Children’s Rights…

Libby Brooks is reaching all the wrong conclusions about services for ‘children and young people’:

We have an opportunity to think afresh about how we provide services for children and young people. In particular, how can the state transform its current role as an agency predominantly geared to picking up the pieces of damaged young lives, something it often does inadequately and almost always expensively? How can it be more proactive and concentrate more on securing positive foundations for our youngsters?

Well, I don’t know, Libby.

How can it?

First, there must be a far more nuanced recognition of children's rights.

FAIL!

It’s the pernicious influence of ‘children’s rights’ that has got us to the point where, in a recent horror story, no-one turned a hair when one of the little darlings responsible uttered the immortal line “We can do anything we like, and you can’t do anything about it”.

It’s ‘children’s rights’ that leads to the attitude of this schoolgirl and her mother.

We need less ‘rights’ for children, not more.

Current requirements to ask young people's opinions of the services they use amount to little more than lip service. To speak of "childism" is to court derision, and conjure a nightmarish totem of the bolshy teen threatening to call ChildLine when his parent or teacher scolds him.

And why? Because of cases like those outlined above.

But the UN convention on the rights of the child explicitly calls for participation, as well as protection and provision.

Screw the UN, Libby! This is the organisation that stands by while its enforcers rape child refugees.

Why the hell should we listen to them on anything?

… we must reassess how services intervene. At present, involvement with social services brands children, as well as parents, as failures. Of course, this sector exists to make the toughest of choices. But a distinction must be made between the known benefits of early intervention, and the nannying nonsense of later ones – such as parenting contracts – that have proliferated over the past decade.

I fail to see the difference between the two, and Libby doesn’t enlighten us.

… we must look at how public services help disadvantaged youngsters make the transition to adulthood. At 16, a teenager with mental health problems is dumped in an adult unit, or a care leaver is stranded without support in a council flat. One of the most vulnerable groups in society, particularly affected by the recession, are young people in their late teens and early 20s who do not enjoy the privilege of extended parental and educational support.

In other words, broken families. Yet who has contributed most to the breaking of those families?

Finally, there's recruitment. While children's services are still seen as punitive, and constantly harangued by the media, the best workers will inevitably drift towards the voluntary sector. It's a trend that may appeal to Conservatives, who remain determined the third sector has the tools to mend Broken Britain, but the truth is that those people have most traction working within the state.

Well, of course! The State is mother, the state is father, right Libby?

In conclusion, we must put the voice of children and young people first, save money on unnecessary interventions, and invest properly in social workers.

So much for the opportunity to ‘think afresh’. The answers seem to be the same as always – give us more money and powers, and more resources, and don’t criticise us when we screw up.

Same as it ever was…