Logie Jan: Vulnerable Children Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Vulnerable Children Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13391. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party will be supporting the Vulnerable Children Bill to the Social Services Committee. We look forward to hearing from the experts and those with experience of these systems to guide us in our future vote. I would like to acknowledge the Minister for Social Development and the commitment that she has put inin terms of focusing on children in the work that she has done and acknowledge that this bill comes out of a good place and we can see that. I also acknowledge you Minister for the time that you have taken to brief us on this bill. With that said probably quite a bit of the content of my speech will now be raising concerns and issues that we will be wanting to look at in the select committee inquiry. I guess that is about good democratic process and about working together on these things in the future I hope.We certainly also have children at the heart of our concern and recognise that 152000 notifications every year are a sign of a real deep problem in this country. Athird of those are dealt with by Child Youth and Family and 22000 are substantiated through that process. I am sure that for all of us when we think about that we can have media stories that come to our minds or stories of people we know and the pictures and the faces of those children and we know where today in this process we are talking about their lives and their ability to be safe and grow into the people whom they would want to be. So it is incredibly important.I am compelled to point out that of the abuse in New Zealand 70 percent—and this has been pointed out by Child Matters and also in a different context by the police—of the abuse of children happens within the context of domestic violence. We will be looking and asking questions throughout the process to see whether those connections will work whether they are transparent and whether this system will respond to the reality of domestic violence and the tragic role that it plays in the abuse of children. For us at the moment it is not clear whether it will. In fact all too often we are hearing through people’s experiences of Child Youth and Family that in fact it is often working in the counter. So we will be definitely looking towards that.Improving the vulnerability of our children means measures that are aimed at protection from abuse and neglect; improving children’s physical mental cultural and emotional well-being; improving their education; strengthening their connections to familieswhānau iwi or other culturally recognised groups; increasing their participation in decision making in society; and improving their social and economic well-being. It is a big job if we are going to fix this. I think it is really important and I notice that the Minister has acknowledged that this bill is a small part of that work and that the Children’s Action Plan actually takes up an even bigger part of the Government’s agenda for this work. For us we need to be able to see those connections to be able to see how it is going to work. If we can see that the systems are being put in place and those systems need improving then we have to see that they are improving. Otherwise we are sending people into and fixing in systems that currently are we could say re-abusing.We also have a concern that the model suggested by this bill as it is at the moment does not look at the wider environmental impacts on children. Focusing on the individual and the State’s response to abuse potentially might undermine the well-being of children. We clearly need all of our Government policies to put children at the heart of them. Previously there have been several bills this year that have come before the House where there has been a refusal to put those clauses in. So that does create a sense of discomfort for us around that ability for the Government to actually really enact that across the board which is necessary for ensuring children’s safety.We also need to resource families and make it as easy as possible for them to get help when they are struggling. At the moment part of the result of the level of inequality in New Zealand is the distancing from the mainstream of people with the least and that has an impact in terms of people being able to get help and to create strength in their family when they are struggling. We also need to ensure that those helping systems we have are as robust as possible.Just last week the former Commissioner of Police Howard Broad released his review of the Child Youth and Family complaints system. He raised a number of concerns and for us that is really critical in terms of looking at this whole process. If we are going to be increasing referrals to Child Youth and Family and we are going to be setting up a cross-departmental group with that at the heart of it we need to know that that system is working and sadly at the moment there are a lot of concerns. In his report he noted that each child in State care is currently supposed to be visited by a responsible social worker on an 8-week rotation but doubts around compliance with that were raised because of the high levels of caseloads for social workers. Although this is a reallysignificant part of the defensive screen for child protection provided by the State at the moment even that is not happening at the moment. We are concerned about putting a whole lot more work into the system when the absolute fundamentals are not working—the children in State care have not got those protections working for them at the moment.We are also a bit worried that at the moment a lot of the information that is coming into Child Youth and Family in terms of the complaints and concerns is staying on the database as evidence which is locking in what turns out to be incorrect information. That needs to be sorted out as well. If we are particularly going to be making decisions around people’s suitability to be parents that are not based on court rulings we need to make sure that the information in the system is accurate. Concern around the evidence in court decisions was raised by former commissioner Howard Broad as well. At the moment those decisions are relying on social workers’ judgment and on the facts that they are bringing to the court. Currently I think they suggested that the process suffers frompredeterminable bias because of the reliance on that information and perhaps a lack of consistency from social workers across the board. So if we are going to be putting these systems in place we need to make sure that the evidentiary processes are solid and that the ability for the system to cope is sound because our children’s lives depend on it and at the moment we are worried and we are going to be looking to make sure that that is in there.I also just want to bring some people’s stories into this and recognise that we have a particular concern around the child harm protection order. I noted that the Minister of Justice spoke very passionately before about the importance of this particularly in relation to where there has not been a conviction and I cannot help but respond now on the basis of that Minister’s refusal to pick up the recommendations of the alternative pre-trial and trial hearings systems which mean that our justice system convicts only one in 100 sexual offenders. There was huge agreement right across sectors on significant aspects of that Law Commission work which could have improved that conviction rate. If we are talking about keeping children safe then we need to have a justice system that will deliver justice to those children before we remove anybody’s rights. This seems to be just saying: “Well the system does not deliver justice so we will work around that.” rather than fixing the problem.