Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

Well, again, this is a different question -- but an interesting one. I accept that even a less-than-optimal parent is probably better than (an optimal?) care home. I also accept that the 'social care apparat' (including family courts) will have a strong tendency to prefer care homes over parents whenever there is the smallest chance of a come-back on them. And maybe not even then since the care home solution solves the problem from their point of view. Choosing a less-than-optimal parent will likely mean more problems (for the apparat) further down the line.

Given all this, surely shoveling resources into the sector -- including home support and suchlike -- will pay dividends? Look, Wiley, I'm a rank amateur in all this and will take a fair bit of tutoring but I'm still an AE-ist, so be in your fairest behaviour.

[Wile E. Coyote]

This was from a Guardian article 2016, at that time children were in some areas 6 times more likely to be taken into care in some areas than others. The motivation of any actors is not in doubt. All involved, we can assume, are doing the right thing as they see it.

[Mick Harper]

So your argument is "We mustn't encourage the bastards." If this is truly endemic -- and knowing the British professionalariat, I think it probably is for the foreseeable future -- we'll just have to bite on the bullet. Or rather, kids in care will.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I think I would say that, if the outcomes for care leavers are as bad as you maintain, then reducing the numbers that get taken in by spending additional money, on preventing them ever being taken into care in the first place, might actually help these children much more.

Reduce your numbers in care, then also your personal budget for those that unfortunately do get taken in because of serious concerns of abuse, will go futher. Same pot for those in care but now less children. It's just a different way of doing what you wanted to do at the start.

[Mick Harper]

Yes, but in practice it will surely be a rerun of 'care in the community'. For those with distant memories, this was a (laudable) desire to close all the big Victorian out-of-town mental asylums and use the money instead to 'care for' the inmates in hostels, sheltered accommodation, often their own flats, in town. What happened is, that when the asylums were all safely closed and off the books, the money was no longer quite so readily forthcoming and a lot of mentally-ill people were left to sink or swim 'in the community'. On the whole, it was still worthwhile, but perhaps only just. And definitely an opportunity missed.

One of the unintended consequences is that it is virtually impossible now to get people into in-patient mental care unless they are deemed to pose a risk to others. Their own mental health needs can go hang. Plus having to put up with a lot of nutters breezing around but that's down to us and is thoroughly deserved.

Clearly, children cannot be left to sink or swim but something like it seems to be on the cards. However, if Wiley is right -- and I'm sure he is -- even sinking and swimming may be a better prognosis than, as it were, in-patient care in a full-blown local authority children's home. This is all quite apart from not putting them into care in the first place.

[Wile E. Coyote]

We know that within the profession and within the public that during the '80s and '90s there was a moral panic about alleged Satanic ritual abuse occurred, mainly in parts of the English-speaking world. This was propagated by certain psychotherapists, social workers, and the police or law enforcement officials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic

In Britain it manifested itself in Orkney.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkney_child_abuse_scandal

I think the question is, if in some areas we are putting children in care at six times the level of others, do you also get localised moral panics, following cases of well publicised real abuse. Cases such as Victoria Climbié, Baby P?

[Mick Harper]

This must be true. Covering backs is a pre-requisite for all public servants. It is an irony that real cases of abuse in children's homes went unreported for so long. And maybe still are. However we never reached the stage of Ireland, Canada, France etc (Jersey?) where the whole thing was subcontracted to closed corporations, like the Christian Brothers, the Catholic Church or Native Administration agencies.

I hope.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I find this interesting given later events.

[Mick Harper]

Cyril Smith territory. They would have had to prove some kind of abuse of power and the courts (not family courts in this case) were not much inclined to go down that road. The ultimate abuse, positively satanic, would be for people to concoct abuse allegations so they can get their hands on the little darlings in a kids' home.

Not altogether far-fetched since the Christian Brothers had the power to prevent nice-looking illegitimate children -- routinely taken from their mothers at birth in de Valera's Ireland -- from being re-united later with their errant mums. That is when they hadn't destroyed the records of who was their mother "not wishing to jeopardise possible adoptions".

While on this jag [I'm listening to Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry currently on Radio 4] the priests only did the sexual abuse, regularly but sporadically. It was the nuns that were day-to-day vicious. The book features one last irony -- anal tears that should have got the abuser sent down (instead of being sent up to Cardinal Cunt to be sent on to a different parish) which is the symptom that got all the Middlesborough dads losing access to their children.

Satanic? More like 'by the grace of God'.

[Mick Harper]

Football fans who want to get rid of their manager find themselves in the uncomfortable position of wanting their team to lose because it will hasten the manager's departure. People in Scotland opposed to independence find themselves in a similar position. Hoping for an incompetent government because it's the SNP. Should their wishes be granted and the SNP are replaced by a non-independence-seeking party, the other half of Scotland will then fervently wish to live under an incompetent government. And this looks to hold good for the next twenty years or so, at least. What a country!

Though now I come to think about it, isn't this true of Labour and Conservative in England. Democracy! What a rubbish system.

[Mick Harper]

[Grant]

Blair should have sacked him in 2001 after winning his second general election. All the papers were saying that Brown had many supporters, but after that second GE they would have faded away.

Anyone who, like Brown, spends their entire life from an early age focused on politics is a weird fish and shouldn’t be allowed any power, witness Sturgeon, May, Hague, Corbyn. Admittedly the last two never had any power

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]