Naylor Jono: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNaylor Jono: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 03 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4316. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONO NAYLOR (National): I find it somewhat ironic that we have just had a Budget that for the first time in 43 years increases the benefit payments for families that have children in them and yet the member opposite Carmel Sepuloni calls the members on this side mean-spirited—I see some irony there that I just could not let pass—mean-spirited people who would want to put up benefits for people who have got children! It is bizarre.I want to talk about this bill though because this is an important bill. In doing so I particularly want to start off by acknowledging the important role that kin carers play within New Zealand society. In almost every circumstance I think it would be fair to say when somebody finds themselves being a kin carer when they are looking after children who are not their own they do not do so out of choice. They do so often in situations where there has been a high level of stress where there has been perhaps a death in the family where there has been for some reason—through abuse or neglect or otherwise—parents not being available to care for their own children. So these kin carers many of them grandparents find themselves at a stage of life when they were planning on doing something completely different from caring for children having to once again care for young children. I can only imagine how challenging that would be.I am fortunate enough now that my youngest child is 17 but on the weekend I had the privilege of looking after some friends’ younger children. We had a nice afternoon. It was OK. We went down to the park. We played and kicked a ball around and all that kind of stuff but the thought I have to say even at my stage of life in my late 40s not necessarily in my 70s or 80s as some of these people find themselves—Richard Prosser: You’re holding up very well.JONO NAYLOR: Thank you very much. I—Richard Prosser: You’re looking well for a man of your age.JONO NAYLOR: Well there you go.I think that at a certain stage of life it is going to be a stressful situation that these people find themselves in having to return to looking after small children. So this bill in fact actually seeks to lessen that stress. It seeks to lessen that burden. I want to just as I said acknowledge those people for the work that they are doing. There are over 6000 children being raised in New Zealand by their grandparents and that is pretty significant. There are another 6000 - plus children who are being raised by other family members. It is a pretty difficult situation as I said.You see when the State has custody of a child everything is taken care of. There are board payments that are made. There are all sorts of other payments that are made for the upkeep of those children. But when there is a payment made under the orphans benefit or the unsupported child’s benefit the payment is less.In a previous part of my life I had a very short stint as a Child Youth and Family social worker. It was part of our job to actually assess the position that foster carers were in and whether or not it would be appropriate for the State to take a step back in order for them to take on additional guardianship. What was a little bit disturbing at the time was that I had a manager who before he would sign off on other payments for shoes and uniforms and stuff used to ask us: “Have you asked them this question about additional guardianship?” and he used to put a little bit of pressure on us to reduce the number of children in care because I think it meant that there was less coming off his budget. But that is by the by. One of the key questions that we needed to address before a child was moved from being under the full care and custody of the State and perhaps then went into an additional guardian situation was the type of bond that they had with the family whether or not there was any need for additional social work input.One of the challenging things that I used to find as a social worker in going to those caregivers and asking them whether or not they would be prepared for the State to take a step back and whether they would be prepared to take on additional guardianship of this child—because on the surface of it it seemed like a very good idea because the bonds were there and it seemed like it would be the most stable thing for a child going forward—was saying to them: “Oh and by the way you won’t be getting as much money anymore.” It was a challenging thing to actually have to say to someone: “Thanks. You’ve done a great job. We really appreciate the fact that you’ve been looking after this child. We really appreciate the great investment that you have made in this child and we see that you have made such a great bond with this child that you could now take care of them on your own but we’re going to pay you less money.” I have got to say that I used to find that pretty challenging.This bill actually seeks to bring a level of redress to that because at the end of the day the last thing we want is for young people to remain in the custody of the State any longer than they need to. It is important that as much as possible young people who have suffered the trauma of either having their parents sort of taken from them through death or who perhaps have had to leave their parents’ care through abuse or neglect can somehow establish as normal a life as possible to establish the kind of life that I guess most children in our country get to have. So it is really critical that we do everything that we can to ensure that these kin carer placements stay in place provide stability for these young people and do not begin to fall over through financial hardship or otherwise. So as I said this is exactly what we are trying to do. It is an incredibly challenging thing for someone to take this on particularly if it is smaller children or sometimes I guess teenagers depending on where you are at that stage of life. They each provide their own challenge of course.Just in going through this bill and preparing to come and speak tonight I thought it was appropriate to go back and have a look at the submissions that were made to the Social Services Committee. I obviously was not around when this bill went through the select committee so I wanted to just get a bit of a feel for some of the things that submitters had said. In particular there was a very substantial submission from the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust. I just want to commend it because it does fantastic work in supporting these grandparents who are raising their grandchildren. It does incredible work in terms of providing networks for people in order to provide support and I think it is well worth listening to.If you will bear with me I just want to read a couple of the things that the trust said. There were about 9 pages of submission and I am not going to read the whole lot you will be pleased to hear although it would be probably just about as riveting as Mr Faafoi’s reading out of the entire list of National MPs the other night but—Kris Faafoi: Don’t make me do it again.JONO NAYLOR: Oh it would be so much fun if we could just hear that over and over again! In fact the thing I liked about that so much actually was that if we had returned the favour to the Labour Party it would have taken only half as long.But anyway here is what the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust had to say. It said: “A number of anomalies exist in our child welfare and social security system creating inequities between kin/whanau carers and foster carers. It is important to acknowledge these anomalies in the context of discussing this Bill because they highlight the substantial disparity that exists in the level of financial support available to the two types of caregivers who undertake the same role as principal caregiver to a child who cannot be cared for by his or her parents.” I think the trust made a very good point there.Also one of its last points was this: “We challenge the committee”—and I guess challenge this House—“to consider this Bill in the light of the anomalies in our system and consider the question: is it fair in our society for a child being raised by its grandparent to be denied access to the services and financial support it needs and would receive if it were in foster care only because it is being raised by a grandparent?”.There were a couple of other submitters and I will not name them but they made some really good points too. Briefly someone said: “My husband and I have been raising our twin grandchildren since they were 7 weeks old and they are now 9 years old. We feel that a clothing allowance would be an amazing help as it is a struggle to keep up with everything.” I will not go into the other one but I think it is a really important thing that we are doing here.Finally I just want to remind the House that this is in the context of a wider framework. This is in the context of a Government that is supporting this—it is obviously a member’s bill but we are supporting it—in the context of the extra $10 million that has been set aside through the White Paper for Vulnerable Children the extra $10 million set aside to help with kin carers. It is in the context of us wanting to work harder to address the needs of our vulnerable children in New Zealand. So it is with great pleasure that we support this bill because we think it will help those very children—not for the reasons referred to by the previous speaker. Thank you.