CYP Now - Respect Action Plan: Professional time and funding are vital to parenting academy

The Government's proposed national parenting academy for frontline staff won't work unless there is enough funding to pay professionals to do the work, experts have warned.

The academy is one of the key proposals in the Respect action planlaunched by Prime Minister Tony Blair last week.

Pauline Batstone, chair of the Association of Youth Offending TeamManagers, said: "If it means free training for us, I'm very happy. Wefully support the idea but the major problem area is having enough moneyto buy the staff time to do the work."

Liz Lovell, policy adviser at The Children's Society, called for greaterclarity on how the academy would fit with other initiatives, as well asmore details on how it would be funded. "If it's something more virtualthen it would be less expensive," she said.

Register Now to Continue Reading

Thank you for visiting Children & Young People Now and making use of our archive of more than 60,000 expert features, topics hubs, case studies and policy updates. Why not register today and enjoy the following great benefits:

What's Included