Cycles of disadvantage

"Nearly a quarter of girls in care become teenage mothers, a shocking report reveals today. The Centre for Social Justice, the think tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, paints a disturbing picture of a struggling care system shamefully betraying many of its vulnerable charges."

Ian Duncan Smith

"Freedom of information requests show that more than 4,000 children go missing from care each year - and that 36 per cent of care leavers are not in education, employment or training by the age of 19."

"The CSJ warns of an inter-generational cycle of disadvantage it says is running through England’s care system. It has found that at least one in ten care leavers aged 16 to 21 who are parents have gone on to have a child of their own taken into care in the last year..."

"The report calls on the Government to create 'scorecards' to name and shame councils failing children in care. It also says care leavers should be given a step up in life by funding £2,000 apprenticeship bursaries."

"Local authorities spend £2.5 billion a year supporting children in foster and residential care - a real terms increase of three per cent since the coalition came to power."

"The number of children in care has risen to almost 70,000 - its highest level for nearly 20 years ... The state spends more each year per child - on average around £36,500 - than it costs to send a child to Eton..."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2916067/A-quarter-girls-care-homes-end-teenage-mothers-Fears-cycle-disadvantage-one-ten-children-taken-care.html

It is sad to see how some commentators to the article cannot see beyond the fact that some young women can and do become mothers, and in doing so fail to see the bigger picture - the child protection system is involved in an inter-generational cycle of abuse - a money spinner (yes, taxpayers money) which damages children.

Here`s one such commentator:

Oldncynical, Newport, United Kingdom,

OH Yes, pregnant at 16, council house, free furniture, money on tap out of taxpayers pockets, keep churning out kids for more income. So it has taken an acedemic (!) survey to tell us what we already knew. I know familes  (!)that are now into the 4th generation that have never done a days work.

 

The irony passes Oldncynical by, that is, that the current view in social care and the child protection system is that services need to intervene early in order to break families out of cycles of disadvantage whilst at the same time perpetrating the most cynical cycle of disadvantage there could possibly be.

As for cycles of worklessness, we only need to refer back to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report which explored the existence of permanent worklessness across generations. It concluded that even two generations of extensive or permanent worklessness in the same family is a rare phenomenon.

http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/worklessness-families-employment-full.pdf

See http://alicemooreuk.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/barnardos-fostering-and-adoption.html