Children’s bill of rights supported

Press, 3 February 1983, Page 4

Children’s bill of rights supported

A bill of rights for New Zealand children should be considered, the community services committee of the Christchurch City Council was told vesterda’v

The bill was produced by the council in 1976 after being put forward by Mrs Nancy Sutherland, then a councillor.

The committee supported this and several other submissions to the New Zealand Committee for Children It wanted the Committee for Children to continue in a restructured form and to report on its strategies and goals in a year

The Committee for Children was asked to follow up an earlier suggestion for the appointment of a full-time children's commissioner, or two or three part-time commissioners. Provision for a full-time commissioner

should be made in the bill of rights for children while part-time commissioners could be covered by an amendment to the Human Rights Commission Act. The Mayoress. Lady Hay. the council's representative on the Committee for Chil--dren. supported the move to appoint a commissioner. She said that neighbours might know of children in trouble but had nowhere to go to report it. Children were admitted to hospital after being maltreated but there was no law saying that the cases had to be reported. ‘There should be a channel obvious to everyone." she said. The chairman of the community services committee. Cr D. J. Rowlands, said that the Committee for Children had been set up to run therf International Year of the

Child in New Zealand. It had not been expected that the committee would run for longer than a year. Lady Hay said that moves had been made to disband the committee “but there were sufficient people who felt that what had gone into it should not be lost." The committee had existed on a year-to-year basis since then.' Moves were now being made to redefine the goals and objectives of the committee. The council committee also supported a suggestion to set up task forces on a regional or national Mr L. M. O'Reilly, a Christchurch lawyer who specialises in handling cases for children, was nominated to the executive off the Committee for Children.