COMRADES, of all the things David Cameron shouldn’t get high and mighty about it’s the subject of raising a child. After all, this is a man who once abandoned his own kids in a pub!
I have no doubt our pig-headed Prime Minister was more cautious about remembering to take an extra packet of pork scratchings than take his children back to the car! Thusly, when Mr Cameron recently took the time to preach the need for parenting lessons to the nation – without a modicum of self-deprecation – it really bedevilled my beret. Of course, the main problem with Cameron’s statement was the fact it came from his duplicitous gub.
There’s no doubt there are serious concerns over the standards of parenting in the UK and the number of children currently living in abusive environments cannot be tolerated. Above the Border, the SNP is looking to combat the problem with its all-encompassing “Named Person” plan.
However, this significant section of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act has been kept suspiciously off the public radar and not openly championed as the world-beating miracle cure that its creators doubtlessly consider it to be.
Contemplating why this is, I can’t help but notice that people who know little about Named Person seem entirely in favour of it, while impassioned researchers appear wholly against it. I’ll concede that every child being assigned a mandatory government official who employs a “Wellbeing Wheel” to determine if the kid is happy or not certainly isn’t something parents are used to.
Indeed, childrearing for 18 years with a performance-checking, private info-sharing state operative might not sound like a bag of magic to many people, but the intention of the scheme is to help vulnerable children without exception – which, we’ll all agree, is a righteous idea.
However, nobody wants that honourable foundation to give way to the assumption that all parents are irresponsible wrongdoers or that every kid is a saint; I had a pretty solid upbringing but I’m convinced I was hard-wired to become an inflammatory delinquent by the age of 12. I wouldn’t want my parents to take the rap for my offences – that would be completely unreasonable. And I believe it’s that fear of unreasonableness that makes some parents wary of compulsory Named Persons who will come into their lives from August this year. After all, irrationality and politics go together like Jim Murphy and failure.
The success of the Named Person scheme is largely predicated upon said person not being a fudrick. As it stands, if you disagree with or refute the official, you may be classified as “hostile” or “non-engaging”. These labels could often be justified, but they’re troubling when I reflect on the number of disastrous encounters I’ve had with authority figures who simply suck as people, no matter how noble their occupation.
We all remember the episode of The Simpsons in which Homer and Marge were classed as bad parents and their kids were taken away and placed in the care of the Flanders family. Although Homer and Marge seemingly benefited from government counselling, the episode’s message is that some families remain functional by being completely dysfunctional, making the audience wonder if governmental intervention was ever required for a family that, while odd, had so much love at its core.
Although played for comic effect, this Simpsons tale gets to the heart of the Named Person controversy. It’s not that the SNP are morphing into a band of villainous child catchers. The idea of the Government replacing all parents is ridiculous (and even sillier when you consider I’m likely your real dad anyway).
The Named Person idea makes people anxious that, once again, politicians are trying to put out the village fire with a tsunami. For every child saved from mistreatment, many other families could be put under unwarranted scrutiny and made to suffer needlessly at the hands of education and health professionals who might also feel unduly burdened. The most undesirable element is the potential workload it could dump on underpaid teaching and medical staff who didn’t choose to be social workers.
In my mind, there was likely a middle-ground between existing child protection procedures and having a government representative linked to every child. Maybe we could have stepped cautiously toward the Named Person scheme rather than diving unwaveringly upon it with no real evidence it will improve anything.
In truth, almost all drastic legislative ideas are the result of well-intentioned stupidity and not premeditated evil, and we must remember that blindly championing Government intervention is just as as bad as thoughtlessly resisting any assistance it may offer. If the SNP truly believes it will work, it would do well to put parents’ minds at rest by robustly and loudly vindicating this arguably controversial policy.
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