for the

Family

for the

Youth

for the

Future

Bulletin 120: Summer 2005

In this issue

 

 

Annual General Meeting & Conference 

Saturday 25 June 2005

A report by Eric Hester, Vice Chairman

The Annual General Meeting and Conference at the Royal Air Force Club, Piccadilly, was again a splendid day. In my vote of thanks I was able to compare the atmosphere with that described by Shakespeare before Agincourt in Henry V: we are few but we are in good heart, confident in each other and the justice of our cause, and knowing that in the end right will triumph. I encourage those who have never been to our Annual General Meeting to come along next year.

Thanks to efficient chairmanship, the business part is dealt with in less than half an hour and the rest of the day is devoted to reports from the regions during the morning and addresses given by invited speakers in the afternoon. All is of the highest quality and a good-natured atmosphere always prevails. Over 60 members attended, with apologies received from a further 90.

In his report, the Chairman, Arthur Cornell thanked all members for their support and especially expressed his gratitude to the new Director, Norman Wells, and to the trustees and executive committee for all their work throughout the year.

He spoke of a culture that appears so hostile to the family; that financially penalises those who marry, that has sought to bypass parents in creating children’s rights, and that has encouraged a freedom from restraint in the young both socially and sexually at the expense of communities. It was therefore hardly surprising that parents were afraid of their children before they reached the age of five, a significant minority of children were terrorising housing estates, and local communities were having to bear the cost of providing street wardens. There was also a sexual free-for-all that was beginning to have implications for the future population growth of the nation; a third of teachers were leaving the profession within three years of completing training because they were disillusioned by the rise in disruptive behaviour that knocked the joy out of teaching; and there was a rise in drug and alcohol abuse and in binge behaviour.

In terms of trends the picture was gloomy, but there had been a glimmer of light in that two government ministers had recently acknowledged the importance of parents to address the situation.

Against this background, Mr Cornell considered that the Trust was in a strong position not only to oppose inappropriate policies and legislation relating to the family, but also to positively advocate a better way.

In his Hon Treasurer’s report, Simon Ling, explained that the Trust was in a better position financially following the move to more economical office premises. However, income from members was still in decline and Mr Ling stressed the need to recruit new members especially from among the young in order to ensure a sound base of support to expand the staffing and work.

Our Director, Norman Wells, gave six examples of how the family had been marginalised in public policy during the previous year: (a) the ten year strategy for early years and childcare; (b) the children’s workforce strategy; (c) extended schools; (d) confidentiality policies; (e) children’s commissioners; (f) information sharing databases in children’s services.

Mr Wells referred to recent statements made both by the Prime Minister and by the new Children’s Minister, Beverley Hughes, which had emphasised that parents are the key figures in effectively addressing the problems of anti-social behaviour and high rates of teenage pregnancy.

It was, however, somewhat disingenuous of the government to stress the need to get parents ‘on board’ while it continued to pursue confidentiality policies that were effectively throwing them overboard by excluding them from vital areas of their children’s lives.

The more the state undermined the authority of parents, the less responsibility parents would be inclined to take for their children. The government could not disempower parents and then proceed to blame them for society’s ills. If it wanted parents to take proper responsibility for their children, then it must first of all respect their authority.

In a brief overview of activities during 2004, Mr Wells referred to briefings which had been mailed to MPs and peers prior to parliamentary debates on the Children Bill. The Trust had also prepared the factsheet, A Reasonable Approach to Discipline which was mailed to policy makers, academics and to the press and media, as well as to parliamentarians. Several MPs drew on briefing material and research evidence supplied by the Trust in the course of a key House of Commons debate and it had been pleasing to see an amendment that would have criminalised loving parents for the mildest of smacks soundly defeated by 424 votes to 75.

Also during 2004, the Trust had published and promoted Valerie Riches’ report, Sex Education or Indoctrination? Thanks to the generosity of supporters, it had been possible to send copies to MPs with a particular interest in the family, to civil servants with responsibility for family issues, to PSHE and teenage pregnancy strategy advisors, social policy academics, religious leaders, and to the press and media. The Trust had additionally been encouraged to send copies to Directors of Education in every Local Education Authority and was currently planning to promote the report more widely in secondary schools.

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Kathleen Cassidy – Family Life Award 2005

This year’s Family Life Award was made to Kathleen Cassidy for her perseverance in support of the family founded on marriage over many years.

Following her marriage to Peter in 1962, Kathleen devoted herself to bringing up their three children, Paul, David and Margaret. As her children grew older and started to leave home, she began to take a keen interest in social trends affecting the family both nationally and internationally.

For many years Kathleen was an active member of her local branch of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. She became a key member of the group, keeping supporters up-to-date with developments, writing letters to MPs, government ministers, and the press, and leafleting in town centres and from door-to-door.

As time went on, Kathleen grew increasingly concerned about the moral and social climate which had led to the lack of respect for human life reflected in the abortion statistics and the mounting campaign to legalise euthanasia. She joined Family & Youth Concern and added marriage, parental responsibility, daycare, sex education and children’s rights to her areas of concern.

Scores of letters on these and other family-related issues have streamed from her computer to MPs, ministers, government departments and letters editors of both national and local newspapers. She has not hesitated to challenge the anti-family policies of various bodies within the United Nations and the false presuppositions of organisations such as ChildLine and the NSPCC.

Her letters are always thoroughly researched, well-reasoned and persuasively written. The filing boxes overflowing with press cuttings at her home in West London testify to the hours of careful research and painstaking diligence that lie behind her work. Blessed with an excellent memory and aided by her extensive library of press cuttings, Kathleen is able to select the most appropriate facts, statistics and quotes to lend weight to her arguments. She is also an enthusiastic advocate of the pro-family cause and has a ready supply of literature to pass on to others.

In addition to reading, researching, filing and writing, Kathleen enjoys spending time visiting her seven grandchildren and still finds time to fit in helping with mailings at the Family & Youth Concern office several times a year.

For her initiative and courage, her dedication and perseverance, we consider Kathleen Cassidy a most worthy recipient of this year’s Family Life Award.

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Local Reports

The reports on regional activities were, as ever, both stimulating and inspiring. Several speakers expressed gratitude to the Director who had supplied help or put them in touch with others. Any member wishing to establish contact with any of the contributors to the local reports session is invited to contact Norman Wells at the office.

Republic of Ireland

In his written report, Mr John O’Reilly noted that over the past quarter century the number of births in the Republic of Ireland had fallen by 32 per cent, while births outside marriage had risen from 5 per cent to 31 per cent, abortions had doubled and diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections had quadrupled. Preparations were being made for a further referendum on abortion.

The Irish branch continued to circulate its magazine Response to activists, church leaders, journalists and politicians, with a print run of 1,000. It remained grateful for the support and encouragement received from Mrs Riches over many years and, more recently, also from Mr Whelan and Mr Wells.

Northern Ireland

Mrs Mary Russell referred to the highly emotive NSPCC ‘Hit Means Lost It’ campaign which implied that any parent who employed smacking as a means of discipline was on the brink of madness. Mrs Russell had participated in several radio debates about this and had also taken part in radio discussions on childcare, working mothers, parental leave and ‘wrap-around’ school care.

She had expressed the view that many mothers were working, not to carve out a career, but simply to make ends meet, when they would prefer to be at home caring for their own children.

More recently, Mrs Russell had represented Family and Youth Concern at a conference organised by the office of the Northern Ireland Children’s Commissioner. The building itself was impressive, with a colourful reception area, exhibiting glossy posters made by children and depicting the sort of rights they wanted. One poster that had caught her eye showed a bedroom door with a huge ‘X’ across the frame and a ‘no parents allowed’ sign, accompanied by child-like writing stating parents should not be able to check on mobile phone calls made by their children. Two of the three main priorities to permeate all aspects of the commissioner’s work with children were summarised as ‘Having your say’ and ‘Knowing your rights’.

The Northern Ireland branch continued to reflect the approach of Family and Youth Concern in areas as diverse as violent computer games, same-sex unions, and sex education.

Cornwall

Our Cornish friends continued their lively presence with another hard-hitting report. Cllr Mrs Carlyon expressed concern about ‘circle time’ which had become very popular in primary schools as a way of making teachers aware of the home situations from which the children came. She also observed that the introduction of extended schools suggested that the government thought it knew better than parents how to bring up children. Cllr Carlyon gave examples of how the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda was working out in practice from the magazine Children Now.

Miss Ann Whitaker cited a letter published in the Daily Mail from a minister’s wife which revealed the true nature of what was being taught in PSHE in many schools. The Challenge Team had paid several successful visits to schools in Cornwall , and Miss Whitaker had accompanied Dr Ted Williams on a trip to Uganda where the message of modesty, chivalry and chastity had been warmly received.

Devon

Mrs Christine Hudson reported that the teenage pregnancy strategy document for Plymouth had stated that the morning-after pill would be available in Plymouth schools by December 2004. She had made enquiries about who would be liable in the event of a fatality following the prescription of the morning-after pill on school premises. The Department of Health initially failed to respond to her emails, but when she requested the information under the Freedom of Information Act she received an immediate response. In the Department’s view, the school nurse was responsible, working in accordance with her professional code of conduct and a Patient Group Direction. The Department had also stated that as a one-off emergency a school nurse might be justified in prescribing the morning-after pill without the sanction of the governors, and that there was no problem with school nurses advising pupils where they may obtain the morning-after pill in cases where the school governors had not approved its supply on school premises.

Mrs Hudson had also been in dispute with her local school after her daughter had not been removed from sex education classes in accordance with her parents’ request. The school had attempted to justify its failure to act by saying that it was the daughter’s responsibility to withdraw herself. Mrs Hudson had approached Family Education Trust about this and been referred to the relevant section of the DfES guidance on the parental right of withdrawal from sex education.

In February, Mrs Hudson had organised a public meeting on the subject, ‘Your parental responsibilities – are they being challenged?’ at which she and Cllr Mrs Carlyon spoke on sex education. As a result of this meeting, a small campaigning group had been formed.

Somerset

Mrs Julie Kosmala from Somerset  had complained to her local secondary school in Midsomer Norton after her 11-year-old brought home a note about the introduction of the C-Card scheme to give children access to contraception. As a result of Mrs Kosmala’s efforts the introduction of the scheme was delayed by six months and the lower age was raised to 13.

Together with other mothers, Mrs Kosmala had held a peaceful protest when the Children’s Minister, Margaret Hodge, had visited the local school. Mrs Kosmala had also been given opportunities to express her concerns on GMTV, LBC Radio, Radio Bristol and BBC Points West. She had met a 14-year-old boy who had a C-Card even though he was not sexually active and had no intention of having sex. He was told he was entitled to 10 condoms per week. In practice, many boys were obtaining the condoms only to sell them to older boys or exchange them for cigarettes and alcohol.

Oxfordshire

English teacher, Mr Laurence Richardson reported on a video he had been asked to show to Year 9 pupils. Having previewed it he had been appalled at its contents and had been given permission to show an alternative. He had subsequently discovered that contraception was being offered to pupils on the school site and attended an information meeting on sex education, where he expressed concerns both about the video he had been asked to show and the availability of contraception. The offending video had subsequently been withdrawn. He firmly believed that parents could have a major impact in schools if they made their views known.

Mrs Eileen Wojciechowska was now working in early years and echoed the concerns of Cllr Mrs Carlyon about ‘circle time’. She had been required to attend training courses aimed at eliminating any ‘discriminatory thoughts’. In view of the growing number of agencies coming into schools, withdrawing children from sex education classes did not cover everything. Visiting speakers were increasingly addressing the acceptability of homosexual relationships under the title of ‘equal opportunities’.

Mrs Wojciechowska was continuing to call for ‘an honest debate about providing honest sex education’ in secondary schools. She had been encouraged by the visit of the Challenge Team to her local secondary school in March and expressed gratitude to Family Education Trust for producing suitable material for her to circulate.

Scotland

During the afternoon session, Mrs Eileen McCloy reported on developments in Scotland . Along with others, she had successfully campaigned to prevent the distribution of the morning-after pill in Scottish schools and stressed that parents needed to be vigilant and take back responsibility for their children.

Challenge Team UK

Sue Relf reported that during the spring, two UK-based Challenge Teams had made a total of 63 presentations in schools and other settings. Positive feedback had been received and Mrs Relf was in touch with four young people in the north of England who were willing to commit themselves to the Challenge Team UK project for a year starting in the autumn. She was currently looking for interested schools in order to arrange a full programme. From past experience she had found that letter writing produced a nil response and that personal introductions were more fruitful.

More regional co-ordinators were required and Mrs Relf was planning to write a series of articles to promote the work. She had found the media more sympathetic than she had anticipated and had received good coverage.

Mrs Relf concluded by mentioning a series of three programmes on ‘The Romance Academy’, which were due to be shown on BBC 2 during the summer. The programmes would show how 12 young people were transformed by their experience of an abstinence programme which included a visit to the Silver Ring Thing in Florida.

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Parents, Children and the Law: Twenty Years on from the Gillick Ruling

Mr Peter Dawson chaired the afternoon session with his usual aplomb and introduced Mr Paul Conrathe, who addressed the conference on, ‘Parents, Children and the Law: Twenty Years on from the Gillick Ruling’.

Mr Conrathe is a lawyer who has taken on a number of cases involving family issues. He considered that the past two decades could aptly be described as ‘a journey in legal schizophrenia’ insofar as the law relating to children and families was concerned.

On the one hand there had been many very positive developments to make the welfare of the child paramount. Sex under the age of 16 remained a criminal activity at least technically, there was a remarkably protective system in place for children with special needs, and parents were entitled to withdraw their children from sex education lessons.

However, at the same time, fathers were being undermined. Suzie Leathers of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority had said that it was anachronistic to speak of the ‘need’ of a child for a father. Fathers had no say in whether or not a child was aborted. The government had introduced a confidentiality policy which excluded parents from decisions in relation to contraceptive and abortion provision to underage girls. Sex education in schools had become more explicit, homosexual adoption had been approved, and pornography was on public display in sweet shops. We were witnessing a growing commodification of children – the creation of children for the benefit of a third party.

Mr Conrathe offered a brief overview of Mrs Gillick’s case in the 1980s. He then proceeded to the Social Exclusion Unit report on Teenage Pregnancy published in 1999 which had made confidentiality a key component of the government’s teenage pregnancy strategy. This was followed in July 2004 by fresh guidance to update the Gillick ruling.

Whereas the original guidance had stated that it should be unusual for parents not to be told when their children were accessing contraceptives, the revised guidance effectively said that it should now be unusual for parents to be told, and health services were encouraged to prominently advertise their confidentiality policies. Mr Conrathe questioned the legality of ‘updating’ a House of Lords ruling in this manner.

Mr Conrathe was currently representing Sue Axon who was challenging the government’s guidance on the basis that it misrepresented the Gillick ruling and introduced abortion for the first time. Mrs Axon was arguing that while she was required to give her permission before her daughter could have her belly button pierced, her daughter could have an abortion without her knowledge. Her case was due to be heard in the High Court during November 2005.

The European Convention on Human Rights was regarded as a ‘living instrument’, the meaning of which moved with the times. If all the courts heard was one side of the debate on a given subject, they may think that ‘times have moved on’ and their judgments would reflect that. It was therefore necessary to speak up.

Far from protecting the welfare of children, the government’s confidentiality policies were having the opposite effect. It was important to get the message out through academic research and through carefully planned legal cases. As a result of Joanna Jepson’s challenge in connection with late abortions for cleft palate and the agreement of the High Court that it was arguable that the unborn child has human rights, doctors had become more cautious and the police more diligent about investigating illegal abortions. The country had moved on, even though it may take time for the courts to catch up.

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Whatever is happening to fatherhood?

Our second speaker in the afternoon was the Austrian academic, Dr Michael Waldstein, who impressed us with his profound knowledge and wisdom, and, not least, his command of English.

Dr Waldstein began his address by referring to some disturbing statistics on the rise in the number of families headed by a lone parent and the growing number of births outside marriage in the UK . The statistics from the USA were no less disturbing, with 72 per cent of American citizens considering fatherlessness to be the gravest social problem facing the United States.

Children who grew up without a father accounted for 63 per cent of adolescent suicides; 71 per cent of pregnant teenagers; 90 per cent of all runaways from home; 70 per cent of adolescents in public care facilities; 85 per cent of adolescents in prison; 71 per cent of school drop-outs; and 75 per cent of adolescents with drug problems.

Progress in science and technology, combined with the growth of utilitarian thought, had led to a culture in which people were often used as means to an end. In this context, women could be reduced to objects for the use of men, children could be regarded as a hindrance to their parents, and the family could be viewed as an institution obstructing the freedom of its members.

Against this background of cultural decay, children had the ability to form and free the hearts of their fathers. Children had no interest in technological power and material wealth and were powerless to help their fathers get them, but they were experts in the science and practice of love. They had a great sensitivity for personal relationships and had the capacity to inspire love in their fathers.

The impact of the law

Developmental psychology and crime statistics confirmed the crucial role of the father in the formation of a child’s personality. The main pillars of the law against fathers were: (a) no-fault divorce; (b) a strong tendency to give mothers primary custody for children, while reducing the presence of the father to a minimum; (c) generous maintenance payments by fathers for their children and former spouses, which could amount to around half their total earnings.

The law was having the effect of detaching financial security from the duty of loyalty in marriage. It offered security from a provider without the personal presence and involvement of the provider. If the father failed to keep up the maintenance payments, emotional extortion came into play, whereby the father was deprived of access to his children. The law had effectively introduced episodic marriage, transformed divorce into a profitable transaction, seduced mothers to egotism, rewarded betrayal and disenfranchised fathers.

However, this external violation of the father’s right to live with his children and share in their education was not the primary obstacle to the exercise of fatherhood. There was a much more insidious and internal problem that was destroying fatherhood from within. The ‘teenager’ was not an inevitable, natural, or God-given phenomenon, but was invented, fashioned, permitted and promoted immediately after the Second World War, together with the so-called ‘generation gap’. History showed that cultural and religious continuity between parents and children was the normal condition of human life. Our failure to pass on our cultural and religious heritage to our own children was without precedent.

The ‘teenager’

Three factors had played a particularly significant role in the invention and formation of the ‘teenager’:

(i) The absence of fathers. The hearts of fathers were turned towards the pursuit of wealth and power and bent on constructing a civilisation of things from which adolescent children could only feel excluded.

(ii) The sexual revolution. Fathers had been the first to embrace a utilitarian ethic. Utilitarianism inevitably destroyed the link between sex and love, and between sex and procreation by reducing the other person to a means for pleasure. In this climate, the sexual passions of children were released into destructive premature relationships. Instead of being introduced into a culture of love, children were being abandoned to a culture of the use of each other for pleasure or ‘fun’.

(iii) The rise of a new form of music, specifically produced for adolescent children. It was a form of music tailor-made for encouraging the expression of sexual passion outside the context of authentic love. American and European adolescents were perhaps the first generation of children who constituted a potent market by themselves because of the large amounts of pocket-money they received from their parents. Parents were happy to let the children do what they wanted while they themselves pursued their professional lives.

The removal of mothers from the home and their induction into the workforce had increased the cultural vacuum in which children lived. The entertainment industry had exploded, aided by technological progress which saw the invention of the radio and the television. The hearts of children were abandoned to the formative power of a form of music which preyed on the most intense and immature passions of adolescents, above all on erotic passion and anger. The idea of ‘the teenager’ had been created. Children no longer returned to a home after school, but to a house filled with electronic appliances and entered an alternative world constructed by entertainment.

Practical suggestions for fathers

A true father must be generous in the amount of time he spends with his children. Quality time was a myth.

Television tended to take up time that could be better spent. Living without a television was perhaps the single most helpful external step towards a richer family life. Quite apart from its content, television served as an enemy of the family because it deprived them of time together.

Sharing music together as a family was a far more profitable use of time. As Plato had recognised, music has the power to form the heart on a deep level. Reading well-chosen books out loud to the family was another valuable contribution a father could make.

When fathers truly turned their hearts to their children, it would also have a deep impact on the father’s relationship with his wife.

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Extended Schools, Condensed Homes

A prospectus detailing the government’s plans to offer universal ‘wraparound childcare’ from 8am to 6pm all year round by 2010 was launched by the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly on 13 June.

In her Foreword to the prospectus, Extended Schools: Access to opportunities and services for all, Miss Kelly stated that:

‘By 2010, all children should have access to a variety of activities beyond the school day. Well-organised, safe and stimulating activities before and after school provide children and young people with a wider range of experiences and make a real difference to their chances at school. It gives them the opportunity to keep fit and healthy, to acquire new skills, to build on what they learn during the school day or simply to have fun and relax.’

 

Menu of activities

It is envisaged that extended schools will offer children a varied menu of activities, such as ‘homework clubs and study support, sport… music tuition, dance and drama, arts and crafts, special interest clubs such as chess and first aid courses, visits to museums and galleries, learning a foreign language, volunteering, business and enterprise activities’.

The aim is also to provide ‘swift and easy referral to a wide range of specialist support services such as speech therapy, child and adolescent mental health services, family support services, intensive behaviour support, and (for young people) sexual health services’, some of which may be delivered on the school site. In addition to provision for children and young people, there would be scope for extended schools to provide adult education classes, parent support programmes and family learning sessions to allow children to learn with their parents.

While the prospectus makes it clear that schools do not have to provide and develop all these services themselves, we are nevertheless told that, ‘s chools, located as they are right at the heart of the community, are ideally placed to take up this challenge.’

Who could possibly object?

We are advised that the government’s ‘demanding but exciting vision’ for extended schools fits in with what parents want for their children, with the direction that schools are already moving in, and with the objectives of the government’s Every Child Matters programme. So with parents happy, schools happy, the government happy and, it goes without saying, with children happy, who could possibly object?

But one question that the prospectus fails to address is whether it is in the best interests of families and of society for children’s lives to revolve around the school rather than around the home. True, the prospectus does extol the importance of the parental role:

‘Parents have the biggest single influence on their children’s lives and are their child’s prime educator. We know from research that good parenting in the home makes an enormous difference to children’s outcomes and we want services in extended schools to support parents in this key role.’

However, if the government really believed that, surely it would be seeking to maximise the time that children are able to spend with their parents rather than investing a further £680 million by 2008 to make it possible for children to spend more time away from their parents, thus limiting the influence of their ‘prime educators’ and inevitably minimising the ‘enormous difference’ that good parenting can make?

Extravagant claims

So extravagant are the claims made for wraparound childcare, that parents could be forgiven for thinking that they are depriving their children or even placing them at risk by not welcoming the wonderful opportunities about to be made available to them with open arms:

‘The reasons for providing or extending childcare services… are compelling. High quality childcare combined with activities will help raise educational achievement… It will also help to improve children’s life chances by enabling parents to return to work and hence lift many households out of poverty…

‘Children will be better placed to achieve their full potential if they are in childcare that allows them to complete their homework, have their health problems addressed and get help from their parents to support their learning…

‘The benefits to young people can be huge… In some areas, access to affordable things for young people to do can be limited and they can also be at risk of being involved in or the victim of crime as they have no safe place to be.’

What parent doesn’t want to raise the educational achievement of his children, improve their life chances, help them reach their full potential, have their health problems addressed and ensure their safety? The prospectus seems to suggest that children who arrive at school just before 9.00am and return home to their mother or father at 3.30pm are in some way disadvantaged compared with those who take advantage of the ‘exciting activities’ on offer before and after school. That is another way of saying that paid childcare workers do a better job of caring for children than their parents.

What choice?

In response to the question, ‘Will all parents have to drop off their child at 8am and leave them there until 6pm ?’ the prospectus answers: ‘No. This is about providing parents with greater choice, flexibility, convenience and accessibility to help them balance family and work commitments .’ There is no recognition of the fact that some families where two parents work would prefer to have the choice for one of them to stay at home to see their children off to school in the morning and to spend time with them at the end of the school day. However, government policies have made it increasingly difficult for parents to make a choice that would serve the interests of children far better than the plan to introduce extended schools.

An editorial in the Daily Telegraph hit the nail on the head when it declared:

‘At best, these plans can be seen as an attempt by ministers to mitigate the social evil that they themselves are helping to create, as they go on turning a whole generation of children into “latch-key kids”. At worst, it will have the effect of undermining the family and supplanting parental authority with that of the state.’

 

The extended schools programme is not really about giving parents greater choice at all. It is more about gift-wrapping a choice already made for them by central government in order to make it look more attractive.

 

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Restoring choice to parents

Many families prefer a parental presence in the home to the vagaries of third party childcare. This is usually because their children are very young, they have a large family, they do not have the back-up of close family members and/or they cannot find a suitable second employment.

Whatever the reason, they find themselves in an anomalous tax position. Such families lose their second personal tax allowance (now standing at £4,895 p.a.) and can only claim the lower rate tax bands once. When their one earner touches £37,295 p.a., he starts to pay tax at 40 per cent on anything earned thereafter. Such families make no claim on state subsidised childcare either. However, the double earners enjoy two personal tax allowances, 2 x the lower rate tax bands and, even if they earn as much as 2 x £37,295 p.a., they pay no tax at the higher rate.

How can the government justify allowing such families, who are much better treated by the system, to claim personal tax breaks for their childcare, when the one-earner families are not even allowed to transfer an unused personal tax allowance to the earning partner?

It would be far better if we were to give all those with dependent children to support a realistic child tax allowance in respect of their extra costs and responsibilities. Whether they wish to engage other people should be for them to decide. Under the present system, a one-earner family forfeits its second personal tax allowance. At the very least this should be made transferable between spouses. Even better, a family income could be split into two equal halves for tax purposes, thus putting all families on a par for tax purposes.

Anna Lines

 

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Parents and the breakdown of respect

At his first press conference following the General Election, the Prime Minister referred to a keenly-felt breakdown of respect in society:

‘[W]e must embed a culture of rights and responsibilities… During the election campaign I heard too often people talk about a loss of respect, in the classroom, on the street corner, in the way our hard working public servants are treated…  

‘We need to address this problem, not just as a government, but as a society…  People like a society that is less deferential, they want a society free from old prejudices, but a loss of deference is very different to a loss of respect for other people. A society without prejudice should not be one without rules.

‘People are rightly fed up with street corner and shopping centre thugs, yobbish behaviour, sometimes from children as young as 10 or 11, whose parents should be looking after them, of Friday and Saturday night binge drinking that makes our town centres no-go areas for respectable citizens, of the low level graffiti, vandalism and disorder that is the work of a very small minority, it is true, but makes the law abiding majority afraid and angry.

‘I have no nostalgia for any by-gone era, so much of society has changed for the better, and it is good that people are free to express their views, lead their personal lives in the way they want to, are less hidebound by old thinking. But some things should endure, and one is respect towards other people. That is a modern yearning as much as a traditional one. Some of the causes of this may be very long term, some of the solutions difficult. I am determined to make this a central piece however of our third term agenda.’

 

In response to a question about where the root of the problem lay, Mr Blair had no hesitation in blaming parents for the anti-social behaviour of their children:

‘I do think there are some very deep seated causes of this that are to do with…family life in the way that parents regard their responsibility to their children, in the way that some kids grow up, generation to generation, without proper parenting, without a proper sense of discipline within the family, and… I can’t solve all these problems… I can start a debate on this and I can legislate, but what I can’t do is I can’t raise someone’s children for them.’1

YouGov survey

A YouGov survey conducted for the Daily Telegraph found that 91 per cent of respondents believed that people show each other either ‘a lot less respect’ (73 per cent) or ‘a little less respect’ (18 per cent) than they did in the past, and 89 per cent were of the opinion that anti-social behaviour had ‘increased a lot (65 per cent) or ‘increased a little’ (24 per cent).

While 14 per cent believed that the government could ‘do a great deal’ to increase the amount of respect that people show one another, others saw a more limited role for effective government intervention, with 39 per cent thinking it could ‘do a certain amount’, 30 per cent of the view that ‘it can’t do very much’, and 12 per cent feeling ‘it can’t really do anything’.

The majority of respondents agreed with the Prime Minister that parents must take the lion’s share of the blame for the widely-perceived decline in respect throughout society. Asked to select two factors that they thought were most responsible for the increase in anti-social behaviour, 85 per cent cited ‘parents not bringing up their children properly’, with 25 per cent mentioning ‘the break-up of so many marriages’. Slightly fewer blamed inadequate government action (22 per cent), a lack of discipline in schools (22 per cent), or the failure of local authorities or charities to provide constructive activities for teenagers (22 per cent).2

Respect begins at home

In calling for a return to respect, the Prime Minister would do well to emphasise that respect begins in the home. Yet o ver recent years there has been a tendency to regard children as the shared responsibility of parents and the state, with the state assuming an ever-increasing role in their lives. Behind the rhetoric about ‘supporting parents’, the personal responsibility of parents has been progressively undermined.

On the one hand parents are held responsible for their children’s behaviour at school and in the community, while on the other their role is being undermined by growing pressure on mothers to work outside the home, official disapproval of effective methods of discipline, and the confidential provision of contraception and abortions without the knowledge or consent of parents.

Much as we welcome Mr Blair’s acknowledgement that he cannot raise other people’s children for them, unless his words are accompanied by a restoration of proper respect for parents, the erosion of respect in society is likely to continue.

Notes
1. Prime Minister’s press briefing, 12 May 2005
2. Daily Telegraph, 27 May 2005

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Information Sharing Databases

The government has published its response to a consultation on recording practitioner details for potentially sensitive services on the planned information sharing databases.

While local authorities and some health bodies argued for practitioner details to be placed on the database without consent in order to provide all practitioners with a full picture of who else was involved with a child or young person, most respondents supported the government’s initial view that prior consent should be obtained before recording details of practitioners providing ‘sensitive services’. In particular, strong concerns were expressed that to record details of services in relation to drug misuse and mental and sexual health might deter children and young people from accessing these services.

In view of the responses received, the government is proposing that the majority of practitioners will not be required to seek consent in order to place their details against a child’s record on the database. However, ‘consent will be required for practitioners in targeted or specialist health services where there is a strong public expectation and practitioner culture that information will only be shared where informed, explicit consent has been secured.’

The Department for Education and Skills will now be working closely with the Department of Health and consulting the Children and Young People’s Board and the children’s commissioner in order to more carefully define the services for which consent will be required. However, the government says that it is likely that consent will be required for services such as the ‘Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, services related to substance misuse, non A&E hospital care, abortion, family planning, sexual health and HIV’. Notwithstanding this, the government is proposing to retain the facility to over-ride lack of consent, but only in carefully specified circumstances where there are genuine child protection concerns.

During the autumn, the government is planning to decide on the next steps as it moves towards introducing the information sharing databases and preparing the necessary regulations and guidance.

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Births outside marriage rise again

According to provisional figures released by the Office for National Statistics, 42.2 per cent of births in England and Wales were to unmarried mothers in 2004, up from 41.4 per cent in 2003. The rate of births outside marriage has risen by almost 10 per cent since 1994 when the figure stood at 32.4 per cent. In 1964 births outside marriage accounted for only 7.2 per cent of the total.

Source: Office for National Statistics: Births in 2004 (provisional), England and Wales.

 

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Cannabis use rises among teens

A study of 369,847 young people between the ages of 10 and 15 undertaken by the Schools Health Education Unit SHEU) found that over a quarter of 14 and 15-year-old boys and girls claim to have taken cannabis. The survey found that 26 per cent of boys and 27 per cent of girls in this age group had taken cannabis, compared with just 2 per cent of both boys and girls in 1987. There has also been a marked rise in the number of younger secondary school pupils experimenting with cannabis. The SHEU study found that 7 per cent of 12 to 13-year-old boys and 6 per cent of girls had taken the drug compared with 1 per cent and zero respectively in 1987.

Source: Young People & Illegal Drugs, Attitudes to and experience of illegal drugs 1987–2004, Schools Health Education Unit, June 2005.

 

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Jack Proom

We are sorry to inform you that Jack Proom died in May. Jack, a chartered accountant, joined the work in 1972 and, as many of you will remember, attended our annual conferences regularly. His interest in our work for the family grew out of the damaging nature of the sex education to which his children were being subjected in school, a concern which I shared from the experience of my own children. Jack was always available to devote time to help in any way he could and to carry out fact-finding exercises – indeed any activity which might further our work. His conscientious and meticulous contribution to our work is a great loss.

We extend our heartfelt sympathy to his daughters and grandchildren.

Valerie Riches

 

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