Even with Greg, please.
]]>"The functions referred to in subsection (1) are— (a) subject to subsection (5A), doing such of the following where the named person considers it to be appropriate in order to promote, support or safeguard the wellbeing of the child or young person— (i) advising, informing or supporting the child or young person, or a parent of the child or young person, (ii) helping the child or young person, or a parent of the child or young person, to access a service or support, or (iii) discussing, or raising, a matter about the child or young person with a service provider or relevant authority, and (b) such other functions as are specified by this Act or any other enactment as being functions of a named person in relation to a child or young person."
]]>I see you being paranoid and a not unreasonable response to situations like the death of Daniel Pelka.
It might not be the right approach but one of the lessons that ought to have been learnt from that case was everyone that should have had a hand in looking after him seemed to think someone else would pick it up. From what I've read of this act this says that someone, a specific someone, is actively responsible. If they have concerns then they have a duty to pick up the phone and ring the GP, ring social services, get the ball rolling. If they're wrong and the parents don't like it - tough, they're doing what they're supposed to and acting in the best interests of the child. If the named adult messes it up, and a child dies of preventable abuse again, there will be enough shit to throw at the health care system, the social services system and so on but there will be a specific person who is front and centre "Why didn't you think this child was at risk? Why didn't you intervene?" It won't work perfectly of course but there's a decent chance it will work pretty well because it designates people with whom the children are coming into frequent contact anyway - it's not an extra busybody visiting your house, it's the health visitor, the teacher and so on.
Maybe I'm missing something but that's certainly what it looks like the relevant bit of the legislation is aimed at. The rest of the act looks like its aimed at getting various bodies to report on what they're doing to make sure that children in Scotland thrive and are in a better, healthier and happier place than they were X years ago. (A lot of this will be form-filling and bureaucracy inevitably, but it's form-filling in the right way, I'd rather them fill forms that say that kind of things than forms that say "we've made the lot of children meaner, crueler and nastier.")
Assuming I've read this right, if UKIP proposed this, or the Tories, neither of whom there's a cat in hell's chance I'll be voting for, I might faint in surprise. But every now and again they can get something right. Callmedave got the equalisation of Gay marriage right after all.
]]>But for all your hyperbole what this act does is not grant specific extra powers, rather it dumps extra responsibilities on someone, or rather a series of people as a child grows older. Not to mount a crusade but to phone the relevant authorities and say "I think this child is at risk." Please note they're supposed to already do this, even in England* where they're clearly not being run by whatever your foul-mouthed abusive term was for the SNP, now, in Scotland they have a specific legal duty to do so, no excuses.
It does not say anywhere "spy on everyone, the whole time" anywhere. That really is a paranoid fantasist reading of the act. It requires people the child comes into regular contact with, in the course of their normal contact to note and act on any signs of abuse: to report them. (As noted above, they're already supposed to do this, but it says at every point through the child's life, everyone else can still do it, but you MUST.) It doesn't grant them extra powers to enter the home, to go home and investigate (although some like the health visitor will visit the child at home routinely).
It also requires them to do a lot of really high-sounding things that add up to "try to make the child's lot better." That bit is really open to interpretation. I'm not sure about Scottish Law, but it's very similar to a number of duties and responsibilities that exist under various laws in England and Wales. I can't point you to the laws, but the form-filling I have to do for college for each lesson I have to record what I've done against a very similar looking set of criteria. Perhaps that's why I'm mellow about them - I know they're already there in rUK and I assume they're already there just being reinforced in this act for teachers in Scotland.
I'm not a believer that "we must do absolutely everything to protect the children, whatever the cost to anyone else." I've worked with far too many teachers to believe they're all nice people. However, unlike you I don't see a sweeping array of new powers, I see a not-crippling but not-insignificant set of new legal responsibilities. Does that increase the likelihood someone will abuse their existing power, knowing they're mandated to do it? Maybe. These days teaching doesn't attract that many martinets but there must a few out there. Unlike you, I'm not racist and don't believe that Scottish teachers are more likely to be power-hungry petty officials than those in England and Wales. Nor are the health visitors and the other named people in the act.
It's quite possible this act might have to be amended - many, many acts of parliament are after all. I'm not going to pretend it's perfect. But I honestly think you're being paranoid and sipping from the anti-SNP Kool-Aid here.
Examples: 1.The antics recently where an attempt was made to take away a couple's very ill child, because there was disagreement over possible thrapies, so the parents fled to Spain, to slammed by an EAW from Britain ... that then collapsed, I'm glad to say in embarrassment due to publicity. 2. A man denied entry to a public park to watch a falconry display, "because he was on his own & "therefore a possible paedophile" 3. The previously referred-to adoption case-example.
Do you really, really want to trust all these petty offcials? After all, it's going to be so much easier to moount a personal spite campaign, rather than, you know do some actual child protection work - "Baby P" comes to mind .....
Now, the other side, the really horrible things crawling out from the rotting woodwork. THIS, specifically I heard this on the radio & it left me shuddering. It has the potential to become as disruptive as the Marc Dutroux case was in Flanders, with a strong possibility that those higher-up were seriously involved. Come to that the deafening silence in S Yorkshore about how the Rotherham (& other) abuse went err "undetected" for so long.
So, I agree with you completely, that not enough was done &, quite possibly not enough is being done to put a stop to this sort of thing.
BUT
I am also of the opinion that the SNP's proposed "cure" is worse than the disease. In the same way that "CRB" checks are inhibiting &/or preventing a large number of perfectly harmless actvities taking place, incidentally.
OK?
]]>Unless there is legislation on the intended limits of a particular law, then it cannot be "abused". The first use of the new stalking laws, designed to prevent evil men stalking innocent women (whipped up by tabloid fervour) was against political activists.
If a law appears to be a catch-all that appears ripe for abuse, that it is because it is intended to be so.
]]>I re-iterate my stance that the certainty that this proposed system will be abused, most likely by officials with religious or political "convictions" that are in opposition to those held by the parents whos children are being "controlled" ... True thoughtcrime will have come to Scoltand. Imagine that a child has parents who are catholic/protestant (perferably wee free) & the bolck warden is protestant/catholic - or worse, the parents are atheists ....
The proponents, including those on this blog are really turning a dangerously blind eye to the depths to which some people will descend in petty spite & viciousness & are failing to put any safeguards against this in place. I'm reminded of the case, about 3 years back where a man of over 80, in hospital, was refused a second egg, "because too much cholesterol is bad for you" ... Or the jobsworths on railway stations trying to stop photography - "because they might be terrists".
Enough of this. We will only have to wait & see ... frist if this scheme is actually implemented as planned, & then (I would guess) about a year, before the vile abuses of power start crawling out of the woodwork. And, of course, the block wardens will be able to commit children of "dissenters" [ NOTE ] to the dreaded secret Family Courts, won't they? What fun. Or the warden is a fervent English-hater & the parents are "English" ... which reminds me, who is going to be block warden for George Alexander Louis - that could be highly "amusing" - or not. ]NOTE: Yes, I used "dissent ers" deliberately, given the history of religio-political persecution & strife in Scotland & worse than anything seen in England (I think) REMEMBER Thomas Aikenhead OK?
]]>To use an example as relevant (at least from my skimming of the act) as the bulk of Greg's ranting about this piece - the Gloucester Cheese Rolling was cancelled one year because of "Health and Safety." As the director of the HSE went to great pains to point out NONE of the legislation under which they operate is relevant because it applies to the workplace and not to leisure activities without any form of actual workforce or workplace. Someone was abusing those laws as surely as a named person under the Scottish act with a vendetta reporting a child for suspected abuse with no grounds will be abusing that one.
Someone actually listened to the director of the HSE though, and reinstated the cheese rolling.
]]>Just very, very worried that this will come to pass ... not least because of bright-faced "optimists" like you - who remind me of the totally brain-fucked morons at "occupy" who were completely against "US corporations" - & were using iPads, yeah.
To repeat. YOU said: Just about any legislation can be abused.
And, in this case will, definitely be abused, big-time, all over the landscape & several people & families & children will get seriously hurt (Shades of Orkney Satanic rubbish), meanwhile the SNP will (being a political party) lie, bluster, claim there's nothing in it , offer a cosmetic re-write that means nothing & finally, afte 3-5 years of misery, half-reform that which should never have been enacted in the first place. Simpler idea: Don't go there to start with.
OK - simples. Shall we wait? And, if this legislation does get passed unaltered, I predict that the first gross abuse of power by some petty offical shit wll take place within less than 18 months. Takers?
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