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Monday 14 September 2015

Cinderella Law meets the Named Person

 
 
According to the recent Judgement of the Named Person scheme that is embedded in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014:
 
"It has no effect whatsoever on the legal, moral or social relationships within the family. The assertion to the contrary, without any supporting basis, has the appearance of hyperbole.''

Read more at http://www.heart.co.uk/scotland/news/local/named-person-policy-not-illegal/#edCqCzFIHh63pAsH.99

A different sense comes across at the `Battle of Ideas` discussion about the Cinderella Law.

Dee Thomas, a No to the Named Person campaigner, talks about the mechanism that is being used by governments which allows the state to criminalise parents for emotional abuse. It is now embedded in Holyrood and Westminster but comes from the US and is called prevention science.

As part of that, Evidence2Success, an online wellbeing survey that scores parental risks and protective factors was created to score the urban poor in America and has now been exported for trial in the UK.

For example, it scores parenting as protective if the child is placed regularly with children who attend religious services. But it scores parenting as risky if family decisions do not take a child`s view into consideration. Parents are automatically seen as a risk if they are unemployed or a step-parent...

The Scottish government has now scored over 40,000 state school children against US designed risk and protective factors and they intend to continue. The Big Lottery Fund is also funding Evidence2Success in areas of multiple deprivation in England. They propose to carry out epigenetic testing, taking DNA samples from the cheek swabs of two month old babies, to show genetic damage inflicted in pregnancy.

So when it comes to the so-called Cinderella Law it will only be a matter of time before a bespoke tool is designed that can be used by government to criminalise parents.

Holyrood has just legislated state appointed Named Persons to oversee the wellbeing of every Scottish child.

Says Dee Thomas: "The Information Commissioner, Ken Macdonald, tells me the wellbeing survey underpins that legislation. Surprisingly he doesn`t have a problem with the survey questions. My 10 year old son was asked: Do people in your family often shout in each other`s faces? Do you carry a knife? Have you used cannabis over the last 30 days? If he had been 14 he would have been asked if he had had anal sex. But what made me really angry was my boy was asked if he thought he was no good at all...and if he thought his life just wasn`t worth it. My son was asked a suicide question with the blessing of the Information Commissioner. Creepy and Weird?  I call it stealing his innocence without my permission. "

She goes on: "The Named Person can receive and share information with the police, NHS and social work via an IT system known as the Secure Portal of Concern - it sounds like something out of Dr Who - but child wellbeing is a two tiered system. Is a parent who pays £30,000 to a boarding school guilty of isolating, rejecting and emotionally abusing their child? Will these farmed out children be scored on isolation and rejection? Will they be asked it their lives are worthless? I doubt it. "

"Because prevention science does not address inequalities in society. It sells governments mechanisms for controlling dissent. "

Prevention Science ?

As well as money for the surveys, there is also money to be made for designing the prevention programmes. Yet many of them are bogus:

For instance:

..." Robert McMahon was Editor of Prevention Science. He is a member of the Triple P Parenting International Scientific Advisory Committee . This makes the possible relationship between Triple P and the journal, including undisclosed conflicts of interest being let slip by all the more troubling."

https://jcoynester.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/sweetheart-relationship-between-triple-p-parenting-and-the-journal-prevention-science/

See also  http://www.alcoholfacts.org/DARE.html

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