PM under fire over his 'family test' pledge
Lauren Higgs
Friday, October 14, 2011
David Cameron comes in for criticism after restating his vow to make his government the most "family-friendly the country has ever seen".
From the promise to invest in health visitors and relationship support, to the commitment to reduce educational inequalities, the Prime Minister's rhetoric on families has remained consistent.
But with nearly four years until the next general election, new policy announcements were thin on the ground at the Conservative Party conference earlier this month.
In his keynote speech to delegates, David Cameron restated pledges to "make this the most family-friendly government the country has ever seen" and transform the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families "by the end of this parliament".
He also reiterated plans to remove barriers to adoption, recognise marriage in the tax system, accelerate the academies programme and triple the reach of the National Citizen Service by next year.
Empty words
But Family Action chief executive Helen Dent claimed that coalition policy is already causing the government to fail its "family test" in which Cameron said all domestic policies must ensure they do not hurt families, in the wake of the summer riots.
"If he is serious about supporting families, he should ditch the benefit cap and improve services and benefit levels to the most vulnerable families," she said. "Empty words won't give hope to families, which are being squeezed and smashed by cuts to childcare, rising food and fuel, welfare cuts and slashed services."
Elsewhere, Education Secretary Michael Gove received criticism for his conference speech. The teaching unions, in particular, condemned Gove's celebration of the government's record on academies as "blatant propaganda".
"One million children are now educated in academies," he said. "They benefit from longer school days, smaller class sizes, better paid teachers, more personalised learning, improved discipline and higher standards all round."
Lively debates
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: "His speech was a naked attempt to win over public support for academies and free schools in the face of considerable public opposition."
But while children and families issues played a modest part in the dialogue on the main conference floor, the fringe debates fostered livelier discussions.
At an event on family wellbeing, Family Action's Dent questioned the way in which Cameron is approaching the issue of families with multiple needs.
She argued that the 120,000 troubled families often cited by government must not be seen as a homogenous group, suggesting that the term "troubled families" usually refers to two groups of families - families in which antisocial behaviour and youth offending are problems and families in which parents are struggling to look after their children. The second group, she insisted, should not be punished with family intervention project-style sanctions.
A fringe event run by the charity Adoption UK garnered support for the government's plans to increase adoptions. But the charity's chief executive Jonathan Pearce warned that the current adoption leave and pay system fails adoptive parents.
"Once adopters have gone through the process and they are approved to have children placed with them, usually the first thing they encounter is the fact that the paid-leave from employment system disadvantages them," he said. "They have fewer rights in relation to what they receive in terms of adoption pay compared to maternity pay and there is a higher requirement for accessing adoption leave as opposed to maternity leave."
On the issue of child sexual exploitation, the government is in the process of putting together an action plan. Barnardo's chief executive Anne-Marie Carrie said that specialist sexual exploitation courts should be set up to spare child victims aggressive cross-examination by barristers representing perpetrators.
"Recently, we had a child who was cross-examined by nine barristers in court over four weeks because there were nine perpetrators," she told delegates. "She ran away from home. I don't know what the worst abuse was - the actual sexual exploitation or what we did to her in the courts system. We have specialist domestic violence courts. We have specialist drug and alcohol courts. Can we begin to consider having specialist courts for children who are sexually exploited?"
At a fringe event on improving young people's mental health, professionals argued that government spending on talking therapies for young people is insufficient. The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme is worth £400m overall, but only £8m of that is dedicated to services for young people.
Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, argued that the fact talking therapies are not automatically funded is "shocking".
"There shouldn't be a need to inject extra money into this," he said. "If somebody was going to come up to us and say 'here's a treatment for a particular physical condition that is approved by Nice', and it wasn't being delivered, there would be an outcry."
Meanwhile, the future of beleaguered youth services featured heavily in several fringe meetings.
At an event organised by the National Youth Agency, children's minister Tim Loughton argued that health and wellbeing boards will be key to joining up funding for health and youth provision.
"They are going to be a significant player," he said. "There will be resources for lots of activities to combat dangerous behaviours around teenagers. At last we will be able to have a better link up between health, local authorities and the voluntary sector around everything from binge drinking and mental health to sexual health and teenage pregnancy."