The Torygraph has a story about the proposed childrens’ database:
Government surveillance of all children, including information on whether they eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, will be condemned tomorrow as a Big Brother system.
Quite rightly condemned too. As pointed out:
Experts say it is the biggest state intrusion in history into the role of parents.
All of this is the outcome of the tragedy of Victoria Climbié’s death in 2000. That sorry little episode was due to catastrophic failings in the social services department. Indeed, it was systemic and widespread incompetence that allowed her to slip through the net. What we are now facing, though, is a disproportionate response. Rather than sort out the underlying causes of this child’s tragic death, government does what seems to be its usual response when faced with something it cannot fully comprehend (its own utter inability to manage the proverbial newts’ tea party) – create a database.
Changes being introduced since Victoria Climbié’s death from abuse include a £224 million database tracking all 12 million children in England and Wales from birth. The Government expects the programme to be operating within two years.
That’s right, rather than deal with underlying causes enabling social services to accurately recognise and deal with real cases of abuse, they want to intrude into every child’s life; all 12 million of them. After all, they are all at risk, aren’t they? Especially those who have independent thinking parents who don’t fit neatly into their state designed pigeonhole…
You think I’m joking? I jest not.
Doctors, schools and the police will have to alert the database to a wide range of “concerns”. Two warning flags on a child’s record could start an investigation.
There will also be a system of targets and performance indicators for children’s development. Children’s services have been told to work together to make sure that targets are met.
If your child doesn’t meet its targets, well, that’s abuse, isn’t it? What sort of targets are we talking about here? Dr Munro of the LSE injects a warning note:
Dr Eileen Munro, of the LSE, said that if a child caused concern by failing to make progress towards state targets, detailed information would be gathered. That would include subjective judgments such as “Is the parent providing a positive role model?”, as well as sensitive information such as a parent’s mental health.
“They include consuming five portions of fruit and veg a day, which I am baffled how they will measure,” she said. “The country is moving from ‘parents are free to bring children up as they think best as long as they are not abusive or neglectful’ to a more coercive ‘parents must bring children up to conform to the state’s views of what is best’.”
Parents’ ideas about suitable diet or what sort of role model they wish to provide will be subject to the scrutiny of the state and the state, not parents will judge what is a suitable role model. What about kids like my nephew who wouldn’t eat anything that was green even if you tried to smother it with ketchup? And what do they mean by role models? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Any idea that parents are responsible for the upbringing of their children is cast asunder by our masters in Whitehall. Is this, perhaps, why?
“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.’”
Adolf Hitler
The state knows best and you’d better start getting used to the idea. That’s if they can get the damn thing working, of course. Personally, I’m rather glad I’m not a parent.
The problem with the Victoria Climbie case was not that Social services etc did not know she was at risk; it was that they did not do enough about it.
Surely, therefore, a more appropriate reaction would be to send something (perhaps even some of that £224 million) on adequate resources of adequate competence.
Instead, a lot of money is to be spent looking for children at risk where there are, very likely, few to be found (and certainly no more than average).
This actually indicates a level of competence, in the senior management of the Government, no better than that found gathered around the sad corpse of that little girl.
Best regards