One in three children who should be taken into care are being left with neglectful parents - only for the state to intervene at a later date, the head of Barnardo’s said.Oh, OK. Not that he's angling for a cut of that action, right?
Mr Narey, who formerly worked as director general of the Prison Service, said there are currently 62,000 ‘looked-after’ children in Britain.Care does damage children. That's a given.
‘Twenty-five years ago this was nearer 90,000. We were determined to reduce this because we thought care damages children. We need to return to a care population of 90,000.’
Mr Narey said the conventional wisdom of social services was outdated and placed ‘too much premium on keeping the birth family together’.Unless that family is a bit dim. Or a bit too uppity with the medicos.
But don't take my word for it, Martin, why not take the word of a bunch of high court judges...
He said that once the decision had been made to take a child away from their family, there should be greater use of residential care as an alternative to fostering.Residential care, eh? I wonder who'll be contracting for that...
Mr Narey believes there is an urgent need to ‘destigmatise care’.This isn't Germany. I bet the Germans do all sorts of things that we don't.
He points out that in Germany, children leaving care homes performed better academically than those in untroubled families.
For starters, they probably don't run their care homes like we do...
A report commissioned for Barnardo's by the thinktank Demos is published today backing Narey's call for greater early intervention, fewer family placements and longer stays in care.How's that work again? 'We're crap at raising kids, but if you just give us two more years...'
…
The thinktank also said the age of leaving care should be raised to 18 from 16. Nearly four-fifths of young people leave care before their 18th birthday.
Demos says the state needs to offer a ‘right to return’ to care up to the age of 24 – the average age of young people leaving home in the general population.
7 comments:
I don't know if you've ever read Winston Smith's blog, a person who works in social care, and recent winner of the Orwell award, but it's an amazing insight into what passes for state care these days.
link
One of my links is to that very blog ;)
It's excellent.
Piglets do squeal loudly when they're having trouble getting at the teat.
With any luck, this is a sound we'll hear a lot more - music to our ears!
I bet the Germans do all sorts of things that we don't.
From a Times article 2007:
"In countries like Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, working with children in care, particularly in a residential setting, is seen as a plum job. Not here – hence the reliance in many places on agency staff...
In the Hamburg home, lunch is prepared by whichever staff member was responsible for waking the children that morning. Children and staff sit down to eat together and nobody touches their plates until everyone is seated. The youngest and shyest boys are given regular hugs and encouraged by their carers to join the discussion around the table...
At Dalling Road[UK], meals are prepared by a professional cook and children drift in and out of the dining room helping themselves to whatever they want. At the lunch I visit, most staff are upstairs seated around a table for a meeting, “project-managing” the future for the children at the Hammersmith home, whom they sometimes refer to as their “client group”."
OH has an article up (somewhere recent) in which he (or one of his "minions") that being brought up by the Sosh cost 4 times as much as ten years at Eton. Makes ya think!
> Care does damage children. That's a given.
See what happens when you use the Left's euphemisms? Crazy sentences.
I'm struggling to think of a proper expression for this one, though. "Being in a home" is another ridiculous one, and "orphanage" doesn't work when most of the kids' parents are alive. What should we call this?
"With any luck, this is a sound we'll hear a lot more..."
Oooh, I do hope so...
"Staff are expected to keep three simultaneous daily logs. The first is a handwritten diary noting the movement of staff and children in and out of the home; no Tipp-Ex corrections are allowed and all unused parts of pages must be crossed through and initialled. The second is a round-the-clock record of the children’s activities and staff registering, for instance, if a child gets up for a glass of water in the night. The third is an individual log compiled each day for each child, noting their activities and behaviour. All these logs and diaries must be stored for a minimum of 75 years – partly in case a child makes an allegation of abuse against a care worker. So many need to be held onto that thousands are kept at a disused salt mine in Kent. "
Wow, the difference is enough to make you weep, isn't it?
"OH has an article up (somewhere recent) in which he (or one of his "minions") that being brought up by the Sosh cost 4 times as much as ten years at Eton. Makes ya think!"
Gah! That's astounding!
"I'm struggling to think of a proper expression for this one, though. "Being in a home" is another ridiculous one, and "orphanage" doesn't work when most of the kids' parents are alive. What should we call this?"
'Protective custody'..?
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