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Thursday 28 July 2016

Getting it Right for the Blog

I am celebrating the fact that the Supreme Court has branded the Named Person legislation as unlawful. I am doing that by removing the sidebar blurb, copy below, that I put in place as I set up my blog.

Thanks to NO2NP and all their supporters for the wonderfully measured, but strong campaign, against this anti-family, anti-child, totalitarian scheme.

A new blurb will be put in place after 42 days and suggestions are most welcome.
 


5 comments:

  1. No suggestions as of yet but taking the opportunity to thank you for what you're doing. Implications of SP judgement still sinking in but in a good way :)

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  2. The worst of it has been halted, which is good for Scotland, and the rest of the UK.

    I`m not sure either how GIRFEC, integrated services and early interventions are going to be played out without the data grab.

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  3. Took me a while to get my head around it because my long held fear was that the highly emotive, late add-on that is the NP would get squashed causing much loud rejoicing but that the real nasty - as you say the data grab that is Girfec - intact.

    I too hope there will be a UK wide shift thanks to this judgement.Read Allan Norman here: http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/the-named-persons-scheme-when-protecting-wellbeing-is-totalitarian/

    "When you have begun believing you are simply applying well-established principles, three years of people taking a contrary view is a long time to wait. Given the go-aheads that the scheme received, I had begun to be concerned that the judgment of the Supreme Court might represent a reconfiguring of the relationship between the individual and the state. Particularly significant here, I would argue, is that in the intervening period a number of other initiatives linked to my practice area of social work that are potentially subject to the same criticisms – arbitrary interference by the State in private and family life without adequate safeguards – have managed to gain traction. These include mandatory reporting, extended “school census” requirements, shared childrens’ databases, multi-agency safeguarding hubs, and near-compulsory child-in-need assessments."

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  4. Thanks Sheila.

    The judgment of the Supreme Court is a major victory and can be referred to again and again, if required, to push back state interference. But constant vigilance is still required I think.

    I`ve picked out some useful snippets from the article.

    RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL WILL NOT CHANGE

    "It will be useful that the Supreme Court so plainly reinforces the primacy of the parental role, and that there is nothing within universal human rights principles to displace parents to such a degree that the totem of wellbeing could justify unwanted state interference."

    "Simply put: positive state duties to protect families cannot metamorphose into positive state rights to direct families..."

    ADVICE, INFORMATION AND SUPPORT CAN ONLY BE VOLUNTARY

    "Care should therefore be taken to emphasise the voluntary nature of the advice, information, support and help which are offered under section 19(5)(a)(i) and (ii) and the Guidance should make this clear.”

    "It seems clear to me from this paragraph that the Supreme Court is identifying no alternative to consent-and-necessity, no lawful basis for intervention in the absence of one or the other, and no compulsion threshold other than the pre-existing (and unchallenged) “significant harm” threshold."

    UK LAW IS NOT BEING USED TO OVERRULE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT

    "This judgment does not apply UK law to overrule the Scottish Parliament, it relies in its entirety on the established principles of European jurisdictions that an independent Scotland would seek to abide by."

    This is an important consideration in uniting the Scottish people around the Supreme Court judgment.

    TWO EXTREMES: BENIGN OR TOTALITARIAN?

    "To put it another way, the wish of the Scottish Government to provide a broad and co-ordinated range of services that promote the wellbeing of children is benign, and the creation of a named person service to facilitate that is legitimate..."

    "But today’s case is a shot across the bows: it cannot become the secret police of a totalitarian state, keeping the population under surveillance, setting child against parent, undermining trust in communities, and amassing secret files on us."

    "It is how to serve society in the wide space between these two extremes that is the operational challenge..."


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