Sepuloni CarmelCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): There are four key changes in this bill. It is extending the age of State care and protection to a young person's 18th birthday; ensuring the views of children and young people are taken into account as part of decision making at an individual level and in the development of services and policy; supporting the establishment of an independent youth advocacy service; and enabling a broader range of professionals with specialist skills who will widen the expertise within the new model to perform some functions under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. Social workers will still be the main professionals responsible for carrying out these functions. I want to speak to those four key changes individually.Firstly on raising the age of care. We on this side of the House—and I know other political parties as well—have fought long and hard for the age of care to be raised. So it is good that in this bill we will be considering that. Before we left Government we had a bill on the Order Paper that would have seen the age of care increased. That was the Children Young Persons and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 6). That was unfortunately dumped by the succeeding Government. We are now at that point when we are reconsidering the age but there was a time some years back when the Government could have done the right thing. We have then tried to use bills before Parliament to raise the age. These too have been defeated. Last year we instigated a petition alongside the likes of Lifewise and the Dingwall Trust to raise the age so we are pleased that the Government has finally acted on these calls—it just took a little bit of time.Currently the law sets out that a young person remains under the care of the chief executive only until they turn 17. This creates a significant gap in support services. Young people at this age are ineligible for a Housing New Zealand house for instance and accessing a benefit at this age is incredibly difficult. Our disappointment with this bill is that the bill only raises the age for care and protection purposes which will now mean we have a different age for care and protection than we have for youth justice. Youth justice provisions are set out in the Child Young Persons and Their Families Act. It makes sense to keep these ages linked especially given the likelihood that offending at a young age is often an indication of wider care and protection issues. Of the 1982 offenders in the Youth Court last year Child Youth and Family (CYF) had prior involvement in about 67 percent of all the cases. The UN has repeatedly raised our failure to meet our United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child obligations because we try 17-year-olds in our adult justice system. This was an opportunity to remedy that. Unfortunately the Government has not taken that opportunity.The Youth Court is not a light touch. It has the ability to apply tough parameters around a young person or to escalate a case to the adult system if need be. It is often a much more confrontational environment for a young person who is placed at the centre of the process and directly held to account—rather than being a bystander as often the case in the adult justice system. The Government is currently considering a lift in the jurisdiction of the Youth Court to include 18-year-olds; we would support this move. Just on considering the lift from 17 to 18—because there has been much discussion over whether it should be higher—my concern if it is left at 18 is that actually year 13 students are often in the middle of their year 13 year when they turn 18. So we still could have that dilemma where we have students who are in the middle of their compulsory schooling in year 13 who all of a sudden are not eligible for care. We have heard from those who have made submissions including the young people who came as part of the Dingwall Trust submission that that just creates so much trauma for them when they are trying to complete their secondary schooling and all of a sudden they have to find their own accommodation and they are no longer eligible to be considered as part of the care. So we will need to have conversations about that at the select committee.On to the advocacy service: we support a change in legislation to embed the voice of young people in care into decision making. We support the independent operation of advocacy services but will explore at the select committee what the responsibilities of the Ministry of Social Development and CYF will be in ensuring that the service is properly resourced. We are concerned that the advocacy and child voice role that the Children's Commissioner has had has been weakened in recent years due to a lack of funding. The bill's introductory notes also state that the design of the independent advocacy service is being undertaken in partnership with the philanthropic sector and we want to ensure that this is a suitable and sustainable model. If we move to enabling a wider roll of professionals to have core roles in discharging functions under the Department of Child Youth and Family Services Act we have some concerns about this section of the bill and will explore them in greater detail in the select committee. This amendment will also create greater flexibility in the delegation to other professionals to play a role in identifying the needs of vulnerable children. We are concerned that this is a significant step and that Parliament will not retain oversight over how this delegation is managed. The bill sets out that the chief executive can essentially make the decision and the delegation can extend beyond those outside State services and they will simply need to ensure that there are contractual arrangements in place and that each delegation is notified on an internet site. Going to the costs pressures within CYF Labour has concerns regarding the overall ability of CYF to currently operate even before these changes will be implemented. In 2016-17 CYF is forecasting a deficit of up to $38 million due to demand-driven costs. The new funding of $35 million allocated for CYF next year only barely covers its deficit which includes the discontinuation of funding from a previous year. The Minister has also not been funding CYF to increase the number of social workers as required to by the Government. In fact we know there is a shortage of social workers—a shortage of qualified and registered social workers. We see that with CYF but we also see that in the Social Workers in Schools (SWIS) programme where we have 183 decile 1 to decile 3 schools that should be—and are actually—eligible for Social Workers in Schools but cannot get them for a range of reasons. Mostly it is the underfunding of the SWIS programme but also the shortage of qualified and registered social workers.CYF had a deficit of $7.7 million in 2014-15 underwritten by the Ministry of Social Development and has an expected deficit for the current year 2015-16 of $11.2 million which includes approximately $18.8 million in cost pressures offset by $7.6 million of mostly one-off savings from within CYF budgets. CYF is currently forecasting a deficit in its budget for 2016-17 of between $28 million and $38 million. This is driven by the continuation of funding pressures from previous years cessation of one-off funding in 2015-16 and additional wage and other cost pressures in 2016-17. The range reflects uncertainty about the offsetting savings that might be achieved both within CYF budgets and the Ministry of Social Development. Overall the projected deficit of $38 million is driven by current demand pressure from client-related costs accumulated remuneration pressures unfunded past agreements to increase social worker resources and continued costs of the implementation of changes to other pressures. This also currently excludes any estimate of future client-related demand increases or decreases which are still being considered. So there is a lot there for the Minister to consider.I will raise something that the Minister for Social Development brought up earlier and has actually brought up time and time again that she thinks that children need to be the focus of policy in relation to CYF. I just want to say to the Minister that actually children should be at the centre of all policy including within her jurisdiction Work and Income. We did raise today with the Minister that if she means that then in the rewrite of the Social Security Act she should be considering a change to the principles to ensure that we include in there a principle that says children should be at the centre of policy making. She said in the select committee that that will not actually be the case because not all social security legislation is about children but can I just say that there is a principle in the Social Security Act around work—and not all social security is about work particularly when we take into consideration superannuation which makes up half the spend in Vote Social Development. I am hopeful that the Minister will actually take seriously her vow to ensure that children are put at the centre of policy.