Michael Gove calls for hundreds more vulnerable children a year to be taken into care, and for an end to ‘preoccupation with rights of biological parents’
The Independent -
Hundreds more vulnerable children a year could be removed from their parents and placed in care or adopted to prevent them suffering “a life of soiled nappies, scummy baths, chaos and hunger”, Michael Gove has signalled.
Tearing up two decades of child protection orthodoxy Mr Gove said the state had for too long exposed children to “appalling neglect and criminal mistreatment” because of its “preoccupation with rights of biological parents”.
And he called for social workers to be “more assertive with dysfunctional parents, courts to be less indulgent of poor parents, and the care system to expand to deal with the consequences”.
Mr Gove’s intervention – his first on child protection policy – comes after the publication of an independent report on children’s services at a council which sparked David Cameron’s pronouncement that Britain had become a “broken society”.
But his comments drew sharp criticism from social workers who questioned whether the Government would commit the resources necessary to expand effective state care. They also warned that there were long term psychological effects of taking children away from their families.
But In his speech in London Mr Gove said the case in Edlington brought home the need for the state to intervene faster and more decisively in child protection issues.
“The state is failing in its duty to keep our children safe,” he said.
“It may seem hard to believe – after the killing of Victoria Climbie, after the torture of Peter Connelly, after the cruel death of Khyra Ishaq – but we haven’t.
Read More: independent.co.uk
2012-11-18 12:21:03
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