input: Text: Lynne Neagle AM: Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Children, Young People and Education Committee. We've received apologies for absence from Suzy Davies and Jack Sargeant and I'm very pleased to welcome Jayne Bryant back, who is substituting for Jack today. Are there any declarations of interest from Members, please? No. Okay, thank you. Item 2, then, this morning, is our sixth scrutiny session on the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Bill. I'm very pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning: Sally Jenkins, who is chair of All Wales Heads of Children’s Services and is here representing the Association of Directors of Social Services; Alastair Birch, who is senior system leader for equalities and safeguarding at Pembrokeshire County Council, who is here representing the Association of Directors of Education Wales; and Councillor Huw David, who is the Welsh Local Government Association spokesperson for health and social care and leader of Bridgend County Borough Council. So, thank you all for attending this morning. We're very pleased to have you here. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so, if you're happy, we'll go straight into questions and I'll start just by asking about your general support for the Bill, which is outlined in the evidence. Can you just explain why you think the current law is ineffective or unclear? Alastair Birch: Bore da—bore da, bawb. So, I'm Alastair Birch. The statement, really, from ADEW is that the rights of the child should be educated and achieved, really, under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The current legislation has been criticised, obviously, by the UN concerning the defence of reasonable punishment still being within our current legislation. So, we will always—ADEW will always—advocate that the rights of the child be upheld, so that is really the fundamental aspect in terms of the statement from ADEW, and the position of ADEW is that the rights of the child are fundamental in this process. And there are certain articles—. I know that the Rights of Children and Young Persons (W
  Question: Summarize the questions and answers on the implementation for social services.
  Answer:
output: The first question was about whether members of the public should be encouraged to contact social services departments if they saw a child being smacked. Sally Jenkins answered that they had a duty to report this. Second question was about to what extent "Anyone accused or convicted of assaulting a child will be subject to long-term social services involvement in their family and social stigma" accurately. Sally Jenkins said that this was not punitive approaches from social services, and their aim was to get in and get out, and let families find their own solutions. Third question was about whether there was a need for legislation if natural behavior and the culture was changing. Huw David mentioned that there was already existing legislation that covered those children who were abused by parents. However, the threshold was not clear enough for children. Then they outlined the practical ways in which social services' interaction with parents would change because of this proposed law. The last question was about the assessment of how this Bill would impact on emergency and out of hours local authority services. Sally Jenkins said that they had out-of-hours provision and emergency duty teams already across Wales that operate 24/7. And there was no doubt that they exist and they work closely with police colleagues.