Wednesday 15 February 2012
Can Cameron Fix ‘Troubled Families’?
Time: 6:45pm (for 7pm start) to 8:30pm
Venue: Room 1, Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds
Speakers: Jennie Bristow and Nick Frost (plus more speakers to be announced)
Many of those who took part in the riots that shook London and other English cities in August 2011 were children and young teenagers. For Prime Minster David Cameron and many opinion-formers, the blame lies with a lack of parental responsibility. “The question people asked over and over again”, Cameron asserted, “was ‘where are the parents?’” — the implication being that parents weren’t at home, didn’t care, or had lost control. The answer for the Government, therefore, is intervention into the 120,000 most “troubled families”, who, it is claimed, are responsible for terrorising neighbourhoods and cost the state an estimated £9bn a year of extra spending on the NHS, policing and social services.
To tackle this problem, the government has set up a Troubled Families Unit, headed by New Labour’s former ‘respect tsar’ Louise Casey. This includes plans for a network of ‘troubleshooters’ who will act as a single point of call to help ‘empower’ families to “take control of their lives”, drawing-up action plans for basics tasks such as ensuring children arrive at school on time and are fed, and helping parents on to work programmes. Families that refuse to co-operate could face benefit sanctions, the removal of their children from their care, eviction from their homes, or ASBOs.
FIPA: the Leeds Salon sister journal
www.freedominapuritanage.co.uk
