Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1972. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to contribute to the second reading debate on the Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill. I will begin as other members have done as well and thank and commend Tracey Martin for bringing this bill to the House. It is absolutely the right thing to do and I am pleased to see that it has been supported by the Government. I wonder whether or not greater immediacy on the implementation of the bill would still equally be supported by the Government. If the Government indeed agrees that this is a beneficial amendment then it is beneficial tomorrow rather than in some time in the future. So we would continue to encourage Government members to just take that extra step.I think the member Tracey Martin has done well to bring the stories of the origins of this bill to the House. I want to just expand though a little bit on the distinction that we have in our legislation currently around a foster child and the difference in treatment that their carers would receive if they were on an unsupported child’s benefit. There is not parity between the two in terms of those additional allowances. I guess that extending the clothing allowance is a significant contribution but our concern is that we would like to see parity in all allowances. Why the difference for a child who is being cared for by someone who is not their biological parent but through reasons that are not of their own choosing are having to be supported by someone else? It is through the goodwill of that someone else that they are being raised in a loving and caring home but often without the financial resources to necessarily deal with that new member of their home.In fact if anything it is often a foster carer who may be able to do more pre-planning around these circumstances to deal with the change in income that they may experience as a result of taking on a child in their home whereas those who are on an unsupported child’s benefit are often family members who are taking in a child because they feel compelled to ensure that that child is still cared for within their family. So they are less likely necessarily to be able to manage their financial circumstances or to plan their financial circumstances to accommodate that extra cost. So it is Labour policy that we would like to see for instance grandparents raising grandchildren—which represents a significant number of people who are in receipt of the unsupported child’s benefit—receiving the same access to allowances as a foster care family would. We think that makes absolute sense.One of our other concerns about the unsupported child’s benefit—and it seems wise to raise it at this juncture—is that a number of families struggle to access the unsupported child’s benefit. I have had a number of grandparents who have contacted my office seeking assistance just to get that basic allowance let alone access to the other allowances that the member is trying to extend to them. The threshold for an unsupported child’s benefit is very high but the family member has to demonstrate that there has been a breakdown in the relationship that means that that child is no longer able to be cared for by their biological parent or their long-term guardian and caregiver. That often places a grandparent in a very difficult situation where they are forced to demonstrate the dysfunction in their own family even though they may have been caring for that child for a number of months thus demonstrating that they are the ones who have been compelled to take up the care of that child.The other issue that it causes is that if a grandparent seeks the unsupported child’s benefit and there is a situation where there is a parent who is in receipt of a benefit that is a result of caring for a child the grandparent seeking that benefit and support triggers Work and Income to see that the parent is no longer caring for the child and is no longer eligible for for instance sole parent support. That causes that parent to then go to try to take back a child from a grandparent who has cared for them because that is the best place for them to be cared for. I am not arguing that it is right that someone be able to access an unsupported child’s benefit when they are not supporting a child but you can see the complexity of the family situations that these grandparents are often having to deal with. They are difficult and we should ease the path as much as possible. At the moment having to care for a child for up to a year to demonstrate that they are the long-term caregiver is a significant barrier for those grandparents.Two other issues that I would like to raise that are relevant to this debate include that a lot of our foster carers are currently in receipt of these allowances—and they might include allowances for Christmas and birthday presents health and education costs and other financial assistance for recreational items that just come with caring for a child. A foster carer who may be in receipt of those allowances often is now being encouraged by the Ministry of Social Development to take bulk one-off payments in exchange for becoming Home for Life parents. There are two issues with this. Home for Life seems to have been used as an intermediary for adoption rather than actually reforming our troubled and antiquated adoption laws. Secondly Home for Life in and of itself has meant that some families have thought that they would get greater legal certainty by moving to this different classification when actually to date they still deal with the same issues that they might have dealt with as a foster carer—for instance a litigious biological parent who constantly challenges any decisions or battles for access rights when that is clearly not appropriate—and none of that is necessarily resolved with Home for Life. In fact all it does is leave what was previously a foster carer without the allowances and access for support that they may have otherwise had.A lot of families who moved to Home for Life do so because they want to indicate to the child they care for that it is not about that financial support and that they want that legal recognition. But when they do so they are also finding that they are abandoned by Child Youth and Family in terms of long-term support on the legal challenges they face with biological parents and with other issues like conduct disorder. So if we want to make sure that we are giving a secure family home for a child who isbeing supported either on an unsupported child’s benefit with a foster care family or by Home for Life we need to make sure that the support is appropriately tailored for each of those different circumstances and currently it is not.The second point that I wanted to raise relates to the age at which a child is covered for these different categories. The Department of Child Youth and Family Services Act currently classifies a child as being a child until their 17th birthday. If I asked any parent in this House whether they at the time that their child turned 17 would pack their bags send them out the door and tell them never to return ask for money help support housing food clothing or even emotional help because it is game up they are 17 and on their way—I know plenty of parents who at times would like to have done that but reasonably never would have. And yet the State the parent of last resort does exactly that. It functionally switches off all legal support at the age of 17. I think it would be hard for many of us in this House to fathom that which is why those who work in the care and protection space—the Dingwall Trust Lifewise and many other agencies—are calling upon us as parliamentarians to lift the age from 17 to at least 18. Let us at least bridge the gaps so that a young person is eligible to sign a tenancy agreement get a Housing New Zealand house or access the unemployment benefit if they need to. But at the moment we have a gap in our law.I would plead with members of this House to take up the opportunity to bridge that gap. We have asked Ministers before but it seems pertinent here because that would of course—as far as I understand it—extend the support that this bill would give to what I think is a reasonable age and that is just the age of 18. These are extra issues that I would ask this House to consider but otherwise I commend Tracy Martin for the work she has done in bringing this bill to the House.