Saturday, 29 June 2013

Wellbeing, tobacco and drugs

During a hearing at Ayr Sheriff Court to the Children`s Panel, Sheriff Scott Pattison said that a mother`s cigarette habit showed a lack of parental care. The mother could now risk losing her children. According to the Sun, worried politicians claim the case proves that the state is getting too involved in family life.

If the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill goes ahead the state will be getting more involved in every aspect of family life.

Yet the state has a poor record of protecting vulnerable children from the harmful effects of drugs. The Teresa Cooper case investigated by the BBC shows that girls at Kendal House, run by the Church of England, were given massive doses of drugs against their will and nine women have subsequently given birth to children with birth defects. In the USA, foster children who do not have parents to speak out for them have been used as guinea pigs to test drugs for the big pharmaceutical companies. Given these dreadful abuses, the parent who smokes seems the lesser evil.

Currently in Ayrshire foster carers who smoke are still able to foster children over three years old. In addition we are informed that a record of offences will need to be carefully looked into, but apart from some offences against children, prospective foster carers will not necessarily be ruled out from fostering. We are assured that `People from all walks of life can foster.` For instance, there is no requirement that a foster carer be married or employed or have children of their own although experience of children would be an advantage.

How can removing children from a smoking parent be justified when the requirements of the foster carer are so limited?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8062000/8062486.stm

Unwilling Guinea Pigs: Using Foster Care Children For Forced Drug Experiments

Stunned by ruling ... Professor Black, left, and Brian Donohoe

Tuesday, 25 June 2013

Stakeholders

How is it that the same ideas become widespread over the whole of Western society? There are differences in application, but the same language exists. For instance: Where did this idea come from that Governments should work with stakeholders in order to arrive at policy? The first time I remember the term, it was Tony Blair who used it and it seemed to suggest we all had a stake in our society. Actually, it did not mean that at all.

We read in Scotland that:

`The Children and Young People Bill will be introduced to Parliament in 2013 and will set out fundamental reforms to the way services for children and young people are designed, delivered and reviewed. The Scottish Government conducted a large-scale series of national engagement events to discuss the proposals for reforms with a wide range of stakeholders.`

Democratic Audit asks the question:

`Who and what are 'stakeholders'? Public bodies and consultants fall over each other to assert that they take into account the views of stakeholders and consult thoroughly with them over policy and its implementation. At first glance this approach might seem a hallmark of open, consultative government. Surely those most involved in a particular area have the knowledge that is needed and should have a say in decisions likely to impact directly upon them? Up to a point, yes. But there are problems with the growing emergence of 'stakeholder-ocracy' that seems to be developing.`

`First, in a democracy, everyone should have an equal opportunity to participate and to have their views taken seriously, regardless of whether or not they are deemed a stakeholder. Second, there are difficulties of definition. There is no clearly set out view of what a stakeholder is, how someone or something gets deemed to be one, and what entitlements this status entails. Because of this fuzziness those who do the consulting are able to exercise much discretion over who (and who not) to consult, over what and in what fashion, and even to disguise who gets that exalted status.

And as we have recently discovered we are not even allowed to know who all the stakeholders are. Democratic Audit is currently appealing against a decision not to release under the Freedom of Information Act details of the stakeholders for departments who were consulted as part of the Cabinet Office Capability Reviews of departments. Given this reticence, 'stakeholders' increasingly come to resemble the closed policy circles of the great and good of old - at least we usually knew who they were.` Stuart Weir & Andrew Blick (Cambridge & London, Democratic Audit):

In the case of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill the vast majority of stakeholders who were consulted were from the third sector whose funding has been increased by the Children`s Minister. So it is no surprise that most were in support of the new bill.

Table 1: Number of responses by category of respondent

Third Sector 104 35%

Local Authority Departments 26 9%

Education Bodies 25 8%

Health Bodies 21 7%

Multi-Agency Partnerships 17 6%

Justice Bodies 10 3%

Unions 8 3%

Academic Institutions 6 2%

Others 24 8%

Total organisations 241                81%

Individuals 57                                   19%
Total 298                                        100%
NB Percentages may not total 100% exactly due to rounding.

Then it should be noted that `Seventy two per cent of those who provided a view agreed with the proposal that there should be a point of contact for children, young people and families through a universal approach to the Named Person role.` But very few of the 72% who agreed with that were individuals.

According to the government website this means: `Every child in Scotland will have a Named Person whose job already involves working with children. After birth - where a midwife will have a role - the Named Person will normally be a health visitor until school age. Thereafter to 18 (or when the child leaves school) the Named Person will normally be a head, deputy head or guidance teacher. They will be the first point of contact for children and families, and can be called upon when there is a concern about a child`s or young person`s wellbeing that is not easy to address. Also the Named Person will be in a position to spot concerns at an early stage.

There is no doubt that mass surveillance of the population is what this bill is really about, and had parents been consulted the figure of 72% in favour of the Named Person proposition would surely have been different. Surveillance of the population is being pushed through in other ways by the UK government.

Chancellor George Osborne is proposing to target 400,000 high-risk families with early morning calls from government agents to get parents to job interviews. (No mention that they will have to find those job interviews themselves) There is no recognition that his austerity measures and cuts in services are failing to provide jobs with a living wage and are stressing vulnerable families. Instead families are to be blamed and harassed for their predicament. The thinking is similar to the Early Years Collaborative.

Sky news reports that: Spending cuts will tip another 600,000 children into poverty by 2015. Perhaps George Osborne consulted the wrong stakeholders when he assured the public that this was the beginning of a recovery. Or maybe he was talking about a recovery for a different set of stakeholders. There`s no doubt about it, some stakeholders get an easier time than others and they`re the ones close to Government who formulate the policies.

Jean Robinson, writing in AIMS Journal explains why child protection interventions often prove damaging to families. It is revealing that the risk to the wellbeing of families and children of unnecessary interventions is seldom considered, but it is real. Insisting that there should be a Named Person for all children whose role will be to collect data and look for `concerns` is going to stress a whole society.

It`s a tragedy so few were consulted when so many are going to be affected.

http://www.aims.org.uk/Journal/Vol16No3/HealthVisitors.htmrt

http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/city-news/atos-boss-thierry-breton-lands-1990110

Saturday, 15 June 2013

Child Poverty

It`s ironic that in the same week there is a large gathering in Hyde Park campaigning against malnutrition and the millions of children who die globally each year, there are figures out that show an increase of 300,000 children in the United Kingdom are experiencing poverty. This makes a total of 2.6 million facing hardship.

According to David Cameron the appearance of more and more food banks is a sign that Big Society is working. If David Cameron does not know that the coalition`s austerity measures are the reason for the food banks and increasing child poverty then he has nothing worthwhile to say about anything.

From the Save the Children UK website we are told that Eglantyne Jebb, one of the founders of the charity, wanted to make the rights and welfare of children a major issue around the world and she has nearly succeeded. Her "Declaration of the Rights of the Child" was adopted by the League of Nations and inspired the present UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Whenever this legislation is introduced into a country it invariably undermines parental rights and allows the State, by acting for the child, to dictate what should happen to families.

Another NGO, UNICEF which was behind the Big IF rally against child malnutrition at Hyde Park is also United Nations based. But it is important to know that these non-governmental organisations have a hidden global agenda.

There`s been a lot of rhetoric about tax since the Bilderberg meeting in Watford last week where it is believed by some that tax evasion by big corporations was discussed and has been hyped up in the mainstream media in order to begin to push through a world tax system as the solution. Then at the Big IF rally in Hyde Park, tax evasion was cunningly linked to child malnutrition in order to play on people`s emotions and muster support. A global taxation system would be one step along the way to a one world government, something the United Nations and Bilderberg globalists have been working for through their various NGOs and charities for years.

Please read about Big If`s celebrity speaker Bill Gates and his global vision and involvement with Monsanto, agriculture and eugenics HERE. Also note his involvement in planned parenthood and population control HERE All these issues are part of the United Nations global agenda.

Let`s see what comes out of the G8 summit in Ireland next week, but whatever it is, it will be important to read between the lines, unless of course Syria tops the bill.

guardian.co.uk,

13 Jun 2013 17:37 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/shocking-child-poverty-figures-show-1950944

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Who are the stakeholders?

The Early Years Collaborative in Scotland involves social services, health, education, police and third sector professionals getting together to discuss policy for children. The third sector is a growing part of the collaborative. Aileen Campbell, the Children`s Minister, announced an extra £10 million on top of the £20 million for the third sector Early Intervention Fund as part of wider investment in prevention of abuse and early intervention in the lives of children. We have to ask how is abuse to be detected before it has happened?

Barnardo`s is one of the most important stakeholders in the third sector and because large children`s homes are no longer popular Barnardo`s have diversified: "We are one of the largest charity providers of fostering and adoption services in the UK and we work in partnership with local authorities and health trusts," they claim on their website.

Yes I bet they do, just as local authorities work in partnership with them. After all, they are part of the Early Years Collaborative. It can be noted below that Martin Narey, ministerial adviser on adoption and previously chief executive of Barnardo`s said that the number of adoptions should be increased by about 50% a year. Well, that is Barnardo`s business so why wouldn`t he? He has also stated that more babies need to be taken into care and adopted. It is easy to see where this is going. Children are going to be removed from their parents in order to hit a percentage and just in case they may suffer harm to their wellbeing some time in the future. That could be any child.

In contrast, John Hemming MP is a lone voice who works with families who have experienced grave injustice at the hands of the secret family courts. He claims that 1,000 children are wrongly adopted each year. The House of Commons is usually empty when he speaks because MPs are more interested in the staged performances at Prime Minister`s question time than they are in children.

Yet it was not so long ago that a prime minister had to stand up in the House of Commons and apologise for the children sent away overseas. Have Barnardo`s forgotten the part they played in removing children from low income families sending them to Australia and Canada, some of them never to see their families again? I can see another disaster on its way, only by the time there is an apology, many more thousands of lives will have been destroyed.

The trouble is stakeholders have their own vested interests and when they consult with public bodies will skew decisions in their preferred direction. They are unelected and therefore undemocratic and we should be worried that they are being given increased funding and invited to take part in collaborative partnerships with local government. Meanwhile the most important stakeholders, the parents and children, are given only a tokenistic presence.

What is really going on?

Barnardo`s Scotland [accessed 12.06.2013]

John Hemmings calls for a public enquiry

Sunday, 9 June 2013

Will the new bill aid children and young people?

A new bill is being pushed through the Scottish Parliament, The Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. The most interesting parts of the proposed bill are in connection with the named person.

Provisions relating to a ‘named person’ will:

Place a duty on NHS Boards to allocate every child with a named person from birth to school age

Place a duty on local authorities to allocate every child with a named person until they are 18 or leave school, whichever is later.

Oblige all relevant authorities to share information with the named person if it is necessary to safeguard, support and promote the wellbeing of the child.

What this means is that parents will no longer be the guardians of their children`s wellbeing and will lose their right to a private and family life. (Article 8 Human Rights Act). Parents will be snooped on throughout their children`s lives, as will children, so that the authorities can swiftly intervene as they see fit.

Given the collaboratives being built incrementally amongst key professionals at the moment the net closing around families and children is going to be truly suffocating - and with no opportunity to opt out.

New bill will aid children and young people

Ms Campbell , Minister for Children and Young people said:

“There is excellent work being done across Scotland to support parents, carers, children and young people. This Bill will improve levels of care and support to children and families across the country through an increase in free and more flexible early learning and childcare from 475 to 600 hours, as well as more joined up services to support the wellbeing of all children and young people through a named person.

Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Social Services and the NHS behaving badly

It`s not often someone from Social Services admits that their management can be corrupt, and it is refreshing to hear it, rather than the same old excuse that they`re `damned if they do, and damned if they don`t.` Blair McPherson, formerly director of community services in Lancashire council, in the first article below believes corruption occurs because departments are being run more like businesses. It is probably true that Social Services have become more corrupt for this reason and government policy is encouraging it. It`s also the case that social workers in the know can make a `killing` by providing the outsourced services that local authorities must commission from providers. But once the culture is established how is it to be eradicated when so few are open about it?

OK, those who are open about it won`t tend to be the front-line staff who will be worried about their mortgages.

The NHS has been hit with horrifying scandals and the worst example is the loss of 1,200 patients in Mid Staffordshire Hospital due to a failure of care. In the extract from the Scotsman below it is reported that `in an editorial for the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh,` three senior officials at the organisation said that the same problems could occur in any hospital in Scotland where medical staff are under pressure particularly from their bosses.

How is the public expected to trust these two huge public institutions these days? With great difficulty I think. So it is very worrying to hear that these two public bodies are collaborating in Scotland in the Early Years Collaborative towards a shared vision for Scottish children.

We need checks and balances in the NHS and SS and less collaborating I say.

From CommunityCare website HERE

From the Scotsman HERE

Early Years Collaborative

Eary intervention or a self fulfilling prophecy ?

The Children and Young People Bill stipulates that there should be a named person overseeing the wellbeing of each child in Scotland for the first 18 years of life, ready to spot concerns at an early stage. The role of the named person will be to mobilise services and instigate early interventions. The child plan will be preventative rather than reactionary. One of the ideas behind the proposal is that health issues and social problems such as criminality, substance abuse, unemployment and the like can be identified potentially in children as young as three, and therefore the most effective way of reducing the overall cost to society is to target the child and family early. No longer is the family to be seen as the lynchpin of society but rather the breeding ground for all social ills.

It is not difficult to see stereotyping at work in these ideas which tend to produce cultures of blame and oppress the poor. Perhaps all totalitarian regimes begin by finding a scapegoat. Be that as it may, this is social engineering on a massive scale and there is no evidence to show that surveillance of a whole country will produce the results claimed by the Scottish Government because nowhere has the experiment ever been done quite like this before. It is also rather simplistic because social problems tend to have social, cultural and economic causes.

Moreover, there are organisations such as AIMS (Association for Improvements in Maternity Services) who have experienced the devastating effects of child protection work on public health. HERE. Given the role of the named person to assess potential harm and the underlying philosophy of blame there is no doubt that many families will come to see the named person as a hostile agent of the state. As AIMS has noted when parents come under the scrutiny of critical health visitors and social workers there is a tendency for families to pull up the drawbridge and go on the defensive. Parents will not take the child to the doctor out of fear of being blamed for the accident. Mothers with the `baby blues` will hide it from the health visitor because mental health issues can result in removal of the baby. The stress caused to families and their children by child protection interventions can last for years even when children are not taken away.

There is another issue which is quite alarming when considering the targeting of young children as future extremists, benefit scroungers and criminals, and that is the phenomenon known as a `self-fulfilling prophecy`. For an example see the Association for Psychological Science Make negative comments about a child often enough and the child will start to believe them. Produce those negative attributions from a number of sources and the effects are cumulative. Under the GIRFEC scheme there will be no escape, regardless of whether or not the assessment was fair; data will be collected by the named person. It matters little how sensitively the intervention is handled; the same data will be collated, shared and follow the child for the next eighteen years. The idea of making a fresh start, turning a new leaf, getting a break from it all, will be no more. I would not wish the enormous impact of that on any child.

Early Years Collaborative
The Early Years Collaborative involves social services, health, education, police and third sector professionals beginning to work together to improve Scotland`s wider society and economy by investing in child development from the start and preventing future problems. So says the Scottish Government following the European guidelines. That a whole country`s problems have been reduced to childcare in the early years is truly staggering. Isn`t Europe collapsing under the impact of corrupt banks?

So here are the distractors/collaborators: a Coalition of Community Planning Partners, all working together on this very ambitious project which starts with such humble beginnings: invest in child development. It is surprising that the police have anything to contribute towards reducing stillbirths or reaching targets for the developmental milestone of toddlers. Did they manage to achieve a shared vision with health and education?

But where are the parents and grandparents? Ah! they are the ones who are going to be the recipients of the collaborators` expertise and their early interventions. Makes sense that they shouldn`t be involved I suppose. After all we live in a democracy, don`t we?

From the Scottish Government Website

News

Listen

Early Years Collaborative HERE

24/01/2013

More than 750 early years experts will - for the first time - gather in Glasgow today to help make Scotland the best place to grow up.
The Early Years Collaborative - a coalition of Community Planning Partners, including social services, health, education, police and third sector professionals - will start to work towards three ambitious aims to improve children’s start in life:

By end 2015, reduce the rate of stillbirths and infant mortality by 15 per cent;

By end 2016, ensure that 85 per cent of all children in each Community Planning Partnership meet all expected developmental milestones at the child’s 27-30 month child health review;

By end 2017, ensure that 90 per cent of all children in each Community Planning Partnership have reached all expected developmental milestones by the time the child starts primary school.

The new approach to better support children and families, has attracted interest from America and Europe and will enable experts to learn, share and work together to the benefit of local communities.

Children and Young People Minister Aileen Campbell said:
“I want to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up and give every child the best start in life. Today marks the start of a new and ambitious approach to early intervention and investment in our children and families.

“Getting it right in the early years is the right thing to do for children and parents. By investing in development from the start, and preventing problems later on, the benefits go beyond families to Scotland’s wider society and economy”...

Monday, 3 June 2013

Engage for Education, Strategy in Scotland 31 May 2013

Referring to the article below, full of management speak and spin, the approach to early years which Naomi Eisenstadt from Sure Start warmly welcomes is the collaborative approach which invariably involves incremental improvements on the small scale, tested and shared amongst participants. She does say that a collaborative is a promising methodology for ensuring a shared vision. It`s the SHARED VISION that is the important part. There`s still some resistance to this idea in England.

But who is to do the collaborating? It is the key players in the system who will all be collaborating together to arrive at the shared vision which those who set up the collaborative are after; the aim is that it will be supported and owned by all levels of the system. In other words by the time those who are driving the changes have finished no-one will be quite sure how it happened. We know that Community Planning Partnerships involve the police, social services, health and education. The move towards Police Scotland and the break up of the separate police forces is in the same direction: integration and centralised planning.

This is LIKELY to result in improvements in early years services, we are assured by Naomi Eisenstadt. No guarantee of course, because there are problems with what to measure, knowing what makes a difference, and over-bureaucratic recording systems. By the looks of things the shared vision is also likely to demonise parents and grandparents.

Naomi Eisenstadt asserts that it is parents who are responsible for getting into poverty and so must get the skills and jobs to get out of poverty. Never mind that there are not enough jobs offering a living wage for families and that many working families also require benefits to stay afloat. Meanwhile the child care provision gap which results when parents eventually find a job is better NOT managed by grandparents because they pass on disadvantages and should be out working too. So says Naomi Eisenstadt. The emphasis here is on children`s rights after all. They are better left with strangers.

Here is what the Education Endowment Foundation has to say about early childhood interventions:

Early years or early childhood interventions are approaches which aim to ensure that young children have educationally based pre-school or nursery experiences which prepare for school and academic success, usually through additional nursery or pre-school provision. Many of the researched programmes and approaches focus on disadvantaged children. Some also offer parental support.

In most studies, the impact on attainment tends to wear off over time, though impact on attitudes to school tends to be more durable. There is no established amount of time where the fade takes place, rather there is a pattern of decline over time. Early years and pre-school interventions are therefore not sufficient to close the gap in attainment for disadvantaged children

There are a number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses which have looked at the impact of early childhood intervention. Most of these are from the US however, where children tend to start school at a later age. Evaluations of Sure Start in the UK do not show consistent positive effects and indicate that some caution is needed when generalising from exceptionally successful examples. However, overall the evidence supporting early childhood intervention is robust.

See Early Education in Childhood and Care 2011

Naomi Eisenstadt, Sure Start

"Naomi Eisenstadt, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford University and former Director of Sure Start, visited Scotland to see and comment on our work on the Early Years."

"During my visit I attended an Early Years Collaborative (EYC) meeting in Ayrshire. The EYC is a very promising methodology for ensuring a shared vision for babies and young children, and a reflective, peer led system for continual improvement in public services aimed at young families."

"Participation of health in such endeavours in England continues to be challenging."

A L I C E ...through the ..LOOKING ..G L A S S..

bowling