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This is a no-brainer for some local authorities. How can we possibly ensure all children are safe if we can’t see them? How can we possibly ensure the child’s voice is heard if we can’t talk to them?
I think this point of view comes from a misunderstanding of legislation, a misunderstanding of children’s rights, and a misunderstanding of the relationship between the state and individual families.
We have gone from a position where the state only intervenes where it believes something has gone wrong, to one were it doesn’t think it possible to assess if something has gone wrong without investigating every detail of our lives. Some say this is because of the collapse of local communities and families, there is no safety net any more so the state has to play that role. I say the more the state takes that role, the more people expect “they” will do something about, well everything really! This just leads to the collapse of society and family responsibility.
The fact is, it doesn’t work. Social Services clearly struggle to keep up with the issues they have identified. How will trying to find more help? For every legitimate case identified how many thousands of families will have the spotlight of suspicion cast on them? And how much money will be spent casting it? Money that could be spent on things that actually reduce abuse. Things that help communities resolve their own problems.
What is proposed is a system where local authorities will have a right to come and inspect my house (what for exactly? No one has actually said this yet, so they’ll have a new power with no identified purpose) and take my child off to interview them on their own. This will also apply to my friends’ autistic children, to the children who were abused by the teacher of the school they have just been withdrawn from and so on. What will they be asked by these officials? Apparently they are the be the guardian of the child’s human rights (I thought that was my job, clearly I don’t need to bother now) so I guess it will be things like “Would you like to try school”. To those of you with children at school I ask this – when someone takes your child off into a room on their own, asks leading questions, then tops off with “would you rather be at home choosing what you learn and when rather than being in school? You could be on the beach now learning about cliff erosion and swimming in the sea.” how would you feel? And when this answer was used as a way of forcing you to withdraw your child from school against your wishes? Far fetched, it probably is (that way round). But think about how you would feel about having the decision made for you about the best way to raise your child, just based on a loaded question asked behind a closed door. That’s what government plans on subjecting our family to.
Oh, and they’ll be round shortly to check your house is a suitable place to raise a child. They’ll make an appointment in advance. At least for now.
By the way, if you have read this far and started to determine that I am just a raving conspiracy theorist, please stick with it. In the next post I’ll come back to some much more mundane flaws in the plans.
4 comments:
The thing that concerns me about the 'secret' interviewing thing is whether my children are going to be asked leading questions about my role as a parent. "Does Mummy ever get cross with you?", "Does she shout sometimes?", "How does that make you feel?" etc etc. I accept that I'm not a perfect parent and yes I have got cross and shouted occasionally! But the Govt clearly has an agenda about somehow 'proving' that HE'd kids are more subject to abuse. So by asking a 5 year old leading questions that are nothing to do with education and more to do with the Govt's 'safeguarding' agenda, I could suddenly find myself having Social Services removing my children because one of them has inadvertently made 'accusations of abuse' because I, for instance, shouted at them for running across the road in front of a car a few days before the meeting and they still feel upset about it!
Just discovered your blog and thoroughly enjoyed reading your continuing story :). I am in the fortunate position that all my children are of an age where they wouldn't let themselves be manipulated into anything - that is if the interviewer had managed to get past myself, my dh and my adult children to talk to them by themselves - but still, it's a scary thought.
But just imagine what precautions they would have to take to make sure they wouldn't run the risk of being accused of allsorts while interviewing a child on their own.
Nah, I don't think this will get through, although they might try to use it as a negotiation tool. "If you agree with this that and the other, we'll drop this..."
i cannot see how the la could practically visit each and every one of us; the resources required to get through the gates of just ONE bolshy home ed family would probably stretch the service to breaking point. we should be encouraging the la's to kick this stupid piece of legislation out too.
Grit - Ah, now you are pre-empting part 5! Coming soon to a PC near you...
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