Is George Osborne squeezing the rich to help poor families? No!

I posted earlier this year in defence of universal Child Benefit, when gossip was spreading that it could come under attack. I won't repeat here the arguments I made there in defence of universality, but I do want to make a few points about the specific policy that the Tories have just announced - to remove Child Benefit from families where one person earns more than £44k.

In doing so, I want to tackle the aspect that I find particularly annoying - the Tories' pretence that this is a pro-working-class policy, which will no doubt find cheerleaders in the tabloids and may even impair the ability of some on the 'left' to defend universal Child Benefit against this attack.

Despite its pretensions at squeezing the rich, George Osborne's announcement leaves rich people without kids well alone while those with kids have money taken from them. No-one is losing money for being rich, but for having kids.

There is a serious ideological point here about society's attitude to, and responsibility for, children. The attack on Child Benefit is based on an assumption that children are the private indulgence of their parents rather than the responsibility of society in general. Sometimes, it feels like people think that "the taxpayer" is being asked to pay towards people's cars or butlers, not towards their children.

Moreover, earning £44k and bit most definitely does NOT make you "rich". It may be well above the average wage, but it is the wage of, for example, some skilled manual workers. If you are one of these and, say, you live in London bringing up three kids on your own or with a partner on much lower earnings, then you may get by, but you hardly live the life of Riley.

The rich-poor divide is not between people on £25k and people on £45k, but between people on £25k and people on £100k+ and a stash of wealth. Let's target our anger against the genuine rich, not on working families who might earn more than other working families, but who certainly do not share in the full fruits of their labour, and are definitely not "rich".

Even so, the way to deal with the genuinely rich is not to take away their child benefit, but to tax them til the pips squeak, or better still, to legislate a maximum wage.

Hands Off Universal Child Benefit

As David Cameron invites the nation to suggest public spending cuts, one thing that seems to be square in the government's sights is universal Child Benefit. What support there is for this appears to rest on two reactionary and annoying 'arguments':

1. That children are a private indulgence of their parents, who should therefore meet the costs themselves.

Actually, matey, they are the continuation of the human race, and therefore the human race collectively bears some responsibility towards them. Moreover, Child Benefit covers a bare fraction of the real cost of raising a child, but it is a useful contribution.

2. That rich parents do not need or deserve Child Benefit and it should therefore be means-tested. This 'argument' is bugging me, as it is superficially appealing but an abuse of people's class consciousness and rightful anger at the rich.

The fact is that once a benefit is means-tested, it is the poor, more than the rich, who lose out. Means-testing means that you have to apply, that you need to be able to navigate the system, to fill in the forms, to reapply periodically. Means testing still carries stigma, as well as practical difficulty. Nearly every means-tested benefit has an unsatisfactory take-up rate.

It also costs the state a great deal more money to administer a means-tested benefit than to give out a universal benefit. A large proportion of the money it would save, it would have to spend.

But why should working-class people's tax pay for rich parents' child benefit?! The answer is simple: pay for it with rich people's tax instead! Give them the Child Benefit with one hand, take their excess wealth for the common good with the other.

And keep Child Benefit universal.

Abuse by Catholic Church in Ireland

In light of the at-long-last publication of the damning report into institutional child abuse by the Catholic Church in Ireland, my best comment is to point you to two articles and a poem by Sean Matgamna, who has first-hand experience of the brutality of the Christian Brothers.

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Savage Violence in Irish Schools: Why Did They Stand For It?
9 February, 2005

The little boy, Tommy, perhaps eight years old, watched the schoolmaster, Sean Gormley, prepare to flog his brother, Mickey. Mickey was a year or two older than Tommy, but smaller.

The procedure was that the boy due to be flogged would climb up, or be lifted up, on the back of a bigger boy, who would reach over his shoulders and hold on to the smaller boy’s hands. The master would then slash again and again, as his mood dictated, at the victim’s backside.

The boy’s short trousers may have been pulled down first. I don’t know. “Flogging” was what they called it, and flogging is what it was. Tommy had seen it before, as had the whole class - had maybe himself been the victim.

As the master slashed at Mickey, Tommy picked up his slate — they used real slates, and chalk — and, moving towards Gormley, flung it at his head. He missed, and the slate clattered against the wall behind the teacher.

Mickey kicked himself free, and the two boys ran out of the schoolroom, across the narrow concreted yard, down the steps, and off towards home.

I have had to “fill in” some of the details, but in its essentials, it is a true story. I heard both Mickey and Tommy, decades later, tell the story more than once. Tommy was not above a bit of embellishment, but he was a truthful man, with a strong contempt for “liars”.

Continues here.

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A horror story to learn from
7 February 2008

An 81 year old retired Irish cardinal, Desmond Connell, has gone to the High Court in Dublin for a writ to stop his successor as Archbishop of Dublin from handing over church files on paedophile priests to a state-organised inquiry into clerical abuse of children.

He has called on the court to prevent the head of the Catholic Church in the Dublin diocese from handing over information about criminal priests to the government-appointed investigation. He has got an interim writ, freezing proceedings until there can be a full court hearing. He claims that some of the files contain solicitors’ advice to him, and therefore that they are privileged, exempt from scrutiny without his say-so.

This strange affair deserves the attention of socialists and secularists in Britain.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Primate of the Catholic Church here, who plausibly claims that his is now the most numerous Christian denomination in the country, has a lot to say on social and political questions these days.

A lot of it is reactionary — its attitude to lesbians and gays, for instance.

His overriding concern is to have as large a part as he can of the affairs of society — its mores, its morality, what it allows and what it forbids to the citizen — regulated by the “laws of God”, as his church understands them. In Britain now it is an effort to have society ruled according to the teachings of a church which the big majority does not accept.

The attempt by Murphy O’Connor and his bishops to impose the prejudices of their church so that lesbians and gays could not adopt or foster children is only one recent example.

The Catholic people of Ireland are now once again, in the grotesque Cardinal Connell affair, being unpleasantly reminded of what rule by priests, bishops, and cardinals sometimes has meant for them. For many decades, Catholic priests, members of the Christian Brothers (a monk-like teaching order), and nuns, running Irish schools, orphanages, and reformatories, savagely abused children, beating and raping them.

That they subjected them to relentless and merciless violence was known to everyone. What was not widely known — scarcely known at all, except to its small victims and to maimed and troubled adults who had been small victims — and certainly never discussed in public, was that sexual abuse of children in schools, orphanages, and reformatories, was also an everyday thing.

The abuse of children is now understood to be a feature of all institutions where children are helpless at the mercy of adults. In Ireland, within a loose and light framework of state regulation to check such things as the qualifications of teachers, schools (etc.) were an archipelago of hell-holes run or supervised by priests, Christian Brothers, and nuns.

Officially, Catholic Ireland was a desert of lacerating, arid sexual puritanism — a place where for many decades the average age of marriage was 35, and many lay men and women, never marrying, lived entirely celibate lives.

The poet Patrick Kavanagh — he is also the author of the well-known song, “On Raglan Road” — borrowed the common name for the Famine of the 1840s, in which a million starved to death, the Great Hunger, for the title of a long poem about that, Ireland’s other great hunger.

In that Ireland, the priests and nuns were honoured as paragons and models, demigods more closely connected to the Big God than anyone else could be. They were the moral police for a strict and very puritanical morality.

Continues here.

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And finally, I'd never usually recommend Sean's poetry, but I'll make an exception in this case ...

MARY PLAYS NUNS' SCHOOL

Now, Mary places papers all along the kitchen,
On table, dresser, chairs: small girls at school;
Herself, the nun, alone with children in her den.

Mary is re-enacting school, convent school,
Where little girls are shaped, chastened, cut
By holy women strung alive to God's tight rule.

So she begins to teach: she stiffens, starts to strut
Facing the girls, like nemesis engaged,
A long thin stick in hand. Slowly she starts to “tut”.

“Tut-tut! Tut-tut! Tut-tut!” Soon anger sparks to rage,
Deep-rooted rage: a wounded eye-less Id
Seething with rancid, poisoned life inside a cage.

Now she begins to shout: she scolds her paper kids,
Upbraiding each as little fool, dunce, dim-wit:
Ne'er-do-well, bad little sinful Patsies, Neaves and Brids.

From shouting soon to action: she starts to hit
The table, the dresser, the unfeeling chairs
With the thin stick, face clenched, caught up, reliving it.

She “slaps” the table, the dresser, slashes at every chair:
Wood rings on nerveless wood, with rapid blows,
In frenzied mimic violence, 'till papers tear.

Mary slashes and beats, her eyes fierce that they glow,
Lost in fevered playing at nuns' school,
At home, in deValera's Ireland long ago;
Lost in that wounded re-enactment long ago.

1991

A scene I witnessed. Mary, who would have been about 9,
was a pupil at the girls National school, run by
the Sisters of Mercy, the only girls primary school in Ennis.
These nuns had a reputation amongst the poor of
the town for being very severe and violent with the
children, but selectively so. They were relentlessly
punitive, physically brutal and persecuting with the “Industrial girls”,
who were in their full-time custody, less severe, though still
very severe , with the children of the poor, and noticably less severe,
or not severe at all, with the children of the well-off.

In defence of social work

So I admit it I am a social worker, a senior one at that and a Practice Teacher for social work students. And after the past few weeks the steam has finally stopped coming out of my ears.

Like everyone else I have shaken my head at the press reports about the torture and death of Baby P and even shed a tear for the wee mite but I haven't got caught up in the social work baiting.

In the current climate we need to defend social work and social workers. I am not trying to defend incompetence or anything like that but there are procedures for that and there is also employment law. But you cannot sack people just because The Sun newspaper calls for them to be sacked, there must be due process.

Being a social worker is a hard and difficult job but can also be the most fabulous job in the world. There are many good times in social work as well as bad and even sad. There are so many difficult decisions to make every day you are at work - everything is a dilemma. Unless you are one it is hard to explain the difficult decisions you have to make from day to day - you have to make relationships with people whose lives you might ultimately destroy.

Have you ever written a report for someone and the consequences is that they will go to prison - they go to prison and then you have to visit them the next week to plan for their release?

Have you ever had to support a woman whose third child is being adopted and you are the one making the recommendation but have to hold her hand when you are sitting in court with her whilst she's breaking her heart?

Or assessed that someone should be sectioned in a psychiatric hospital against their will but you have to then run back to their house to get the cat, Ginger, to take to their Auntie Jessie's house.

Unless you are a social worker you will never have done any of these things, they are unique to social work.

I could tell you tales that would curl your toes , make you weep for a week and make your ribs hurt so much from laughing - social work is a unique profession.

Particularly in child protection the decisions that need to be made on a day to day basis are very difficult and sometimes the right thing is the wrong thing for someone.

The problem also is when it comes to child protection most parents do not want a social worker as they have to say and do difficult things and it is intrusive, there is little privacy and a family is turned inside out. Social workers alongside their colleagues in education, health, police and the voluntary sector have to balance children's attachments to their care givers and the the risk they may be at from them or because of them - and that is very, very difficult to do particularly now we know how children's attachments happen and the ripping and tearing of affectionate bonds is not recommended unless absolutely necessary.

And not there is a discource that is different that the past when the joke "What the difference between a rottwillier and a social worker - you get your kids back from a rottweiler!" was common - nopw everyone wants all the children on the Child Protection Register to go into children's homes!

There is a lot being said about Baby P and Shannon Mathews but people should be careful for what they wish for - it could lead to sharing of information without consent, children taken into care who might not need to be in care and a whole lot of other things most socialists would disagree with.

It is easy to call for the sacking of Baby P's social worker or the workers who didn't think Shannon Mathews needed to be on Child Protection Register and I am not suggesting that they should not be but only after an investigation and the correct legal process has gone through and only if it is the right thing to happen.

The issue for me about social work is that it moved from a community development model that was predominant in the 70s and 80s to case work. This is due to cuts and attacks first from the Tories and then the latter squeezing of local authority funding. Seeing "clients" as individuals and not in relation to their community, for me remains an issue.

Social work is one of the last "professions" which is under democratic control i.e. local authorities.
Of course there is an argument whether this is democratic or not but all major policy changes are decided by local councillors and not by boards or quangos and I think we need to defend that.

There is much more effective practice out there in social work than poor practice.

Social workers support thousands and thousands of adults and children every day, the problem is lack of resources and workers - it is common to freeze vacancies to pay for over time, not to fill posts to keep budgets in place - look around Britain and there are many cuts to the social work budgets.

I also think some of the attacks on social work and their clients, Baby P's mum and Karen Mathews come from a misogynist framework.
70% of social workers are women and in reading some of the blogs about social work in relation to Shannon Mathews and Baby P there have been quite lumpenised comments about social work as a profession and the work social workers have to do.
But there is a sort of sexist undercurrent to the discussion too (though I hope it is not intentional) Socialist Unity comments about "over-professionalising" social work, teaching etc - professions dominating by women but there would never be such remarks made about steel workers or car factory workers.
There are also comments about the salaries of social workers - electricians, plumbers etc. get paid more than social workers. And do I need to remind comrades that the majority of socialists supported Fire Fighters to have a wage of £30K a year a few years back?
Is it because social workers are women and their work is done with people usually children and vulnerable people that their value is not recognised or is it that working with women like Karen Mathews and Baby P's mum is seen as worthless despite being chastised and criticised for doing it wrongly or badly?

Dave Osler had a sensible post on his blog in my opinion however chaos broke out on Socialist Unity and one of the contributors got himself in a right pickle and did a 180 degree spin particularly once Michael Rosen contributed (he was very sensible) but I did think to myself "What is it that made the comrade change his mind after reading the internationally renowned author Michael Rosen's comments?".

The same old argument about the middle class and the working class came out in regards to social workers - I actually find this quite a boring argument.
I know working class social workers I wouldn't cross the road to talk to and one of my favourite social workers is a Laird, and he is lovely and very well liked in the community he works in.
The issue is a class one, however, because the majority of social work "clients" are working class and very poor working class families at that and they don't protest or complain, they don't demand better and the consequences is shoe string budgets.
If social work was universal like education and the NHS then I think there would be more resources but it is not.

Social workers are common whipping girls and boys but they are the last effort of the welfare state to try and have a collective response to problems in communities and families, you cannot make it safer by more regulations - social workers need more time, resources and support in order to do a very difficult job. Are you brave enough to defend the pariahs that are social workers?

Diagnosing a Child With Asperger Syndrome

As promised two weeks ago, this Sunday's post on the subject of Asperger syndrome is about the process of getting a child diagnosed.

As we left it on that occasion, Joe's dad and I had a strong feeling that Joe had AS, having become increasingly concerned about his behaviour and frequent distress, and having read this description of Asperger's which very accurately describes Joe.

His teacher (he was in nursery class at the time) also had sufficient concerns about Joe to have filled in the necessary form. One of her concerns was that he flatly refused to join in 'circle time' (the first child in twenty years of the school's nursery to do so!); another was that he frequently mistook excitement for anger in adults - if she praised something he had done, he would flinch as if being told off.

When I said to her, "He's autistic, isn't he?", she was obviously relieved that I had worked it out and she had not had to break this news to me. She then told me that these days, we call it "being on the autistic spectrum".

The next step was to get our GP to refer Joe for diagnosis. This involved attending the Complex Communication Clinic at the Donald Winnicott Centre in Hackney (which has since been replaced by the all-new Hackney Ark). Joe, John and I all spent time with a Consultant Paediatrician and a Child Psychologist (called, ironically enough, John and Janine). They observed his behaviour and listened to lengthy testimony from us.

They then gave him some tests, the nature of which are quite illuminating about autism and Asperger's. It is important to recognise that they judged Joe's responses not as 'right' or 'wrong' but as 'typical' or 'atypical'. Some examples:

• They asked Joe, "What is a bicycle?". He replied, "Two sticks, two wheels, three seats". (My bike at the time had a child's seat for Joe and a baby seat for his brother Harrison.) Atypical. Most kids would say, "Something you ride", but the Asperger's kid is more likely to see an object in terms of its components rather than its function. Not wrong, just different - and rather handy if you become a bicycle designer in later life, I'd have thought.
  
  
• They asked Joe, "What is an umbrella?". He replied, "A carrot and a plastic bag". Now that's a bit harder to fathom, but as I explained to them later, he had been playing with Sticklebrix a lot lately, often used the long orange one to represent a carrot and the square white one to represent a plastic bag, and used the long orange one and the square white one together to make an umbrella. Logical, but most definitely atypical. Not wrong, but different - but so different that it is barely comprehensible to anyone who does not know the reasoning behind it. So we can see where those communication difficulties might come in.
  
  
• They showed Joe a photo of a boy with a spider landing on his head and asked him how he thought the boy would feel. Joe replied, "Angry". Atypical: most kids say "frightened". But isn't it actually more logical to be angry with a spider for landing on your head than to be scared of a minute creature that can cause you no harm?!

In all, Joe had a general development assessment, play-based assessment and cognitive assessment at the clinic, plus a speech and language assessment and classroom observation at his school. None of these, as far as I can tell, caused him any distress.

By this time, he was in Reception class and had an Individual Education Plan (IEP) - a written plan which a school can give to a child with problems, issues or special needs, with or without a particular diagnosis.

Joe's diagnosis arrived on the day that his dad was elected National President of the RMT, in November 2006. It is an 8-page document describing their various investigations and observations. The key passage reads,

Joe has been assessed formally and informally over time and in different settings. On the basis of the typical developmental history, clinical observation, information provided by his school and formal assessment of language and cognitive skills, it is our opinion that Joseph's difficulties with social interaction, communication and behaviour are best described as being within the autistic spectrum.

His early language development appears to have been normal and on the basis of his current functioning and the absence of a general learning difficulty, we feel that Asperger's Syndrome best describes Joseph's profile within the autistic spectrum.

Shock Horror! Five-Year-Olds Can't Write Their Names!

The reactionary 'school standards' brigade are up in arms about a new report that shows that some five-year-olds can not write their own name.

Er, why is this such a big deal? The priority for kids in their first year of primary school should surely be that they are happy, settled, making friends, and developing the skills that will enable them to learn.

Instead, the government - egged on by the aforementioned reactionary 'school standards' brigade - is concerned only with their ability to pass regimented measures of achievement regardless of their personal development. It is a recipe for a generation of kids who may be able to write a list of key words, but may also be stressed, anti-social and able to learn only by rote and not by creative and critical thinking.

The report goes on to bemoan that many five-year-olds can not write a shopping list. A shopping list?! Why on earth would a five-year-old need to write a shopping list?! Going to despatch them to the local Tesco's for the family's weekly shop, are we? Er, no.

It's not that I'm against school standards. Heavens, no. It's just that my standards are different from those of the government or the Mail on Sunday. They are to do with children's well-being and rounded development, not just their ability to write 'oranges, pasta, coffee' at an age when they should actually be having fun.

Oh, and one more thing. If the government announced the necessary measures that would genuinely improve school standards - eg. better pay for teachers and support staff, more staff to teach smaller classes, more books and equipment etc - that would necessarily involve higher public spending, how do you think the Mail on Sunday would react?!

Child Benefit Data Disks

Some comments on the loss of the child benefit data disks ...

There is a glaringly obvious link between cutting civil service jobs and funding, and the civil service cocking up. PCS has commented on this. I'd have thought that the CWU should be pointing out the pitfalls of a government department using a private courier rather than Royal Mail, but there is nothing yet on its website.

I also agree with the chorus of people pointing out that this incident should be the nail in the coffin of ID cards.

There has been a lot of concern about ID theft, and yes, as one of the people whose details are on those disks, I feel a little flustered.

But there is, I think, a greater concern, which I have not heard in the extensive news coverage. There are vulnerable parents and children whose details are on those lost disks - women fleeing violent ex-partners, families who are refugees from oppressive regimes, parents who have been rejected by hostile families or 'elders' who do not approve of their relationships. For many of those kids and their parents, the confidentiality of their addresses and personal details is absolutely essential to their safety. Yet the BBC asks how worried we should be, but considers only the threat to our bank accounts and credit facilities.

Maybe I've missed it. But maybe the politicians are too busy trading insults to even think about the potential victims.

Conferences and Creches

As many of you are probably aware, this weekend brings a sort of 'super' Saturday of leftie conferences. There is the LRC, Respect , Respect renewal and the Socialist Party event. Spoilt for choice, that is as long as you don't have any childcare responsibilities .

I planned to go along to the LRC event with Dave. All well and good except he needs to have his kids to stay that weekend. I e-mail to find out if there is a creche. The response I get is :

The LRC is very aware of the difficulties that some parents or guardians will face because of their childcare responsibilities, but unfortunately we just simply don’t have the resources to provide a full crèche this year.

In previous years we have looked into the possibilities of running a creche but it was found to be prohibitively expensive both in relation to our resources and demand.

There is a box on the leaflet which asks people if they need childcare assistance but you are the first to contact us this regarding this.

Thank you for raising this issue and we will gladly undertake a full investigation around the possibilities of providing a creche next year.

The LRC will be happy to reimburse you with the cost of your conference registration to assist with your childcare costs.



Hmmm. I find it strange we are the only ones who need childcare. Have people just given up asking for a creche at events. The cost to attend is £15 waged and £10 unwaged. Dave pays £8 an hour for a babysitter . A whole day at a conference would set him back nearly £80, pretty prohibitive even with the registration reimbursed. Childcare is an issue for men and women. We want men to play a full part in childcare . Dave is looking after the kids this weekend so his ex can work. If men don't share the responsibility it impacts on women. Childcare is fundamental to support women, both directly and in this case indirectly, and the left should find a way to make sure its in place at all its events.

I have done a bit of research. I have looked at the two Respect websites and can't find reference to whether either of the conferences have a creche. I have e-mailed them both to ask. If I have missed it on the website or anyone knows anything please add a comment .

I note though that the Socialist Party do provide a creche and its quite prominent on their information :

Creche
There will be full creche facilities but places must be booked in advance. Please email us details of children (i.e. age and other important information such as foods they cannot eat etc.)

Also under 'Essential Information' they have :

Special Needs
The venue is accessible but please contact us if you think there is something we may have overlooked

I did not notice this on any of the other events so well done. Slight quibble in that it could be more explicit about the access. Does it include sight and hearing needs ? But still at least it gets a mention.

I note that feminist Fightback had a creche and they charged £5 for registration . I don't know what they charged for the creche but am asking around. So if they could do it why can't the LRC. Why aren't people asking for one. Is childcare no longer an issue ? I don't think that is the case. Why isn't this an issue for the left. Oh and why I'm having a gripe , why isn't disability either.

There will be a women's caucus at the LRC. I hope they will take this issue up.I plan to.

And while I'm doing that Dave will be reading Trotsky to his daughters,bless.

Update

Please keep the comments coming as to which groups have a creche at events. Seems some are good at this and others pretty crap. I think the issue of cost does not wash as some groups do it. Its not good enough to say its too expensive !
Seems at least two people will not be at the event because of lack of a creche and others who don't even bother asking anymore. I will also link it to the wider issue of access to events .
This is not just an LRC issue but I will raise it at the Women's Network meeting at the LRC conference and suggest a left wide campaign on it.

Another update

As a result of a bit of naming and shaming on this blog, and MarshaJane's powers of persuasion, the LRC has agreed to reimburse the full childcare costs (within what is reasonable, £80 ish ) for people needing it. They will properly look into the issue for next year.