Social services discriminate against poor mothers at supermarkets
Poor looking parents target of child care
By Gary Cleland
Last Updated: 3:18am GMT 02/02/2008
Parents who look poor and families who shop in budget supermarkets have been approached on the street by social workers and asked if they would like to put their children into child care.
An official report found that the social workers trawled shopping centres in an attempt to fill places in a Government scheme to give free child care to 12,000 two-year-olds from the poorest families.
The report said staff waited outside post offices, supermarkets and schools in disadvantaged areas and approached "families which looked as though they fitted the criteria".
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They also knocked on doors on deprived council estates trying to recruit youngsters to the scheme.
The intention is to release parents so they can work, but the methods used prompted outrage last night.
The report, conducted for the Department for Children by the National Centre for Social Research, admitted that some parents took offence at being asked about their income in public.
Robert Whelan, the deputy director of the think-tank Civitas, said picking on families on the street who looked poor was discriminatory.
"Why don’t they just send out the child snatcher?" he said. "It’s outrageous to make judgments about people’s ability to parent based on superficial factors like where they shop and how they dress.
"It’s a form of discrimination and a very unpleasant form."
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