seek.Additionally you can see then why the Vulnerable Children Bill perhaps should be the “Vulnerable Children and Young Persons Bill”. They are whom it should have covered. Perhaps our wider point all the way through this debate though has been that actually the word “vulnerable” is fraught. If we want to lift the well-being of vulnerable children we should actually be focusing on the well-being of every child. If we put in place provisions that have an element of universalism and then we overlay that with additional targeted support for those who need it most we are more likely to have beneficial outcomes for a wider range of children. Yes of course there are going to be families and children who are at the hardest end of neglect abuse and offending who need the direct and immediate attention of the State. None of what we have said around lifting the well-being of all children tries to dilute that—not at all.As I made the point yesterday we have tried too hard in this bill—or the Government has—to try to separate out social issues that cannot be separated out. The Government has tried to say that abuse sits here neglect sits here other issues like domestic and family violence sit over here—you barely get a mention of it in some of the work that we have seen off the back of this action plan—and material deprivationand poverty sit way over here. In fact let us dump a whole lot of personal responsibility mantra over the top of it. The Government has tried to compartmentalise and partition it and you simply cannot do that when it comes to children.