Intervening between child and parents is a difficult decision
Intervening between child and parents is a difficult decisionPhil Collins: Commentary
Good parents are just about the best assets a child can have. But what do we do when a child has appalling parents? Andrew Flanagan has given a brave answer: we should intervene earlier and more often. Elected politicians always run a mile from this argument. And, indeed, the optimal solution is for the child to stay at home. But too often, unfortunately, the home is not a haven against a hostile world. It is the very source of hostility itself. So Mr Flanagan deserves credit for his daring. What he said needed saying.
But there are two difficult pre-conditions to doing as he says. The first is that, if the threshold for intervention by the State is lower, then prevention has to be better. Very many parents fail for lack of help. They are not hopeless parents. We need better treatment for parents with depression, which so often lies behind neglect. The help systems for adults and for children run on parallel lines, never touching at any point. It is not impossible to change this — in the Netherlands and in Sweden, for example, the entry of an adult into the system triggers help for the whole family. We need, in particular, better treatment for parents with depression, which so often lies behind neglect.
There is already some good practice: the nurse-family partnership — a scheme, starting 16 weeks into pregnancy — which is helping young women to become more skilful mothers. So is multisystemic therapy, at places such as the Marlborough Family Service. The results are notable — families in difficulty are brought back from the brink. One caveat, especially relevant now, is that this is all very expensive. It is very intensive and does not come cheap.
That said, neither does taking a child into care. This is the second thing that has to happen. Some parents are truly dreadful but that does not mean that the State is usually a good parent, because it is not. The problem is not that the State is a nanny. It is that the State is no good at being a nanny. The whole panoply of services for children taken into care — local authority homes, adoption, fostering — needs an overhaul. Mr Flanagan is very well aware both of that and of how far we are from being good enough
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6041331.ece
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