Minister Tracey Martin to visit Napier as it plots how to become a child-friendly city

Minister for Children Tracey Martin (centre) in Hastings in June after a meeting relating to the baby uplift crisis. Photo / File

Minister for Children Tracey Martin has been confirmed as the key speaker at the Napier Pilot City's Kinder and Fairer Napier Forum next Wednesday.

The forum marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in New York on November 20, 1989, and Martin, a New Zealand First List MP with the hot-potato children's ministry role in the Oranga Tamariki uproar, will speak about the Government's plans for child and youth wellbeing.

Among others on the programme for the 8.30am-1pm forum at the MTG Century Theatre will be new Napier mayor Kirsten Wise, whose council is being asked by the Pilot City Trust to mandate Napier as a child-friendly city.

Trust chairwoman Joan Plowman said the trust is "on a mission to make our city kinder and fairer."

Councillor Richard McGrath, right, as been appointed the first council representative on the Pilot City Trust. Photo / File

"This can be achieved happen of the community works with central and local government to shape an inclusive society," she said.

"Being child-friendly is a good place to start," she said. "A child-friendly city is where the voices, needs, priorities and rights of children are an integral part of public policies, programmes and decisions."

She said Napier's high rates of benefit-dependant families, housing shortages, children being placed in care and violent offending are all issues which demand "urgent unified action".

The trust is "excited" to bring together local and central government, non-government organisations, and other service providers to share the vision of better outcomes for children, she said.

"We believe that the Regional Economic Development Strategy, known as Matariki, and the Prime Minister's Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy provide the ideal platform for our new council to engage with the community to shape a unique child-friendly approach for Napier," Plowman said.

Wise said she had met with Plowman and other Pilot City Trust representatives last week and the "conservation has started" as to how a child-friendly city concept might look in Napier and how it might affect council operations. "It is a work in progress," she said.

As a result, Councillor Richard McGrath as been appointed the first-ever council representative on the trust, which was established as a response to a 1983 research initiative seeking answers to community social needs, and which held its 30th anniversary Unity celebration in April this year.

The forum programme also includes people actively working for change, including a police officer, iwi kaumātua Des Ratima, who has also been at the centre of the debate relating to an Oranga Tamariki attempt to uplift a newborn child into state care from a maternity suite in Hastings in May, and school principals and students.

The trust is hoping to fill the Century Theatre with about 250 people, but while it is a free event it is asking people to register to attend at https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/child-friendly-forum-tickets-79473733075?aff=NPCTSupporters