Logie Jan: Urgent Debates — Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015ReportText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Urgent Debates — Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015Report[Sitting date: 27 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6263. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): The Green Party wants to see children at the heart of all our decision making so in this report although it was not an entire surprise it was nevertheless shocking to read of the experiences of young people within our collective care. Although I do hold this Government and potentially Governments before it responsible I do see the fact that these children are in State care which is our care. We all have a duty to ensure those children are safe.I have heard from the Minister for Social Development today that she has been reading the 14 reviews that have taken place that there has been more funding put in—$23 million even though the Ministry of Social Development last year indicated it needed $60 million—and that she has put more staff in even though the caseloads and notifications have increased by 67000 and the increase in the number of staff is only 76.You could listen to her without hearing the other side of the evidence and think: “That’s reasonable. They care. They’re doing the work. They’re looking at this in the long-term interests of the country.” But then you come back to the question: is the investment matching the need? And the answer is no. Is the Minister treating this with any urgency? The answer is no. Despite what the Minister has said we have had clearly written in here a message from the Children’s Commissioner that waiting on the Child Youth and Family review and for the children’s teams will leave the children now in care without a structure to ensure their safety.It was not a comment solely about the data despite what the Minister said because the Children’s Commissioner said: “Do we know whether children who are being lifted out of really dangerous situations”—and believe me as somebody who understands that domestic violence is not even a threshold for a Child Youth and Family intervention how difficult and extreme this situation must be for Child Youth and Family to take a child into its care. For the Children’s Commissioner to say he cannot even guarantee that children in care are safer than they would have been in that initial situation and the indications are not good that they are safer is an absolute indictment of a systemic failure in child protection in this country. I believe that that kind of information requires a really strong and urgent response from the Minister not for her to say: “Well the Children’s Commissioner thinks we’re doing a great job.”The Children’s Commissioner has evaluated and looked at what is happening and has said that what is in train now will not protect those children in care now. That to me indicates we need a degree of more urgent action and at least an urgent review around the placement process that is happening now. I know the Minister is doing a Child Youth and Family review and that the announcements are going to happen around that but that is a different thing. When we are hearing from the Children’s Commissioner as well that we cannot guarantee children are better off and he is saying that there is a culture of “dump and run”—I know many people are interpreting that as a criticism of the staff within Child Youth and Family. I did not read this report in that context. I read this report as saying that where the resources are going in at the assessment stage is where the political risk is and I think that point has been made in the House already.So for the social workers as well-intentioned as they may be in wanting to stay in contact and ensure that those children once they are in a placement are safe and that the family who is looking after them also has the resources to be able to bond with them adequately care for them and help them to have a better future there is just simply not the resource. Therefore because of the funding structure and the systems within Child Youth and Family this has resulted in a “dump and run” culture. That makes sense considering how short-staffed we know the Child Youth and Family social workers are.The workload and casework review that was done by the Office of the Chief Social Worker in May of last year told us many of the same issues. It clearly said that we needed in the short term to change the expectations and clarify the expectations of social workers. Now we are hearing from the Minister over a year on that this Child Youth and Family review panel which includes one social worker I think from overseas—not one domestic social worker and not one person who works as a Māori social worker—is going to come up with a rework of the system. Yes part of that will be expectations. This is over a year later and these people do not have the expertise that is grounded in the experience of this country. It does not stack up. It is not good enough basically.When we read the words—I do want to take it back to some of the particular value I found in the Children’s Commissioner’s report the voices of the young people themselves and really highlight the urgency of this. There was an example from a participant in one of their youth voices workshops. They talked about the highs of having been in care as having got a job got a car they went flatting and they raised their dog. That was out of the long-term outcomes for them. The lows were abuse at home; sexual physical and verbal abuse in foster homes; going from home to home to home; being separated from their twin; shit social workers who never listened or followed through with promises; constant change; Bible-bashers; being expelled from school; going on the run; depression; drugs; police anger-management courses; and alcohol. This is the experience of a child in our collective care. That is how we have looked after a child in our care.When we asked the Minister earlier today whether she would rule out the privatisation of any child protection services she did not. My real fear is that this Government has been running down Child Youth and Family services and has consciously not invested what it is told needs to be invested—that is on the record—that it has seen this organisation under such pressure because of the Government’s policy and funding decisions and that now it is going to do what it is doing to Housing New Zealand and say: “Look at the state of our children. Look at the state of our houses. We can’t deal with this collectively. We will have to open up the opportunity for a business.”I too have heard the rumours about Serco and youth residential services—looking at that as an option. I do remind this House of Serco’s international track record including having children behind bars in detention camps in Australia and the very clear harm that we are seeing in our prisons being managed by Serco.It is important that we take responsibility as a country for the welfare of these children and that means we need to ensure these services stay within our collective control. That means they need to be provided by the State because that is the most direct mechanism for us to ensure the quality of services. Once something is privatised and provided by a business it is much harder for us as a country to have oversight. It is much harder for us to ensure that that profit-making motive does not undermine the fundamental care of our children.I will finish by again reminding the House that this is urgent. This is about the 5000 children—a number the size of a small town—who are currently in our collective care whom we cannot guarantee are safe.