Teenage mums and other problems
(Originally posted on Thursday night, then lost until just now when I worked out how to retrieve it)
Interesting to see the Prime Minister putting so much emphasis on teenage mums producing problem children in his first interview since returning from holiday. The interview on Thursday night seems to have been about trailing the speech on social inclusion he’s giving on Tuesday, in which we know he’ll announce new measures to support families with disabled children, people with persistent mental health problems, looked after children and yes, new plans to tackle teenage pregnancy. All groups of people with particularly difficult circumstances who need extra help - so far so good.
But I have alarm bells ringing at the thought that benefits may be withdrawn from families who don’t attend the parenting support offered to them. In the oral interview (video link at the side of the BBC piece), Mr Blair even floats the idea that if families with children who are likely to grow up to cause problems don’t co-operate, they may have their children taken away from them. Dreadful idea, using threats like that to coerce families to take up support, especially as consultations like Get Heard point out time and time again how terrified low income families are that they might lose their children. Counterproductive, too, when services like Sure Start are almost universally appreciated by low-income families, and when the hardest-to-reach families could be reached with just a bit more effort and investment in getting to them.
The thing is that services like Sure Start are *not* universally appreicated - your “almost” is the key here. Talking to people in government they are very concerned about the 0.5 - 1.5% of people who simply have no engagement whatsoever. Getting tough on people who refuse to use any of the postive services set out to help them is what this is about. I think you need to have something to say about that if you are going to critcise - because it is them and not the 99.5 - 98.5% of the rest of us who are the issue.
Adrian - I’d appreciate a bit more respect in your tone, thanks.
I’m really glad that TB is focussing on a Labour issue - how to deal with some of the most intractable social problems that cause long-term poverty and exclusion. We’ve got a good record on this issue, but some of the things we thought might do more to tackle it haven’t worked as well as we thought they would.
I’d like to see some more outreach to the most deprived and unengaged families than we have now. We’re most of the way there - the SureStart centres are working in the right areas, and they’re reaching lots of the right families. But there is a hard core who won’t ever voluntarily come through the doors of a children’s centre.
The SureStart in my area (full disclosure - I’m on the board of trustees) is getting to those families through mobile workers taking the services into the homes of families least likely to engage. In our area, there’s a lamentable and untrue myth grown up that the SureStart is for Asian families - that’s because the outreach to the Asian families, previously unengaged, has been stepped up by a fabulous local Asian worker. It’s solved one problem and caused another, but I’ve no reason to believe that a similar approach wouldn’t work.
I am open to requiring parents to take up support. Unlike you seem to, I’m not happy to support proposals to take away benefits without hearing some more detail about it. We have no problem linking work-focussed activity to aspects of out-of-work benefits, and I won’t oppose a scheme that works and takes account of the really difficult circumstances of these families’ lives.
But threatening to take children into care is an awful thing to propose, and not even effective in its stated aim - to achieve change in life chances. We can’t even get 15% of children looked after by local authorities through five good GCSEs at the moment, so why we think expanding this failing system is a good idea I don’t know. Given that it fails, it can only be being proposed as a punitive measure, and that’s entirely inappropriate.
Amen, Antonia. I fail to see how taking the children of teenage mums into care really does either child or mother any favours.
Girls who have solid aspirations for the future don’t tend to get pregnant. But those poor girls who can only voice vague hopes of being Jordan or a hair stylist one day (the two most popular career choices for most of the fourteen year old girls my mother is currently teaching) but no REALISTIC goals for the future do - becoming a mother is one goal they CAN achieve. And then they can go on ‘the list’ for a house of their own. Threatening them with the removal of their children because they are apathetic about their futures (what futures?!) seems cruel.
I wish I knew what the solution was. Improving schools such as Peers seems like a step in the right direction…
Hold on - where did I say that I was supporting proposals to take away benefit “without hearing some more detail”? It’s all very well to lecture people on their “tone” but please don’t misrepresent them.
However, i am sure you are not really arguing that no children should ever be taken into care even though you are saying it is “awful” and “failing”. It’s not as failing as kids being killed or abused by parents unable or unwilling to treat their children as human beings.
Anyway, before this turns into a flame war (I certainly had no hostile intent in my first post, merely wished to point out how narrowly focussed the government’s drive is) - I am not convinced that outreach workers are sufficient, even if necessary.
However, i am sure you are not really arguing that no children should ever be taken into care even though you are saying it is “awful” and “failing”. It’s not as failing as kids being killed or abused by parents unable or unwilling to treat their children as human beings.
There are, absolutely, a small number of children who have to be taken into care because they’re in real danger from their parents.
The problem, which Antonia alludes to, is that the state is really bad at bringing up children. This means that the threshold for taking children into care as to be really very high - if there’s anything worse than the might of the state confiscating someone’s children and placing them in a worse situation than the one they’ve been removed from, I can’t imagine what it is.
Sam,
I agree. Though I also note that one of the social exclusion priorities for the government is looked after children, so an effort is being made to improve that.
But it is also the case that if there are children being looked after who shouldn’t be, there are also children who should be in care and who are not.
This is a debate in which absolutes are not particularly helpful.
No of course I’m not arguing that children at real risk shouldn’t be taken into care. I’m arguing that we shouldn’t use “we’ll take them away from you” as a bogeyman to frighten and coerce parents.
Fair enough.
There is a lot of patronising nonsense talked about teenage mothers. Is wanting to have a child showing a “lack of aspiration”? Maybe some people like having children.
However, where there are problems with children can we just break one taboo and suggest that SOMETIMES it might be at least partly because of the lack of a father figure.
This is especially true of a boy who once he gets 12 or so can effectively tell his mum to “****” off if she attempts to discipline him because he is probably bigger and stronger than her (but still has the behaviour patterns of a kid). Where there is a father or father figure to back up the mother then the boy will probably think twice before defying her.
Furthermore, if a boy does not have a male role model to follow he is more likely to go off the rails. Obviously not all fathers are responsible and good role models, but most could be if they were allowed to.
Dealing out ASBOs and getting the courts involved is a failure in itself. Bad behaviour can be nipped in the bud if parents are given the right support by society which instead seems to trying to make it as difficult as possible for them to discipline their kids.
Instead the bad behaviour degenerates to a point where eventually the courts and police have to get involved.
Does Blair care about civil liberties and freedom? The evidence of the last nine years tells an sane and rational person that he doesn’t. Blair is a Hitler-wannabe!