Turner Judy: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Turner Judy: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:647;Page:15979] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I will comment briefly on some of the concerns that I think the Social Services Committee still has around this board. We certainly welcome the opportunity for social workers to become a registered profession and I understand the need for the current provisions to provide for social workers to choose to register voluntarily. We are looking forward to the day when possibly that can become a mandatory requirement because I think that we have a large number of people now who technically would call themselves social workers but who I suspect are not and who would not meet the requirements to register with the registration board. The board does not currently require people to have a qualification in social work but some provisions were put in that allowed people time to prove their competency. Those were people who had worked in the area of social work for years and years without qualifications but who did a very fine job and who would have been lost to the profession if they had been required to get a qualification. Those people should be registered so there is I think a 6-year period that we gave originally for the mop-up of that situation so that those people could become registered. But I think that we are fast approaching the day when we need to see that situation change and when we need to step up with this profession and have it as a fully professional body with a real clarity around who can call themselves social workers. 
The concern I have is that this profession for me can beggar belief a little bit. I will start off by saying that I am very supportive of the work social workers do particularly those who have statutory powers and who work for Child Youth and Family. They do an unenviable job dealing with some extremely difficult cases and most of us admire hugely the people who put their name forward to do that kind of work. So what I say now is not in any way denigrating that role and the need for it but I have a real concern around the fact that the culture—not just within Child Youth and Family but also around social work—seems to me at times to be characterised a lot by uncertainty and fear where social workers are unsure of what risks there may be for them personally if they make a wrong decision. 
Although the Social Workers Registration Board also has a disciplinary function currently very little of the money that is put aside for disciplinary purposes is used. The hope is that in future there will be a greater uptake of that as some of the complaints we hear about as MPs filter through and the board is able to deal with them. But one of the problems—and I know that it is a problem that the Minister is setting about fixing—is that there have not been clear processes particularly for Government-employed social workers and social work to complain through some sort of official process. Therefore there is not a clear path currently in place to have complaints directed through where necessary to the Social Workers Registration Board. That needs to be fixed. I know that the Government has contracts only with providers that can demonstrate they have a complaints process in place but even then it seems unclear to those who work with the board that there is any flow-through of those complaints to them for professional assessment. I think that that is something that needs to be strengthened over time. 
We talk all the time about the fact that the general public who have dealings with Child Youth and Family particularly are currently a little hamstrung if they want to lay a complaint but I also suspect that if social workers felt a lot safer in their job then they would have less to fear. I think that some of the relationship falls down between the Government department and a particular client often because there is no clear process and advocacy for people who want to lay a complaint. Often those people have an ongoing relationship with Child Youth and Family; the service has their children in care and it determines how often they get to visit their children and under what circumstances. Therefore for people in those circumstances to go and lay a complaint is a very scary thing because of the power that social workers have over them. But on the other side of the coin I think that we have a profession that does not always feel clear that it is protected. 
Report noted.