One of the most “shocking scandals in Britain today”, is the corrupt nature of our child-protection system. The law rightly demands that in cases where state officials seek to remove a child from its parents, the identity of the child be kept secret. But somehow that provision has become so broad it is now a punishable offence to report on anything that goes on in our family courts. You can’t even name the judge, witnesses or social workers involved. Result? Endless horror stories of children being unnecessarily torn from their parents.
Thank heavens then for “the unusually humane and intelligent” judge, Sir James Munby, newly appointed head of the family courts. Responding to the council’s attempt to ban any mention of the case, he ruled that all items not directly referring to the identity of parents and children should be public knowledge. Thanks to him, the iniquitous “blanket of secrecy” may finally be torn down. (Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph).
Time and again the social services have got it wrong, dividing children from their parents for inscrutable reasons and covering up their own incompetence. The only way to combat bureaucratic over-reach is by publicizing it. It’s nice to report an Epicurean outbreak of common sense.
In a perfect world a licence would be needed for two people to have a child! Producing progeny is the one thing in the world where you need neither education or skill ( some women might argue about that!). At the very least, mothers in particular should be made absolutely aware of what is involved in bringing up and caring for another, helpless, human being.
“[Y]ou do not have to be a genius to recognise that every un-socialized, traumatized child can be tomorrow’s drug addict or petty criminal.”
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Excellent two-day analysis of yet another issue which requires a long-range perspective. Un-socialized individuals are a basic threat to any society, anytime.
This has been true in the West ever since the Industrial Revolution when economic forces destroyed communities. Benjamin Disraeli (“Sybil or the Two Nations) and all of Charles Dickens’s work show clearly what happens when families are destroyed, driving atomized and un-socialized individuals into slums and shattered families into the notorious workhouses.