Welcome to another week.
Home Secretary Theresa May has announced an intention to create specialised schools for what she calls troubled children, which would be set up and run by the police and crime commissioners with a view to increasing commissioners’ powers into youth justice, probation and court services.
The idea behind the new schools is to help prevent children from entering a life of crime and would have a crime-specific curriculum.
But not everyone thinks this is a good idea. Sara Ogilvie, policy officer for human rights group Liberty, said the new plan was ‘a sure-fire way to estrange troubled children and fast-track them into the criminal justice system.’
And Researching Reform also happens to agree.
So, what do you think? Would this type of school be able to offer vulnerable children a positive way to stay out of trouble and a beneficial and nurturing environment or would it alienate these children further, and allow for a culture in these schools to develop, not dissimilar to the current culture we see inside the criminal justice system?
Many thanks to Dana for alerting us to this news item.
Researching Reform 
My god what will they think of next for children, what they should be doing is listening to the children because so many want to go home and of course they are some times naughty even we as adults are naughty when we lose our loved ones just go to the bloody people who divorce and use the kids as weapons TERESA MAY should set up schools for divorced parents and look at the real problems why kids are naughty also look at the detention centres that kids are sent to even those poor kids who run away from being abused in care are put into detention centres and more abuse they are looking for their families, and when we think about her ideas look at yes more jobs and debates for the idiots who think they know best (In a child’s best interest) bloody idiot her what is she going through menopause and on HRT and cant think straight
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well said maggie
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Well said.
Follow the money and then you realise who is to fill the prisons of the future.
Fill a school with children deemed naughty and disruptive and they will live up to that reputation.
Like teachers who call looked after children as disposable kids- useless eaters- fit for nothing……..and so the children hear nothing else only demeaning remarks.
I did a study once as a teacher and asked for the class of disposable children for a year.
Every teacher thought I was insane taking on such a difficult task after coming from the top school .
I had all the top qualifications – but nothing to assist with these children- so I had to devise a plan of my own.
I got called all kinds of names by the children for the first few days.
They expected me to throw in the towel on them.
I explained how they were seen as troublesome and deemed never to amount to anything.
I asked them to work WITH ME and together we would prove the staff wrong.
So the work began – or should I say fun.
We spent our lunch times together- I shared how to shop, cook, pay bills, get a business of their own going, etc etc.
Most became self employed. My pride and joy is to see the trucking company belonging to one of them pass by on the M6.
Its all a matter of us adults believing in children and encouraging them all the way.
Imagine putting these children in some new boot camp and telling them daily how naughty and useless they are- then that is what they become.
We must learn to listen to the children- they have the answers and are here to teach us..
Only a loving team effort results in children becoming loving adults who will parent the next generation.
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Special schools for children over what age? We have had ‘special schools’ for years, but mainly for mentally-slow (used to be called Educationally Sub-Normal) and for severely mentally-retarded children (formerly Severely Sub-normal ) and of course we had Borstal. I don’t view this as entirely negative. The experiment where children with learning difficulties were absorbed into main-stream classes to stop them being ‘stigmatised’ didn’t help either them or the ‘brighter’ children because the mainstream teachers didn’t adequately understand the needs of the slow learners and the quicker-learners lost out because the teachers were too distracted coping with the others. Basically, it didn’t work. Is this partly the thinking behind taking disruptive children out?
My step-grandson, severely affected by his parent’s divorce, has had to be taken out of normal school and placed in a special needs one. He is doing much better, both academically and emotionally. I don’t like the idea of schools being run by other than ‘proper’ teachers, but perhaps we need to learn a little more about these proposals before condemning them out-of-hand.
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Thank you for all your comments. Roger, thank you also for yours. In response to your thoughts, whilst I think it’s wonderful to have schools run by specialists in areas relating to child welfare, my concern with this proposal is that the schools would be run by the police commissioner and children being educated there would be exposed to a strange hybrid of drill-style sessions on why crime is bad and mainstream education. I just don’t feel this is the right approach. If the government wants to stop kids going on to a life of crime, there is no short term solution – the government has to invest in raising the standard of living and increasing opportunities for people.
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I agree Natasha re raising the standard of living.
http://stoptherecession.weebly.com/
Dr Lynne has a much more evolved plan in mind and it eliminates poverty and crime etc.
“Outcomes
Removal of the ‘poverty traps’ that are part of the current welfare system. In other words, people will be able to choose to work to improve their wellbeing, without financial penalty.
A larger workforce will be available to produce goods and provide services.
Enormous savings on administration of means testing and other assessments of eligibility, and on enforcement of preventing the fraud of working while on benefits.
Enhanced multiplier effects. Stimulating consumer spending will build confidence and stimulate employment.
Significant economic growth. As people spend the subsidy, they are stimulating employment to produce the goods and services that they are consuming.”
Have we learned nothing from the past in treating children as second class slaves to be used and abused?
Is the idea to copy USA and their failed boot camp “schools”
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Thanks Natasha, I totally agree with your comments. There is a distinction between schools run by the police commission and those run by trained and qualified teachers. Interesting that Cameron has, today, come out with some radical thinking on prison reform. I wonder if any of it will actually happen though?
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Thank you for your comment, Roger. Yes, I’m not sure how I feel about all of these things. I worry that there isn’t enough understanding of the issues to implement well.
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Roger what planet are you on shame you are not up to date with the truth of what all kids have to suffer you may know a little but my god kids from all walks of life are suffering and the last thing they want is another detention centre to be abused as many people have said here lets put right the wrongs in the system NOW, and let the kids have a voice
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Before a new system is created maybe they need to look at what went wrong with the old system. The government has failed both children and their families on ALL levels! I don’t know of one area they have succeeded in! A complere shambles! We are bottom of the Western countries leader board for kids attaining even an adequate mark for Maths and English. Thousands of kids are held in custody in inappropriate places. Kids are abused there too by G4 wardens. 1 in 4 kids in fostercare care abused. Tens of thousands of kids go missing every year from the care system.
In fact the more I think about it the whole education and judicial system it is a disaster but here they go again, tinkering around the edges, making more expensive projects doomed to failure. They need to go back to why these problems exist and address those first. Is TM up to the job? I don’t think so. She has failed at every thing she has touched so far but she cannot take all the blame as most of the MPs haven’t got a clue!
They need to start at the basics and work up from there. Decent housing and food first! Jobs. Mental health and medical facilities. Pre school/Education/ youth centres for all. Stop taking kids into care and work with families. Stop segregation of troubled families and council house tenants! Prison should be for those who need locking up. The rest should work in the community on Community projects like decorating old peoples homes, gardening, cooking. Using whatever skills they have and working out a program that allows them to give back to society and take pride in what they do.
Is this government up to it? No! I don’t think so!
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Dana, if the bloody paedophiles in governments were bought to account the prisons would be full with them with no place for the crooks,
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There is a great deal in what you say, Dana. And there has been far too much emphasis on getting children who are not academically-gifted to go to University, and obtain degrees in subjects that are really of no practical use in the ‘real’ world. I was not at all academic and I had a great training under the old three-year apprenticeship scheme. But this poverty thing – it is relative. Millions of people lived in real poverty in the thirties and into the seventies in this country but still (I think) the children were, generally, happier than today and grew up not to be criminals. I think there is a poverty of spirit today, which is less easily identifiable but actually more pernicious. I see people who are ‘living below the poverty line’ who have wide-screen T.V.’s, I-pads, mobile phones, computers, benefits unheard-of by their predecessors. But yet, no pride, no cohesion, little dignity, no sense of place. And I don’t speak as some long-haired, green-corduroyed academic! I officially live below the poverty line in material terms, but it does not make me want to commit criminal acts or make me unhappy or discontent, or envious of others. Is there too much emphasis on material prosperity and too little on other, fundamental aspects of life?
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The trouble is Roger, we now live in a technical age and most of those gadgets are just as necessary to kids trying to fit in with their peers as the bike or skates or new shoes once were. Pity the child who doesn’t have what the others have. You may say it’s always been like that and you are right but nowadays more kids seem to have them & life is so fast paced, you will be left behind if you don’t have them. Computers are required for school homework and mobiles for safety too. It’s a shame that parents often get themselves into debt to do so. It’s not the best solution but parents have often done the wrong thing in order to do the right thing by their child!
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Natasha can you help with this.
YOUR URGENT ACTION REQUIRED PLEASE
http://www.exposetheestablishment.com/carol-woods-whistleblower/
Carol Woods is an ex social worker from Lancaster. She was employed by Lancashire County Council.
She exposed child sexual abuse and other issues that were not properly dealt with by Lancashire County Council, and that were covered up by both Lancashire County Council and police. The cases involve deaths and corporate manslaughter.
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Speech: Prison reform: Prime Minister’s speech
8 February, 2016 at 04:46pm
David Cameron spoke at the Policy Exchange on prison reform including plans to give governors complete control over the way they run their prisons.
Well Well has he made way in for the naughty kids to go to prison wonder if Teresa May whispered in Cameron’s ear.
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On the BBC news tonight Cameron has said prisons should be a places for hope with being allowed to go home during the week what did he forget giving hope to the kids being stolen abused and lost for ever to their families all by Cameron’s lot, time they got it right or is he making way in the prisons just in case the paedophiles are caught and sent to prison,
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Dana is obviously right in her reply to me. Perhaps it was easier, in this sense, that children as a whole had very few, if any, personal possessions in earlier days so there was little competition. As a child I didn’t have a bike or skates but neither did any of my neighbours. Yet we were all very happy, carefree, and innocent in many ways, and helped each other cobble together karts and imagine ourselves in the wild west whilst hiding in a compost heap! I don’t know what the answer is for today, Dana, but somehow we must try and find a better way I think than the present one.
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