The poor families get poorer, but the United Kingdom media plays down the significance of the March 26th, 2011, TUC protest about public expenditure cuts.

First posted on March 27th, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/Home.aspx?cpid=1  where many other many articles relating to children, childhood, child development, parenting, families, foster care and residential child care can be found.

In London on Saturday, March 26th, reportedly between 100,000 and 500,000 people - among them child care workers, teachers and health workers - protested legitimately and peacefully about the coalition government's decision to cut drastically our health, education, social and other community services. The British media, including the BBC, chose to focus most of its reporting of the event on a small breakaway group which - though it may have had a valid point to make - protested in a more sensational and destructive way.

The overwhelming response to the TUC's call for a protest march came in a week when the coalition government's budget offered little sustenance to those families with children who struggle on a low income. An analysis of the budget carried out by Tom Horton, the research director of the Fabian Society, and Howard Reed, the director of Landmark Economics, shows that many single-earner families with children and families claiming help with child care are set to lose from tax-and-benefit reform. The report claims that "despite government rhetoric about 'lifting the poorest out of tax' many low income families are set to become bigger contributors to the Exchequer." According to the report these losses occur because for many families, the rise in Value Added Tax and the cuts in tax credits outweigh any gains from the budget's proposed cuts in income tax and national insurance.

The cutting of services and the increased financial burdens to less well off families with children impacts upon what the parents in these families can give to their children. Moreover this has an emotional impact. Parents who are struggling financially often become anxious parents and anxious parents make children anxious. Attention should be drawn to this and that is exactly what the peaceful protesters in London were trying to do. It is therefore tragic as well as ironic that at a time when the coalition government backed by the media is defending the rights of peaceful protesters in other countries, our media deflects attention away from legitimate protests about government policies and financial restrictions which not only cut essential resources for our children and young people but also challenge their basic rights.

Note

The full text of the Fabian Society Report can be found at :

 http://www.fabians.org.uk/images/FabianSociety-LandmanEconomics_post-Budget_report.pdf

Something to reflect on : the trials, tribulations,struggles and excitement of adolescence

First posted on March 24th, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/  where many other many articles relating to children, childhood, child development, parenting, families, foster care and residential child care can be found.


As adults with a responsibility to look after young people who are experiencing the onset of puberty while butting through the storms and languishing in the occasional calms of adolescence, we sometimes adopt a temporary amnesia concerning the trials, tribulations, and the excitement we experienced at that time in our lives. We forget those occasions when we thought or said "When I become a parent I am going to make a better job of the world than my Mum or Dad." Instead an understanding dawns on us of the frustrations our parenting figures felt when we as youngsters thought it unreasonable that we were not, for instance, allowed to stay out late every night. As we rediscover the parenting wheel for ourselves we can appreciate that adolescence is an essential part of the development of both generations. The psychoanalyst, Margot Waddell begins to explore the adolescent phenomenon in this excerpt from her book, Inside Lives .



"......the nature of adolescence and its course are organised around responses to the upheaval of puberty. Adolescence can be described, in narrow terms, as a complex adjustment on the child's part to these major physical and emotional changes. This adjustment entails finding a new, and often hard-won, sense of onself-in-the-world, in the wake of the disturbing latency attitudes and ways of thinking. The means by which this altered relationship to the self may be achieved vary across a very wide range of behaviour, of different modes of defence and adaptation, from being the "conforming", "pseudo adult", "good" boy or girl to being the "tear-away", the "drug addict", the "suicide risk", "bad" boy or girl. It may take several years, or decades,for the turmoil to settle. For adolescents the psychic agenda is a demanding one : the negotiation between adult and infantile structures; the transition from life in the family to life in the world; the finding and establishing of an identity, especially in sexual terms; in short the capacity to manage separation, loss, choice, independence, and perhaps disillusionment with life on the outside."



Reference



Waddell, Margot (1998) Inside Lives  London  :  Karnac Books 2005,  p140

Foster Care Controversy

In response to our opinion piece on the recent Question Time programme which was broadcast on March 3rd, 2011, Stuart Russon writes,

'Following the media frenzy over the Derbyshire couple who weren't allowed to foster because of their religious/homophobic views and following your short article about this programme I was struck - without commenting on the moral dilemma itself - by the general view that seemed to pervade most on the Question Time panel and audience when discussing it. The consensus seemed to be that because the child was under 10 that the religious/homophobic views of the foster parents didn't really matter as the child was too young to be influenced (or "is too young to be considering such adult themes"). Now I've always thought that a child of that age is most susceptible to influence and so it does matter. The child WILL be influenced by the thinking/views of the foster parents and this at a possibly critical time in the child's development. Watching the programme was one of those times when I realise how out of kilter I am with public opinion, as I thought, with all due respect to the couple involved, that it was the right decision although the Question Time audience thought otherwise'.

First posted on the goodenoughcaring home page  on March 9th, 2011 at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com  where you have access to many articles about childhood, child care, nurture, parenting, children in care, social pedagogy and therapeutic child care.

Government minister, Iain Duncan Smith, claims residential child care fails children

Visitors to the goodenoughcaring.com site who watched the programme “Question Time” from Derby on BBC 1 last night, (Thursday,3/3/11) may have heard Iain Duncan Smith, the coalition government’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions say as an aside to a plea for the recruitment of more foster carers, “that as many children as possible should not be in care homes because ultimately they do not do them any good at all.”
Iain Duncan Smith is right to stress the need to recruit more foster parents for troubled children but there is a significant number of children who, temporarily or more long term, cannot live with their birth families and who, for a variety of reasons, would not have their current needs met in a foster care placement. For them good quality group residential care is less threatening and also has the resources which can accommodate and provide for their complex developmental needs. This is not to be complacent about, or to deny the difficulties residential child care faces, and at the best of times residential child care is a problematic project. In a sense that is how it should be for if it were otherwise something would be seriously wrong.
Iain Duncan Smith is not the minister responsible for children’s homes but he is a rightly respected and influential voice in the coalition government on matters concerning the most needy and vulnerable members of our community. This is why his remark is disappointing for it is surely not stretching things too far to conclude that his views represent the government’s position on this matter. It is disappointing too because he should know that there are many examples of good residential child care being provided throughout England but these are not encouraged or developed further because there is a lack of consistent political commitment and support to the residential child care sector.
The recent Ofsted report on children’s homes in England, Outstanding Children's Homes (2.3.11) highlights examples of the good residential child care practice but implies that the lack of consistent suppport to the sector is reflected in the inconsistency of service provision which Ofsted found. The report recommends that exceptional practitioner leaders in residential child care should be encouraged to spread their practice by being placed at the forefront of the development and training of residential child care workers. Those directly involved with residential child care are wary when they are provided with neat general solutions to the unique and dynamic difficulties faced by individual children but Ofsted's recommendation is to be welcomed if it is intended to free residential child care workers from being manacled to laid down procedures that satisfy the demands of political and senior management “heavyweights” but which, as Mark Smith (2009) and Jim Rose (2010) in their different ways so eloquently demonstrate, do nothing to meet the real personal and intimate needs of children.
This week in Community Care (3.3.11) Camilla Pemberton observes that Ofsted’s report comes after a period of time when support to residential child care in England has been severely reduced. The National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care closed last year when the Labour government withdrew its funding. For a time it seemed the private consultancy consortium Tribal would take over much of the NCERCC role until the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government cancelled the contract with Tribal. This cancellation was broadly welcomed but sadly nothing has been heard from the government about what will be put in place to fill the vacuum left by the excellent service provided by the NCERCC or indeed what will be done to provide the kind of consistent support and leadership for which the Ofsted report asks. In the shadow of Iain Duncan Smith’s remark the government’s silence is concerning.

Sources
Camilla Pemberton (2011) “Ministers need to take the lead on improving children’s homes” in Community Care . Accessed on 3.3.11 at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2011/03/02/116373/ofsted-urges-ministers-to-boost-childrens-homes-leadership.htm)
Ofsted (2011) Outstanding Children’s Homes Accessed from http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Outstanding-children-s-homes
Jim Rose (2010) How Nurture Protects Children : Nurture and narrative in work with children, young people and families London : Responsive Solutions
Iain Duncan Smith statement from “Question Time”, BBC 1 on Thursday, 3rd March, 2011. Re-accessed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z2xk8/Question_Time_03_03_2011/
Mark Smith (2009) Rethinking Residential Child Care : Positive perspectives Bristol : Policy Press

A review of Mark Smith's book can be found at www.goodenoughcaring.com/JournalArticle.aspx?cpid=102 An article by Mark Smith 'Loving and Fearful Relationships' can be found at www.goodenoughcaring.com/JournalArticle.aspx?cpid=52



This opinion piece was first published online at http://www,goodenoughcaring.com/  at 2.15pm  on 4/3/11

Teachers don't let your students grow up to be prime ministers

In 1969, a son of Forfar, the Scottish educationalist and founder of Summerhill School, A.S. Neill, was heard to say,

"I'd be very disappointed if a Summerhill child became Prime Minister. I'd feel I'd failed".

What could he have meant ?


Reference : Croall, J. (1983) Neil of Summerfield : The Permanent Rebel London Routledge and Kegan Paul p.400

First posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring website home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/