The society we live in today - what is wrong with some people and how can it be fixed?

[DrNortherner]

Watching the news, all you see is stories of yobs being violent, socially disruptive, on the dole and genrally not giving a toss about themselves or anyone else. They have no desire to get off their arses and get a job and a better life and future.

Do we make it too easy for these kind of people? We give them money to spend, we let them off if they commit a crime and hell, we even house them if they become parents and pay some of their monthly bills.

I grew up on a council estate in Teesside, lived there till I was 17. My parents still live in the same house. My Gran and 2 aunties live on council estates too, and I visit regularly so I know what I am talking about. Don't shout me down in flames, I am not critiscising everyone, I am well aware there are many good people with morals who live on council estates, and I am the first to defend when a bit of council estate bashing takes place.

But I have seen a huge change.When I was a kid, most of the residents were elderly or young families, but mainly people had jobs - they just didn't earn alot. People took care of their properties and the gardens were immaculate.

Now it is a different story. It is full of youngsters with kids, with no jobs, with no hope and with no desire to improve their lot. I so worry about my mum and dad. They live next door to a young girl with 3 kids. The Dad is 19 and on drugs. They have lots of visitors throughout the night, and last year 4 men turned up and smashed all their windows and kicked their door in.

This is just one example. The local shops are nearly all closed down, lots of houses boarded up, kids parks in disrepair (because of local vandals) and kids as young as 2 wander the streets for most of the day 'playing' outside.

The local secondary school is crap and in special measures.

Can you imagine living there as a teen?

What can we possibly do to get out of this rut?

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The figure that always gets me is 70% of the prison population comes from the lowest socio-economic groups.

There are reasons for that. And I know it may always have been the case but that doesn't make it right either.

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I do sometimes wonder whether tolerance is sometimes actually just indifference (not affecting me so not a problem) or fear (I don't want to get involved), rather than open-mindedness.

The money never gets where it needs to go.

I think people have lost faith in the whole punishment system and care system. Chronic shortage of social workers, midwives...LOADS of mental health wards being closed down, very few secure mental health units left, little 'help in the community' because there's no-one to do it.

Friend of ours got racially abused on a packed bus last week. No-one said a word. Then she was physically abused and SHE had to get off the bus. That's the way it works these days - people not causing trouble have to adapt their lives to try and avoid getting into a mess. People are scared of confronting trouble makers or even helping other people in case they get knifed, shot, beaten up. Also, people have stopped believing that the trouble makers will be punished so they think there's no point in doing anything.

I do think some of it is due to the home situation. A parent in one of my children's classes came into school, stormed into the classroom and verbally abused the teacher in front of all the children (including her own who was inconsolable for most of the rest of the day). What hope do her children have of learning about respect etc.?

The thing about tolerance is that it should cut both ways. Of course we shouldn't tolerate violence, anti-social behaviour and so on. But as a society, we should also not tolerate: children growing up in violent, abusive homes; people living in abject poverty; children going to school malnourished; people on lower incomes having substantially worse life expectancies; entire communities being left to rot when local industries close down; rotten schools in impoverished areas... but, despite being one of the most affluent countries in the world, we DO tolerate these things, and many more like them. The electorate is regularly given the chance to vote for politicians who want to increase taxes and devote more money to solving entrenched social problems, and it regularly chooses to vote for politicans who will cut taxes and cut back on social services.

I do agree with Cod, that more money in the system is required to fund more support to help people out of the cycle of making bad decisions.

40% on NC level 1 seems to me to imply that there is pretty wide spread undiagnosed SN going on there. Is that possible?

I think that the lowest socio-economic group will always constitute the vast majority of the prison population. For no other reason than they are the group most likely to grow up in the conditions which lead to offending. I think therefore the move must be to reduce offending, to reduce the absolute levels of people in prison, rather than by hoping to change that proportion.

Agree policywonk.

I don't want to tolerate living in a society that disenfranchises so many people. My children, as adults, will have to share a world with those children growing up with no hope and no help. I don't want that.

But then, and I'm not deliberately stirring it here, how do you square all this with pple moving heaven, earth and house to get away from schls which serve these areas and these kids?

Its all related to me.

I agree with whoever said "poverty of expectation".

Didn't grow up in the UK so can't really comment on how/if things have changed BUT the big difference I noticed when moving here is that education was not valued so much.

I wonder if in the past when there was a lot more industry, kids went from school to a secure, relatively ok paid job in the local factory and so the imperative to stay on for A-levels etc wasn't there... times have changed and those jobs are scarce/insecure now but the culture of appreciating and valuing education hasn't developed....

Coming from what was a very poor country with high unemployment, families there generally wanted their children to get the best education they could - if only to give them a good start when they emigrated.

Another thing - we never hung around getting into trouble in the evening as teenagers because a) there was nowhere to go and it was too wet/cold to hang around outside and b) we had loads of homework to keep us busy!

people voted in Labour with all their promises to reduce child poverty, it's just that they haven't made as much progress as people expected I think.

It's hard to turn things like that around. Requires an enormous investment and people (as a whole, I know there are exceptions) will not vote for their taxes being put up much more because it's hard enough to make ends meet as it is with the cost of living so blardy high.

Agree Cod about money needing to be spent but it has to be fairly shared out.

I live on a council estate in what is considered to be an affluent area, and there are also 2 other near by council estates.

To my knowledge there is very very little government subsidised stuff around here, ie play schemes, youth clubs etc and even school things like music lessons are not subsidised at all, meaning they are a complete no go for most people I know.

Now if I go further into the city, there is so much stuff going on at little cost to anyone who wants to use it, that you'd be spoilt for choice. I don't begrudge that, but at the end of the day, they are no worse off than anyone else on benefits or low income that lives here, so why the difference ?

My friend lives in an inner city area and her kids get to have keyboard lessons for £1.75 a week each. Music lessons where I live are £75 a term, yet we both have exactly the same financial cirumstances.

Policywonk - if only it were true that people were voting for tax cuts and cuts in public spending. The saddest thing is, that people voted for a labour govt, who have increased public spending phenomenally over its term in office but that increase in public spending is not reaching those that need it.

I fear that it is being squandered on bureaucracy and quangos rather than getting to the grass roots where it could make a difference.

I agree though that there should be a lack of tolerance for all the conditions that you describe. However, in part at least, that requires individuals to be more responsible too. To take better care of their home environment, to use drug, alcohol rehabilitation, to take parenting classes, to contribute to the communities that they live in, to work productively in whatever capacity they can. State and individuals are interdependent and both must take their responsibilities seriously!

As a single mum on benefits, I was also refused access to a government funded back to work scheme, because my postcode deemed not needy enough.

I complained, and their response was that I should just go the job centre

policy wonk, you are SO right...in our town, over christmas, according to the paper there was a pregnant, homeless teenager living on the streets. This is beyond shameful. I blame Thatcher, too.

I think we can all agree that Education needs to change, unfortunately the people who have already left school and are having children often don't have a clue.

I think a large part of it is what is now acceptable in society, since we all became so PC it's wrong for a mother to go mad at ehr teenage daughter for getting up the spout before she has even done ehr GCSE's let alone got married, that used to be frowned upon, now it's normal.

Bad parents use all sorts of excuses as why their children are misbehaving, it's the teachers or the other bad kids in the class, or they have some form of disorder or other (NOTE: I am not saying some children do not have problems, but too many parents are willing to self-diagnose their children rather than actually parent them).

Sex education is lacking, severely, if we are going to accept that our children have sex earlier then we need to make sure they are protected, they need to learn more about relationships and respect(think Davina's PSHE campaign that disappeared as soon as she mentioned it) rather than just The Pill (the easiest form of contraception to fuck up IMO).

Prisons need to be tougher on peope who dont care about going there, and help people who do go that would much prefer to be successful.

As Cod says though, it's all money, so as parents all we can do is teach our children properly and hope they grow up to not be these 'yobs' which are normally just frightened young children looking for some form of belonging and acceptance

I wasn't really talking about shame for individual crimes Soapbox. More about people making sweeping judgments about various sections of society.

CAMILLA BATMAN-GHELIDJA of Kids Company puts it better than I can:

"I feel that the whole Asbo debate is coming at the problem from the wrong angle. I feel it is articulate opinion-formers who make judgements based on their own quality of life and they set standards for other people in relation to how they want their lives to be.

If you have that power you must ensure that children's lives are of a similar quality and standard as your own."

Thatcher did fuck up our country in many ways, the focus on family changed and the only thing families were good for was paying what she didn't want to pay benefits out for.

But much as the woman angers me, I don't think we can lay the blame totally at her door, both labour and the tories have given us huge problems, with Thatcher it was the way she messed aroudn with benefits and sold off companies and told us all how great capitalism was, with Labour, it's being too namby pamby to say 'Ok, we'll help those immigrnats that really desperately need our help, but we can only have so many here because we have our own country to support first and foremost.'

My friend works with excluded children - the very children who sometimes go on to ruin their own lives and those of other families in the way we have seen this week in the news.

What all these children have in common is absolutely dreadful home lives. Abuse, neglect, bad role models (some of these families are on the third generation of adults who are unemployed). Many of them have SNs which have never been properly diagnosed and supported. They are just about still in education but will probably never go back into mainstream,never get any qualifications. The system has given up on them when they are 14/15 and just about big enough to do someone some real damage.

One of the big issues is how we identify and work with these children and their families early enough to make a real difference to their lives and their aspirations.

We live in a completely unfair system that rewards bad behaviour. I think that we are way too liberal with criminals. We take the softly softly approach and try and rehabilitate them but there is no incentive for not committing crimes in the first place.

We have a benefits system that is so easy to abuse and many people do. I think it is far too comfy for those who chose not to work. I'm not slating anyone who genuinely can not work just those who can and chose not to.

I think there is not enough help for people who want to do well for themselves. Not enough deterrent for those who want to cause trouble. Stupid meaningless punishments like banning people for driving without a license -duh that's not going to stop them.

We help people who have made very bad choices in their life and continue doing because the system says they deserve more help than the average person who is struggling through no fault of their own. In my borough there are many projects to help people who have made bad choices and next to nothing for those who have worked all their life and fallen upon hard times.

As for government budgets- they need to stop spending money on private contractors that tick all the target boxes but have no real function for a better society.

Soapbox said '40% on NC level 1 seems to me to imply that there is pretty wide spread undiagnosed SN going on there. Is that possible?'

Errr, why should they be SN? Yes, some of them are but many will be the product of a crappy education system and a family that doesn't value education. Boys especially find the whole sit down and be quiet part of school tough.
Please don't automatically assume they are SN.

But we are actually not that soft on crime.

England and Wales have the highest per capita prison population in Western Europe - 143 people per 100,000.

It's not working!!!

Education is the key.

And if the government would only butt out and let teachers do their jobs, and we had confidence that money would not be spent on yet another centrally controlled "new initiative" every 5 mins, then I'm sure we would all be more prepared to pay higher taxes.

Needmorecoffee - I asked whether SN was a possible cause. I think it may well be. A child that cannot read or write at all may very well be a child with SN. In fact at my DC's school being unable to read or write by the end of Y2 would almost always result in an assessment of whether the child has SN.

Of course not every child who cannot read or write has SN, but many will have.