Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Power grab

As I feared, the government are using the exposure of local government failures in child welfare to grab more power for the state.

Thousands of children supposedly educated at home by their parents are at risk of abuse, neglect, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude, the Government said yesterday.

I don't home school either of my kids (although I have been considering it recently), but I do know a few people who do. In all circumstances they are doing so because the schools their children were in repeatedly failed to address the concerns they had as parents with regards to their child's education and welfare within their school - an experience which I have recently had too.

The review follows mounting concern from local authorities that their overarching duty to promote and protect child welfare is undermined by the present rules, under which responsibility for a child's education rests squarely with the parents.

This is utter bullshit. The fact is that in the case of Baby P and numerous other instances of child abuse, the child in question was not of school age and would not have been in education.They were also well known to local authorities who, quite simply, failed to act more because of the culture of political correctness that permeates social work rather than any deficiency of knowledge of the child's circumstances.

If you extend this reviews concern, the logical conclusion is that they can not perform their duty to protect child welfare unless the child is in full time education - which is patently ridiculous - and is the precursor to children being placed into state baby farms virtually from the moment they are born.

It is another attempt by the state to undermine the role of parents and family and increase the reach of the state into ever more areas of our lives. It will make no difference to the welfare of children who are vulnerable, but it will increase the power of the state and the grip of the progressives on society.

Perhaps that is the real purpose?

3 comments:

North Northwester said...

"Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Simple.

JuliaM said...

Ah, I wondered if anyone else would pick up on this. The sheer contempt for those who choose to stand on their own two feet shines through.

They had a home-schooler vs a NSPCC 'spokesman' on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 this afternoon; it was embarassing. She utterly destroyed him, quoting back chapter and verse of the regulations at him.

He was obviously unprepared, totally baffled that people weren't deferring to him as a 'charidee spokesman'. The fact that he appeared to have some kind of speech impediment didn't hep!

Anonymous said...

Stan, you've got it in one.

Within a short period, home-schooling will be illegal.

It already is in Germany.

There's probably an EU regulation covering it, which we will find out about after it's too late.