Barnardo's Martin Narey has stepped into the debate on bad parents.
A lot of progress has been made in terms of dealing with dysfunctional, disruptive or just chaotic families in our society. Family Intervention Programmes, hugely improved provision for under fives, higher educational standards (GCSE results have doubled in Blackburn in the last 12 years) better health care, better training, more jobs, tougher benefit enforcement and a great expansion in drugs services have all helped.
Teenage pregnancy rates are down too - by 38 per cent in Blackburn and Darwen between 2005 and 2007. Better and tougher law enforcement also seems to be working. Action can be taken against antisocial behaviour and youth crime in a way it never could in the '70s and '80s. Crime has gone down; more offenders are being locked up and for longer.
“It's why it's false to describe Britain as a ‘broken society’, as David Cameron does. It's a simplistic view which overlooks all the good about our country. But it would be wrong to pretend that despite all the improvements there is no longer a problem with dysfunctional families.”
All of this highlights it's why it's false to describe Britain as a "broken society", as David Cameron does. It's a simplistic view which overlooks all the good about our country. But it would be wrong to pretend that despite all the improvements there is no longer a problem with dysfunctional families, as horrendous cases like Baby P and the backgrounds of the two boys responsible for that appalling attack in Edlington illustrate.
If you're unlucky enough to live next door to one of those families, those which cause disruption to all around, breaking the law, children out of control and appalling behaviour which blights the whole community, the problem is dreadful.
Often the law-abiding neighbours, driven mad by this behaviour, ask why children's services are not acting more quickly in taking the children into care to make them available for adoption. These decisions are really difficult. Professional - and media - "wisdom" on this can swing violently. One minute too many children are in care, the next (especially after a case like Baby P) too few.
Into this debate has now stepped Martin Narey, the head of the Barnardo's Children's Charity. "If you can take a baby very young and get them quickly into a permanent adoptive home, then we know that is where we have success" he said. "We can't keep trying to fix families that are completely broken. It sounds terrible, but I think we try too hard with birth parents. I have seen children sent back to homes that I certainly wouldn't have sent them back to. I have been extremely surprised at decisions taken. If we really cared about the interests of the child, we would take children away as babies and put them into permanent adoptive families".
Narey is not saying that every child born into a dysfunctional family should be removed at birth. Many families can be made to functio n much better.
And I have witnessed the distress of parents who face the removal of their children. But he is surely right to emphasise that what's key here is the welfare of the child - not the welfare of the parents, nor some quixotic conventional wisdom.
