{"id":20427,"date":"2013-05-26T08:25:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T13:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20427"},"modified":"2013-05-26T08:25:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-26T13:25:31","slug":"more-on-scotlands-proposed-child-protection-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/26\/more-on-scotlands-proposed-child-protection-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Scotland’s proposed “child protection” scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I linked to a story<\/a> about the Scottish government introducing a new “child protection” program that would assign a “named person” as guardian for every child. Christopher Booker<\/a> has more on this rather disturbing Big Brother initiative:<\/p>\n

We are familiar with the idea that state employees are expected to take an interest in a child\u2019s welfare, from health visitors to teachers at school. But this proposal that local authorities should be empowered to appoint an official to act as a personal \u201cguardian\u201d, or social worker, to oversee every aspect of a child\u2019s life from birth onwards is a world first.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Bill is remarkably vague about the powers to be given to these \u201cnamed persons\u201d. Will they be free to arrive unannounced at the family home to check on how a child is being treated by its parents, when it goes to bed, what food it is given, what political or religious opinions it is being brought up with? In other words, the Bill gives no idea of how this hugely ambitious scheme, estimated to cost Scotland\u2019s local authorities up to \u00a3138\u2009million a year, will work in practice. And most worrying of all, to anyone familiar with the failings of our existing \u201cchild protection\u201d system, is how often the most damaging errors can arise when professionals are charged with reporting to social workers their suspicion that something in a child\u2019s life might be amiss.<\/p>\n

In too many of the cases I have followed where children have been removed from their families for what seems to be no good reason, their nightmare began with a report by a teacher or a doctor that got some overheard remark or slight injury absurdly out of proportion. Too often, such suspicions then harden into allegations that are never properly tested against the evidence, and the damage is done. However admirable, in theory, the thought of appointing a \u201cguardian\u201d to watch over every child might seem, experience suggests that, in practice, this may exacerbate those weaknesses in our existing \u201cchild protection\u201d system, which make a mockery of the noble aims it was set up to promote. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I linked to a story about the Scottish government introducing a new “child protection” program that would assign a “named person” as guardian for every child. Christopher Booker has more on this rather disturbing Big Brother initiative: We are familiar with the idea that state employees are expected to take an interest in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,84,9],"tags":[374,322,375,338],"class_list":["post-20427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-government","category-law","tag-children","tag-nannystate","tag-parents","tag-scotland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5jt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20428,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20427\/revisions\/20428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}