Blair to tackle 'menace' children

[Joolstoo]

story

"He said teenage mums and problem families could be forced to take help to head off difficulties.

He said the government had to intervene much earlier to prevent problems developing when children were older.

There could be sanctions for parents who refused to take advice, he said"

the man is becoming even more bizarre. what is he going to suggest, eugenics?

Adn who is going to do all this? Social services, health visitors?? They can't even manage to stop child abuse much of the time; how on earth are they going to watch out for signs of future deliquency?

He is nuts. He said he was going to do something about this 9 years ago when he had the power and the backing of his party which would have enabled him to forge ahead. Instead he did nothing and now seems to want to go out with a bang which will probably turn into a fizzle.

i just heard he was going to stop it before the children are even born. he sounds like a loon

Yes, last night I heard this. He thinks you can spot the potential problem children when they are babies, and sometimes before they are even born - so will target them too.

maybe he should tackle things like the lack of opportunity in this country rather than blaming it on the usual suspects.

does any one have more detail about this.

this is what i feel. i feel that if we all cut the shit we know TB is right. but the thought of it - is wrong - my pinko side wants to say its wrong.

but i can't altogether bring my self to say its wrong.

i hate the thought of all people with children in council housing being forced into parenting classes whilst mr and mrs home owner are seen as a better parent simply becuase of their financial situation.

however theory smearory. the reality is different.

but i dont have any detail what will this involve exactly?

is it just parenting classes? coping techniques.....whats so wrong with that?

I guess what bothers me is 2 things:

1. I hated mws and hvs 'dropping' round and checking useless things (i.e. baby's weight) when everything was clearly OK, I imagine an intelligent and well-supported young mum might feel even more riled by the kind of 'close watch' of hvs and social workers TB is suggesting for ALL young mums. Seems like a waste of resources to have a blanket policy like that.

2. Parenting classes can be extremely useful in some cases. But again, it's a very prescriptive 'right' way to bring up baby that smacks of the 1950s to me. It's also often dealing with behaviour without addressing underlying causes for the parents' or childs' behaviour.

I agree with southeastastra - support and addressing causes like poverty and opportunity should be the targets. I don't want to seem like a wishy-washy liberal - and lord knows there are many parents round here who need parenting classes - but they are not all teenage mums by any means...

You mean to identify the kids who will be found dead drunk in a London street at 16? (cheap shot, I know)

As custy said I really want to disagree witht his but there is a kernel of truth. I work in family support as well as teaching in a secondary school and we do a lot of the kind of work TB is talking about just without the force of the law behind us. It is sad but you can look at new born children and know that they are going to have a difficult life ahead of them and if intervention can be made early than something can be done with more effect. It is not just necessarily single mums on council estates that need help but as Custy said they will probbaly be the prime taregts because they are an easy targets, it is much easier to hid bad parenting if muffled inside your three bedroomed semi set back from the road than a little flat.

I see,at work, parents basically fucking their kids lives up and while I know from experience how hard it can be to parent when everything around you is negative I am sorry but children have to come first.

I would probably have been a parent targetted as a woman who was mnetally unstable living in hostels but I would have gladly taken that help, as I did at the time. In fact I was the one who phoned social services and asked for help. I went to parenting classes, support groups anything I could to get my life back on track and provide the best environment for my dd, yes I was patronised and yes I didn;t agree with eveything I was told but I did what I needed to do for my dd.

Hearing him talk about it sounded more reasonable and less draconian than the stark sensationalist way it was reported (even by the beeb).

If it just a way of helping or guiding people and preventing them getting asbo's then it might (just might) be ok.

However I don't trust politicians, the police or some of the public. Asbos are bad enough - hearsay evidence only, no proof needed. This is worse - guilt by reading the future. You can't make assumptions about people acording to race or colour so why should it be ok to do it because of background.

This could result in more kids being taken into care for no reason except an educated guess if you are lucky. Or prejudice or just to be on the safe side. Or even vindictiveness.

So, on balance, I don't like it one little bit.

Is it not just sure start with more force?

But as someone has said on the news yeaterday social services are powerless to do anything unless they actually see a baby being beaten in front of them, especially in areas such as this where there is a lot of need.

I have been in a home where the floor is covered in dogshit and old food, flies and maggots, live wires on the floor, kids ridden with nits and fleas, the parents openly admitting that they smack the children regularly, most of whom were pre schoolers, the children being left in soiled nappies and literally starving and social services not intervening.

As others have implied, what TB has said is annoying because he is so bl%dy santimonious about things but I feel there is indeed a grain of truth in this.

I'm currently living in W Africa and have lived in Indonesia where the sense of family, society and community are much stronger than they are in the UK. To me, TB's initiative is an attempt by the govt to replace that lost sense of community. I'm not at all sure it will work, though.

Lack of opportunity is indeed an issue but I find myself in a quandry over it when I know ordinary Nigerians would give their eye teeth (and more) to have the free education, health and welfare we have in the UK.

spot on about TB being sanctimonious, suedonim, makes you want to disagree with him on principle.
but I'm sure he's right that problem families exist and can be identified and that children born into those families would benefit greatly from early intervention into those families in the form of parenting classes etc. It's been reported in some papers like the intervention is just to put them into care or something equally overdramatic.
it's a shame that sure start, which provides absolutely brilliant services to young mums (well, mine does) is not an appealing option to the people who might benefit the most from its services. Ours seems full to the brim with parents who really care about their children's development and some parents (like me) who know they might go a bit nuts if they had to stay at home with the kids all day.
being forced to go to parenting classes is not the end of the world. Maybe everyone should have to do it, bit like when you get married in church you're supposed to go to the classes first

there absolutley must be more views on this - i thought it would be a big mn subject - come on tell me why we should just pick out the gonnabe crims and brainwasht hem orwellian stylee.

Genuine support for parents who are having a hard time would be a good thing. But this government seems to distrust parents on principle. They are setting up a massive database of all children - the original idea was two flags by health/education/social services professionals = a case conference. Which seemed pretty draconian. And dangerous. Apart from anything else, massive, complex IT projects tend not to work very well. There will be confusion and social services turning up on the wrong doorstep. And it is highly likely to mean the state picking on working class families.

The state is a crap parent itself. Look at what happens to kids in care - they get moved from pillar to post, sent miles away from their home town, social workers turn up on the doorstep of foster parents with no notice to take them away, repeatedly, they end up with no qualifications, homeless/ in prison/sectioned/ getting pregnant at a very young age. Can we trust a system which fails vulnerable children so very badly to deal with even more kids?

Allegedly, TB hasn't been that great a parent anyway. There are stories that have never been published about his kids... but wealthy, powerful people never get pulled up by social services, do they?

This thread is a bit sluggish. Don't understand that at all.

If any intervention is confined to parenting classes then it might be a good idea if it isn't too rigid. But what about the implications - a national curriculum for parenting - one size fits all? Parents getting all the blame as usual?

I have friends with children as different as chalk and cheese. Chalk is and always will be a pillar of the community, Cheese has always been wild and a problem. But Cheese at 18 is becoming tamer, responsible and at least she has escaped without being labelled. Parneting skills can't be given all the credit or all the blame for these kids - they aren't computers to be programmed.

And I don't trust TB not to take it too far. Children and teenagers are a soft target for the police who want to show they are Doing Something. I just wish they would find out who broke into our garage but that would mean a bit of work.

I think the thread is sluggish because it's difficult to express an opinion without looking extreme one way or another - either you "support invasion of family life & stereotyping of teenage mums", or you "don't care about parents messing up their kid's lives".That's why so many posts are so equivocal.

Good point Quangle. My mother says the reason she didn't seek help for my sister (who went off the rails VERY badly) was that she didn't want her to be labelled. Took till about age 23 to stop the teenage rebellion. Thing is, if we'd been working class it would have gone very differently. But my mother knew the system and could keep my sister out of official trouble, to some extent. Her friends from that time mostly didn't have those resources and have ended up in a much worse situation.

but if he says do nothing, then he gets called someone who doesn't give a toss about society.

it's a lose-lose situation.

when I watch supernanny I sometimes think it's such a shame that kind of help is not more easily available (without the cameras) to anyone who felt they needed help with parenting. The one I saw this week made me feel so sad for that family. employ thousands of supernannies I say!

But, this assumes 'bad' teenagers were 'bad' kids. Many so-called wayward teenagers were model kids who could do no wrong in the eyes of their teachers. I know quite a few. As parents we don't bring up our children in isolation we have to fit in with the law and society and do the best we can within these limits. And there are other ways society could change without resorting to new laws are always open to mis-use or abuse.

When boys (in particular) hit 12 they become persona non grata and a pattern of behaviour develops. They aren't welcome hanging around the streets and they aren't allowed in the pubs. One pub used to allow them in to play pool and drink coke, which was great but it has become a poncy expensive eating pub now where kids have the status of sewer rats.

So what happens? From the age of about 14 they obtain cans of very, very cheap beer and go down by the river out of sight. And then what happens when they are 18? They are used to drinking very cheap alcohol in the fresh air so why go and pay pub prices? To quote some bloke on the radio - they are learning [their drinking habits] from people as daft as they are.
If young people weren't ostracised in this country maybe we wouldn't have such as much anti-social behaviour.

God I sound pompous. Sorry.

How can you 'force' someone to take help?

The help is there via charities like HomeSTart. They have no end to their waiting lists, but not enough volunteers to help. I am forever told off by Dh for suggesting to elderly ladies whicnging that maybe they'd like to volunteer and actually do something about it LOL!

I've seen many famillies where nothing could help the kids. And a Hell of a lot more who are struggling just for want of ten minutes to let them take a breather, or whatever. Sometimes a coffee and a chat are far mroe use in making a Mum / Dad feel capable than bloody sanctions.

Qanglewangle - what would help teenage boys then to stop them hanging around the streets drinking lager? I hear this all the time - there's nothing for the kids to do - but what is the answer to that? I genuinely never know what people mean by that. Don't want to come over all old farty but I didn't feel the need to hang around with groups of mates when I was that age. Neither did my brother. Don't know about DH - I'll have to ask him when he gets in.

BTW - calling a child Cheese is just asking for them to go off the rails...