Respect and parenting contracts, parenting orders

[Guest guest]

Dear Senate,

Today I attended a meeting of the Home Office's 'Respect Academy' (in

borough). Hewitt and the DH have also formally signed up to

this Blair/Reid social control agenda for the antisocial 'minority'.

By the end of 6 hours, if I had heard the words Enforcement and Coercion

one more time, I would have started screaming and swearing in an

antisocial way- as I left the hall, one participant was quietly banging

her (adult) head on her table. Be prepared for a big roll-out of legal

Parenting Orders from January 2007 - you have been warned!

However, there was some good news. Louise Casey (she who must be obeyed)

told me that in two weeks the DfES will launch a new strategy for Looked

After Children: if I had dared, I would have hugged Ms.Casey then. This

is supposed to link in with Blair's new 0 - 2 years initiative, too.

During the various sessions, there was some really interesting discussion

of the CAF framework, Lead Professionals under the Children Act 2004,

Connexions Mentors as role model adults, Family Support Workers, school

exclusions and Youth Opportunity Cards. There were very mixed feelings

expressed about the single agency (un-'enforceable') Parenting

Contracts... coercive Orders are likely to become dominant in 2007?

would have been delighted when Heslop lead social worker from

the Manchester pathfinder for parenting said there was a:

" Key role for universal services to play "

which I followed up with a discussion of child protection arrangements in

the ASBO-linked Manchester pathfinder (the arrangements are separate but

equal, with the social services Keyworker the bridge).

Heslop's team gave much the most positive messages of the day, based

on their just published Positive And Responsible Parenting strategy for

Manchester: this has trained 400 Webster-Stratton trainers so far!

parents and parents with learning disabilities have been included in

their programme, which has an explicit sense of what 'good' parenting is -

something lacking from national thinking.

Only a few Dads are taking part in any of the programmes discussed today-

one service has all male Dads' parenting classes, which I suspect is a

good idea. Sadly only one mental health professional (CAMHS) was present:

one of the scenarios given the audience manifestly involved a (depressed,

alcoholic) wife with a lifetime of abuse, but no therapeutic options were

explored, only legal sanctions for her 'out of control' children. I leave

it to your imagination how that would impact on her mental state.

Surprisingly, I was the only person to raise self-harm and no one talked

about suicide within desperate, isolated and violent families.

To echo A Christmas Carol, 'are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?'

Happy Family work-

I am off to hear Lord Layard talk about happiness at KCL tomorrow!

Woody.