Baby P

It is recorded that Baby P was murdered by his immediate family with excessive abuse. The result of the ensuing court case was that they were successfully convicted and are now enjoying life in custody. That is surely the right approach to have been taken. That should surely have been the end of it, other than seriously considering what could be done in the future to avoid such a situation occurring again. In fact nothing can be done to absolutely avoid any such happening again, other than removing all children from their family environments and putting them into some sort of commune, like a boarding school, where they could be controlled by a chosen group of people educated or experienced enough to be able to care for, to educate, and to train them for future adulthood.

That suggestion brings forth all sorts of other problems which might have to include having no normally accepted family relationships, this probably resulting in very limited intermixing of different sexes and these also with a limited range of ages and experiences, and with people having a limited range of viewpoints to life generally. This would produce what might reasonably be described as a group of adults of possibly robot like characteristics with experiences generally limited to a very restricted type of upbringing. This course of action is considered to be a route to a far more dangerous journey than is provided by the traditional family environment with the faults that such a life has, with the latter generally having the enormously advantageous range of experiences and education aspects that it has traditionally. So it is considered that the family life, with all its faults, is the right course to follow.

Back to Baby P. The local authorities were accused and found guilty of allowing the baby to be treated as he was, and of not stopping the fatal shortening of his life. Why are they being vilified, when it is the mother, her boyfriend, and his brother, that have been found guilty? It is not, by any reasonable stretch of imagination, the fault of the local authority that the baby died. That should be made very clear. It is the baby’s family who are to blame and they only. Nobody else!

The Social Service has a thankless task. They are always blamed for any child who suffers beyond that normally felt to be reasonable. Their brief should be to be available to provide help and assistance for anyone asking for it. Their brief should not be to interfere in family life because they think it is wanted. To follow that route is a course of disaster in far too many situations, if only because they can so easily misinterpret the real situation, only having perceived it from outside the family unit which is by default only a very small part of the child’s life. And if the Social Service interpret wrongly because they are naturally unable to be party to the intimate environment of the child’s family unit, which it is more than likely, the child then suffers by being taken away from their family life which they have grown up to accept and love, to the serious detriment of it’s future life.

The Social Service, because they get unfairly blamed for everything associated with mistreatment of children, and because of such blame they tend to be ultra careful and go beyond their brief to the detriment of many of the allegedly affected children, it results in their workload increasing such that they don’t have the time, staff, or facilities to cope, with the result that they tend not to do their jobs properly and the whole systems collapses.

How about blaming the people who actually mistreat the children, and leave the Social Services to deal with helping where requested or where very obviously required!

Further education

There has been intention of the Government to seemingly insist that every child should go to University, and in order to achieve this they have gone down the route of trying to make it intellectually easy for children to gain entry, regardless of their ability, or of their wish to attend for intellectual reasons. This is a totally misplaced line of thinking, as it should only be those who wish to attend such an institution who should be encouraged to make the effort to reach the standard required of the particular University chosen.

It should not be considered that every child has a right to attend further intellectual education regardless of whether they have the ability or the will or the motivation, just because of some misjudged principle that every child should be offered an open door. It should also not be mandatory that the entrance requirements for entry to a University should be reduced to make it easier for a child to gain acceptance. It is a different matter if this is done voluntarily, if the institution itself sees a motivation in the child that could be nurtured to enjoy and benefit from such an exposure. That is quite different.

Forcing every child to attend an institution of further academic education is counterproductive for the future of many of them, if only because those that are obviously not going to be able to cope intellectually will just be wasting their time when considering the more appropriate alternatives that should be available for which they could easily be more suitably equipped.

There are many children who would benefit more by attending what used to be called a Technical College, where manual tasks were learned, like bricklaying, plastering, and hedge laying, to quote but just a few. This would also be more beneficial for the Country to have such facilities, and would certainly be much more appreciated by the children who would have a preference for such a vocation.

Why is this not pursued, for the benefit of both the future adults and the Country as a whole?

There is no shame in attending a Technical College. It is not inferior when compared with a University. And similarly those attending a University are not superior to those attending the alternative. They both require different strengths, and this should acknowledged by both groups. They cannot, in real life, live without each other, and this should be accepted. Their combined existence is essential for survival of the human race!