Useless Girfec scheme still threatening families

New Zealand abandoned a Girfec-like scheme after branding it `useless` according to the Scottish Express in August of last year.

They quoted the disastrous attempt of the Isle of Man to successfully implement such a scheme and how even UNICEF had expressed concerns over the plans to rate every newborn child with a risk score to predict future abuse for officials to keep an eye on.

Moreover, the Supreme Court had ruled that the data sharing provision of the Named Person scheme to be rolled out in Scotland was unlawful

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/697358/New-Zealand-

But it looks like these ideas are not so easy to shake off and are deeply entrenched in research establishments as the report on childhood forecasting illustrates.

"A detailed analysis of the lives of nearly a thousand people from birth to age 38 shows that a small portion of the population accounts for the lion’s share of social costs such as crime, welfare dependence and health-care needs as adults..."

"The researchers found they could have predicted which adults were likely to incur such costs as early as age 3 based on assessments of 'brain health,' giving them hope that early interventions could avoid some of these social costs..."

"The research group wanted to test the 'Pareto principle,' which is also called the '80-20 rule.' Italian engineer and social scientist Vilfredo Pareto observed a century ago that 80 per cent of wealth is controlled by 20 per cent of the population. This principle has subsequently been found a useful rule of thumb when applied to phenomena in computer science, biology, physics, economics and many other fields..."

"'The digitisation of people’s lives allows us to quantify precisely how much a person costs society and which people are using multiple different costly health and social services,’ Professor Moffitt said. 'Apparently, the same few clients use the courts, welfare benefits, disability services, children’s services, and the health-care system. These systems could be more joined up...' "

"Professors Caspi and Moffitt stress that this ability to identify and predict a person’s life course from their childhood status should be an invitation to intervene, not discriminate."

Paper reference: Caspi, A et al (2016) Childhood Forecasting of a Small Segment of the Population With Large Economic Burden Nature Human Behaviour DOI: 10.1038/S41562-016-0005  

In Scotland, councils are being regularly accused of ignoring the Supreme Court ruling.

Read about: Mum exasperated by unlawful info sharing and ‘Named Person knows best’ attitude