Monday, November 17, 2008

Message to Yasmin: Demonising Families Is Not the Answer

This lunchtime I had the anguish pleasure of listening to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown tell Jeremy Vine that in the field of child protection, it is families who are the problem rather than the solution. Even for Yasmin, that was a corker. In her opinion families just can't be trusted with child welfare and therefore the State should intervene far more often. She clearly thinks that Baby P would have survived if the State had had more powers, conveniently forgetting that the State had plenty of powers to intervene but chose not to use them. In her Independent column this morning she says we "fetishise" the institution of the family giving...

...it ever more power over its members, more since right wing orthodoxies have taken root on the left ... David Cameron believes parents know what is best for their kids. Mr & Mrs Common Sense tell the nanny state to keep out. Parenting has been privatised along with much else. That leaves vulnerable children unprotected.
Where to start... Parenting has not been privatised. It was always thus. Only over the last forty or fifty years has the state involved itself in the non-educational aspects of child rearing. Up to then, if there were familial problems or issues it was left to the wider family or local community to intervene. As Hilary Clinton said, "it takes a village", rather than a State.

I am not someone who decries all the efforts of social workers. They have a very difficult job to do, often in very trying and harrowing circumstances. But social workers primarily have a role to play when the family unit can no longer cope, or when it is clear that a child is at risk. Yasmin seems to think that the State - through social workers - is more adept at child rearing than mothers and fathers.

What we cannot do is to allow the tragic case of Baby P colour all our judgements on the pros and cons of social workers, or indeed the child rearing abilities of single mothers. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is attempting to besmirch the fantastic way 99% of families in this country bring up their children, and by doing that trying to give the State an even greater role in our lives.

She also said on Radio 2 that if taking 100 babies away from parents meant saving the life of one, it was a price worth paying. In her column she writes...
Taking boys and girls away from their parents can give some the only chance they have...Even if the worst parents were themselves victims of deprivation, they cannot be the primary concern if we want children to be safe.

Safe. An interesting word. In Yasmin's world, the only safe place is in the arms of the State, away from the abusive hands of parents. She conveniently forgets the numerous examples of child abuse occurring while children have been in the care of the State. There is no panacea, no idyll, no nirvana where children will come to no harm. There are bad parents, just as there are bad State controlled institutions. The State can play a role in helping parents to learn how to be good parents, but there is no one size fits all solution.

Just as I am not going to demonise all State institutions just because one - Haringey - has so spectacularly failed - people like Yasmin should not demonise all parents and families on the basis that Baby P's brought disgrace on the very word 'family'.

But there is one consolation from Yasmin's Radio 2 interview. As my partner pointed out, she talked for 10-15 minutes without mentioning the issue of race once. Progress indeed.

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know you are not a swear blog and I know you get upset with gratuitous foul language and therefore I cannot express how much I hate this racist, bigoted and hypocritical woman.

I demanded that the Indie terminate her employment when she called Boris Johnson's first mayoral appointments as "Uncle Toms".

Can you imagine young Heffer referring to "coons" in his Telegraph column? Exactly.

Ben said...

Thank you for your excellent comments. The complexities and sensitivities of this case (not to mention that we are probably only in the early stages of learning what really happened) make it very hard to comment on this at present.

We can certainly do without hearing from the appallingly simplistic YAB. Shame on her for taking this opportunity for trying to promote an anti-family message.

Whatever the true circumstances of Baby P's short life, it seems clear that he was not being cared for by his family; there was no family, by any proper definition, in the home where he lived.

Anonymous said...

Iain, you know full well that the amount of child abuse in families dwarfs that in state run institutions. Whenever we have something like the Soham murders there's media panic and hysteria about children's safety when statistically the most likely murderer of a child is a member of that child's family.

neil craig said...

I think you are trying to hard to be balanced here Iain. The killingh of Baby P should colour our views of social workers. It should only be a small tint of the colour & we should also take into account other things we know - the Climbie murder, the social workers in Dumfrieshire who continually raped a retarded girl over many years, the numerous false satanic abuse claims, their decision recently that adults who smoke should not be allowed to adopt & any examples of them actually doing good, if such can be provided, which we are repeatedly told they do.

Always remember that the first duty of government spending is to pay government employees, anything else is a bonus, & that the best way to ensure there are jobs for social workers is not for them to solve the problems, often by letting families that want the kids adopt them & then getting out of the way, but for them to keep them in a disfunctional environment.

It is a matter of fact that the overwhelming bulk of those who end up in prison, homeless, alcoholic etc come from datherless families - something which social workers in practice encourage.

Anonymous said...

A poisonous rent-a-gob woman of very limited brain, inexplicably (or perhaps not) indulged by the Harperson Luvvy Tendency.

And, depressingly, the quangoes are infested with her like.

Lola said...

She needs a good spanking

Anonymous said...

Have you seen –?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/16/AR2008111601728.html?wpisrc%3Dnewsletter&sub=AR

It seems like a good idea to me as a Grandfather no one is more important to me than my Grandson.

Wrinkled Weasel said...

There is a type of sexual perversion that involves something called "fisting". Normally, I am shun physical violence, and in the case of a lady, I would be even more reticent, but in the case of YAB I am prepared to make an exception. If someone were to procure some KY and rubber gloves, I am happy to try it, and give it my enthusiastic best.

WV: bilshot

Anonymous said...

Chris A - that's because the amount of children reared by parents dwarves the number of those reared by institutions. Relatively speaking, abuse is far more widespread in institutions. Jersey springs to mind.

Good post, Iain.

Anonymous said...

Well said, Iain. And very diplomatically at that.

Me... I wouldn't slow down if I saw her in the middle of the road.

Anonymous said...

I was stunned to see Ed Balls recently be bold enough to acknowledge that parents should "continue to play a role on discipline". Is the state really now first port of call on bringing up children?

Anonymous said...

Yesteday I wrote,
"That really is a very good post Mr Dale. Well Done.

Today I am compelled to write, that really is a very good post Mr Dale. Well Done.

Theo Spark said...

Terrorist Alibi Brown is a bloody idiot. She should not be allowed to peddle her twaddle on the airwaves.

Anonymous said...

My god, this woman gets more and more awful by the minute. Wrong on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start.

Anonymous said...

Iain,

Don't waste space on your blog with a trivial ill (YAB). The worst fate threatening the country at the moment is Her Majesty's Government. Use all your energy and space to change that first.

Anonymous said...

The Left are suspicious of the family. What else is new?

"Iain, you know full well that the amount of child abuse in families dwarfs that in state run institutions."

What would you rather grow up in? An orphanage or a nuclear family?

Anonymous said...

A subject close to your heart: bloogers.

Murdoch, no less, has told Cnet news that old media is dead.

Read through Drudge.

Colin said...

I wonder how her kid feels when she reads tripe like this?

It must be devastating to know that your mother thinks that the family you belong to is nothing more than the manifestation of a corrupt fetish.

Anonymous said...

"the fantastic way 99% of families in this country bring up their children"

Where do you get your statistics form?

It's the care system in this country that needs a serious overhaul. It's failing children.

"Children in the care of local authorities are one of the most vulnerable groups in society. The majority of children who remain in care are there because they have suffered abuse or neglect. At any one time around 60,000 children are looked after in England, although some 90,000 pass through the care system in any year."

---

"Children in care should be able to sue their local council if it fails to provide them with a decent upbringing and education, a think-tank chaired by the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith will argue today.

The care system responsible for 60,000 children is a "source of national shame", the report from the Centre for Social Justice says.

"Ironically," says Mr Duncan Smith, "the plight of children in care is so dreadful that if they were living with their natural parents, the state would insist on taking them into care." "

I actually agree with IDS.

Anonymous said...

That woman is a nightmare! At least you've got a bit of perspective Iain, a voice of reason. That woman riles me every time I read or hear her.

Ugh!

Anonymous said...

I remember there was once on the radio an argument between Yasmin Ali B Brown and Tebbit. She was ranting on how the ehnics citizens are badly understood and treated etc.. and she challenged Tebbit to accept that she is English ( a naturalised Ugandan Asian). Tebbit cooly said ' All I can accept is you habe a British passport'. The ranting Yasmin was dumbstruck and faded away.

She is a disgrace and a bad example of 'brownies'-I mean people who have brown colour like me by being Labour toady and demanding State intervention and being racist. Look at how her fellow Uandan Asians have prospered without State aids. Take the example of Conservative Shilesh Vara , the lawyer by profession.

Anonymous said...

I remember there was once on the radio an argument between Yasmin Ali B Brown and Tebbit. She was ranting on how the ehnics citizens are badly understood and treated etc.. and she challenged Tebbit to accept that she is English ( a naturalised Ugandan Asian). Tebbit cooly said ' All I can accept is you habe a British passport'. The ranting Yasmin was dumbstruck and faded away.

She is a disgrace and a bad example of 'brownies'-I mean people who have brown colour like me by being Labour toady and demanding State intervention and being racist. Look at how her fellow Uandan Asians have prospered without State aids. Take the example of Conservative Shilesh Vara , the lawyer by profession.

AloneMan said...

Iain,

I've criticised you in the past but I think this post demonstrates why you are in politics and many of us who read your blog are not.

Somehow you've managed to write a considered, measured and balanced response to this utterly foul woman and her ludicrous views.

If I'd have written an article about this, my swear box would have been overflowing...

Unsworth said...

This woman is a racist bigot, plain and simple.

I am appalled and nauseated by her.

Anonymous said...

When I see YAB I know I will be treated to the most twisted and warped view of the world that you can get on TV or MSM. She never fails to astound me with her callousness.

Did she learn nothing from Romanian orphanages - state institutions mandated by a leftist govt to raise large numbers of children with no parental guidance? Buildings full of unwanted, abused and neglected children.

The only reason I can think that they keep her at The Indie is that she makes the other journalists look good by comparison.

Anonymous said...

Iain you are being far to kind to the state yet again.

To my knowledge, there is not a child care social worker, with more then a few years actual experience, that genuinely believes a child is better off in state care, other then in the worst possible cases.

This case clearly being one of those worst possible cases.

Although all professions including your own Iain do have a very annoying habit of closing ranks, under certain circumstances.

This case clearly being one of those certain circumstances.

Which is a case where the whole lot know they are all a bunch of lying incompetent over rewarded idiots, working in a system that can't possibly work well for the benefit of more then the people that are employed in it. So they all greatly prefer that the people that pay for the nonsense, the tax payer, dont get so much as a clue, if they can help it.

I wonder how long it will take before the BBC determines that ID cards would be an excellent way of stopping child murder?

Our establishment seems to have spent every waking hour of every day for the last 63 years, thinking up more and more evil plans to destroy the normal family life of our children.

When not spending an equal amount of time and effort working out how they are going to get us to blame ourselves, for it being destroyed.

Could it be that the system deliberately destroyed normal family life, mainly so it could excuse employing more social workers, to assist them in legally stealing our children?

You bet it did.

Anonymous said...

If only such certainty were possible. Yasmin seems to be of the view that we can somehow "know" which children are definitely at risk and which are not. She cites groundbreaking research by Southbank University who have apparently developed some kind of sophisticated methodology to make this possible.

Clearly work is being done by a number of institutions, but as far as I am aware there isn't yet any foolproof way of doing this. So much depends on the information that you feed into the system. For example, if you rate underage drinking permitted by parents as 'harm', then you will get large numbers of children and young people who are potential candidates for local authority care. There simply isn't any universally accepted way of definining harm or significant harm and all children are potentially at risk of something in their home environments.

Also, does she truly not see any tension in the fact that she herself emerged from a difficult upbringing without state intervention, yet she is now demanding compulsory state intervention on behalf of others in similar situations? Why does she assume that the community involvement she benefitted from would amount to "almost criminal intrusion" now? Communities still exist with informal child-minding networks, mothers prepared to take in the children of others for tea, and so on. It might be worth Yasmin's while writing a column on how to support these women too.

Jess The Dog said...

Crazy woman. She fails to understand the whole truth. One of the reasons that this abhorrence occured was that the wretched household was propped up by the State. The poor child would not have been in that house were it not for State benefits. The State financially supports feckless deviant behaviour amongst the indolent and criminal classes and throws up its hands in horror when this wretched part of society misbehaves.

The best bet for victim children is caring foster or adoptive parents rather than institutions. Unfortunately the State distrusts "normal" people far more than its own incompetent and even abusive employees or the feckless classes treated with infinite tolerance.

Anonymous said...

This Yasmin bint is a tosser.

You have been far too kind to her on 'The papers' before now.

if your not prepared (or not capable) to hang draw and quarter her - then do not appear with her next time.

And on this point - I think the right wing reviewers are far too soft with their opponents on these occasions. About time you all realised you are being fitted up.

Anonymous said...

I was going to comment, but >>I cannot express how much I hate this racist, bigoted and hypocritical woman.<, does it just fine.

Man in a Shed said...

Poor Yasmin , perhaps she needs taking into care ?

Anonymous said...

Ugh, that woman is a menace. Rally, there is something not quite right about her. Worse, it is because of attitudes like hers that the underclass have been allowed to flourish. Take all responsibility and motivation from people and reward their fecklessness. Well, the state just as much as his white trash so-called family failed that poor child. She really is a dangerous fool.

Anonymous said...

"Is the state really now first port of call on bringing up children?" (anon, 7.31)

Yes, if their advertisements are anything to go by. Check out some of the ads placed by the big cities - Manchester, Brum etc. "Protecting and caring for all our children" or such crap.

They really do think they own the next generation. To them, parents are an inconvenience.

Superb post, Iain. I could not have used such restraint.

Anonymous said...

Maybe your issue is she used the word "family" to recognise single mothers.I'm sure if she'd refered to pram faced women with a Croydon facelift the right would have no problem urging the state to intervene. The number of times I've heard people on the right call for all kinds of restrictions on teenage mums (and in response to a woman who was 27 despite what Cameron may think) is unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

I've never understood Yasmin A-B. She comes from a community that thrives in every respect, precisely because they have family values. I can't believe anyone would think the state is better than the family. Shamefully, some children end up in bad, dysfunctional families. But these are so rare. And to suggest it's best to take away 100 babies from normal parents just to protect one child who may be in danger, well this shows why once the election is called it's everyone's duty to chuck out Labour.
If yasmin Ali-B wants to know how the family is best for a child, she should mix more with people from her own community and see the sterling lives they lead with grandparents, aunties and uncles providing children with all the support they need.

Anonymous said...

I spent my first few years very contentedly in a church charity run orphanage before being adopted ( by smokers ! )
Happily this was before social workers took it all over ( don't think I ever met one ) and certainly well before the Islington Childrens Home Scandal

http://www.leighday.co.uk/news/news-archive/leigh-day-act-in-islington-child-abuse-scandal

The Independent 1 July 2003
"The Tories called for the resignation of Margaret Hodge, the minister for Children, last night after social workers accused her of failing to confront one of Britain's worst child abuse scandals when she was leader of Islington council...

Mr Fitch, who was identified as "Dean" in the original Standard stories, was in care from the age of nine to 19, the latter half during Mrs Hodge's reign. He twice tried to tell Islington social services that he was being abused by Caterer at Shepall Manor Special School in Stevenage. "Caterer took me to the woods at the back of the school one lunchtime and had sex with me," Mr Fitch said. "Afterwards, he showed me a nine-foot pit he had dug and told me, 'If you tell anybody I'll bury you alive'. I was terrified." Despite the threats, he went to the headteacher but was ignored. When back in Islington in the school holidays, he "begged" social workers not to send him back. "But nothing was done."

Even after he left the school and went to a care home in Islington, Caterer continued to visit him. Again, he told social workers he was being abused and again they "did nothing".


Perhaps Yasmin would like to explain to me why I would have been better off remaining at that orphange or better still, transfered to the care of the local authority ? I expect she will tell me that lessons have been learned.

btw, has Ms. Shoesmith resigned yet ?

Roger Thornhill said...

Yasmin Alibi-for-Brown has long proven herself to be a stranger to reason.

If there is any fetishising going on, it is of the State by YAfB.

p.s. @Neil Craig: re: Social Workers building their future pipeline. Absolutely, but not uniquely. The entire concept of Welfarism feeds on entropy.

p.p.s. @Raven. Hit Yasmin? No. I'd slow down. I've just washed my car.

neil craig said...

Chris a said "Iain, you know full well that the amount of child abuse in families dwarfs that in state run institutions"

Even bearing in mind that thousands of times more kids live in families than in children's homes this is a claim I would like to see Chris provide evidence for.

About 1/3rd of young people in jail have spent part of their formative years in children's homes which suggests somethong pretty abusive is happening there.

Most of the remaining 2/3rds come from families lacking a true father, though, as in this case, there may be one or a series of boyfriends. The degree to which "social" workers hate & are responsible for breaking up nuclear families is well demonstrated by the cruel & parasitic YAB.

Anonymous said...

And, depressingly, the quangoes are infested with her like.

November 17, 2008 6:47 PM

It's called 'Common Purpose'

Anonymous said...

The 'family' has fallen apart under Labour.

Reason - the 'family' is dangerous to Labour.

Labour need dependants. People who rely on them. People who are servile to them. People who cannot live without them. People who are hooked on the 'generosity'.

Labour and, by association, this nut case of a woman, will, eventually, get there comeupance.

But what really gets me? Their moral superiority.

It grinds and grinds hard.

Unknown said...

There is one arrangement that has a very high probability of delivering a safe and positive childhood. When a child is brought up by its married natural parents.

Lola said...

The more I read this the more angry I get. She really is a Bloody Fool isn't she?

A Mum said...

Raising kids is a tough job. fraught with as much anxiety and disappointment and frustration as it is joy. A job that requires strength and confidence (confidence which is frankly undermined by comments like YAB's and publishers permanant bid to pump out books on How To Parent - when did the task of raising baby become elevated to competitive art form, a search for ''parenting'' titles at Amazon will throw out a terrifying number of opporutnities to better your skills). In the end most of us, within the context of our own families, our own lives and choices, do the best we can for our kids. Of course the state has a part to play. At times. But on balance parents muddle by, tackling the toughest job in the world suprisingly well. Thanks for this.