Baby P and the ology

Following hot on the heels of absurd action by social workers in the case of Hannah Jones we have the tale of absurd dithering and weakness by social workers in the case of Baby P. Sometimes I read of events that are so far beyond my comprehension I am unsure what to make of them. Baby P was regularly beaten and shaken so badly his spine was broken and he had more than fifty separate injuries by the time his tiny body could not take any more and he died at the age of just seventeen months. Despite sixty visits from social services, Baby P was left with his mother so that the abuse could escalate.

I am not going to discuss that case in any detail because there is nothing to say about the mother and her male friends except that they are complete scum. Totally unfit to be in charge of a child. Lowlifes of a kind any sensible person with a balanced outlook on life can recognise easily. I will add, in passing, that there seems to be only one reason why the mother and her boyfriend cannot be named. It is because they have another child or other children, and what a dreadful thought that is.

What I do want to discuss is the contrast between how social workers dealt with Baby P and how they act in other cases. Just a few weeks ago we learned that children might be taken into care if they are obese, last week we heard that one council will not place foster children with couples who smoke tobacco and earlier today we read the tale of Hannah Jones, threatened with being taken into care because she and her parents did not follow the thought processes required by social workers. The mind truly boggles at the concept of a child being taken into care because his parents feed him too much while a small baby is left at home to have his tender bones snapped by acts of random thuggishness. How can these things all happen under the watch of (self-proclaimed) "professional" people? There are two reasons, self-importance and naivety.

The last thing social workers want is to lose their jobs and comfortable pensions, so they have to be seen to be doing something to justify their existence. The last thing they want is a society in which people lead contented lives and bring up children independently of "expert" "help". The wider they can define the circumstances requiring their involvement, the safer their own careers will be. So they must be on the lookout for new perceived dangers, new threats to youthful wellbeing. Perhaps this became inevitable when some bright spark had the idea of calling social workers "professionals". No doubt he or she was related to the fraudsters who invented sociology and called it a social "science". Vague and essentially political analyses of how people behave became respectable as a field of study because they formed an "ology" and every ologist is a scientist, just as worthy of our respect and admiration as those in labs with white coats and lengths of glass tubing containing combustible materials. The more politicians sought to interfere with how people lived their lives, the more these new scientists were needed to enforce the ideal. But it's not political, it's not social engineering for political ends, it's a science; this we know because it is an ology and an ology is substantive not just a matter of opinion. We cannot have people defying science, it is bad for them. They must be stopped and that can only be done by those who understand the complexities of the new ology, only "professional" people could possibly achieve something so difficult and important. And only constant and ever widening enforcement of the forms of behaviour defined as beneficial by the new ology can ensure that its full benefit can flourish for society as a whole. After a while it had been around long enough to no longer be a new ology, then it was a fully fledged established ology. In the minds of its practitioners it is not the new ology but the ology (gap optional).

A central tenet of the ology is that people cannot cope without complex formal networks of "help" because they are victims of society as it was before the ology was discovered. The old discredited society of self-belief, mutual-support and family is so deeply ingrained that victimhood is imposed at birth. Only the ology recognises the need to break free from such oppressive cultural chains and only professional practitioners of the ology can achieve this essential end.

Baby P, in the eyes of a the ologist was a victim but only because his mother and her various partners were also victims. Their base behaviour showed them to be some of the most vulnerable victims of all. They had to be helped. Baby P could not be removed from them for that would suggest that they have failed whereas it is society that has failed them. The ology required Baby P to be kept at home to give the mother the greatest possible chance of benefitting from help given by the ologists.

To any sensible person the mother's problems would be subordinated to the need to keep her baby from risk, after all the baby has no choice about how he will be treated whereas the mother has. To any sensible person it would have taken just one bruise combined with an unchanged nappy to give the excuse needed to remove Baby P from a junkie mother whose infant was dirty and injured regularly, someone who obviously didn't give a damn about his wellbeing. Let's get one thing clear: sixty visits over a life of seventeen months is an average of one every 8.6 days. That could not happen unless it was patently obvious that Baby P was in serious danger. But the ologists are a naive group for whom leaving a baby in danger can be a sensible thing to do to relieve the mother's victimhood.

Until adults who choose to live and behave like scum are seen for what they are, there will be more and more cases like Baby P. You can have any number of enquiries and reviews but they can achieve nothing unless the ologists are prepared to bite the bullet and call a spade a spade. The social workers did not just turn up on spec those sixty times, on many occasions they would have received a phone call from a concerned neighbour; quite possibly someone too scared of the violent junkie and her scum friends to approach them directly. If a neighbour can see what is going on there is no excuse for so-called professionals.

Have a heart for the vulnerable

The case of Hannah Jones raises some interesting questions. She is thirteen years old and has a serious heart complaint which is likely to lead to her death within a short period of time. Only one course of treatment is possible, a heart transplant. No one knows whether a suitable donor heart could be found while she is strong enough to receive it, nor whether the transplant would succeed. What is certain is that a successful transplant would give greater life expectancy but a lifetime of anti-rejection drugs and regular hospital visits, possibly including further surgery from time to time. In fact a donor heart was available last year, and I will return to that fact a little later.

If Hannah were aged over eighteen the story would attract no attention. She would be responsible for deciding whether to put herself forward for a transplant and her decision would be final. Because she is a child the decision, in law, is not for her to take. It is at this point that things become messy. The general rule is that it is for her parents to take the decision because they are responsible for her care. In the days before raffia cardigan wearing social workers, any perceived failure of Hannah's parents to act in her best interests could lead to local worthies raising the matter in the courts and Hannah being made a Ward of Court so that a judge could review the evidence and decide whether he should overrule her parent's choice. Wardship is an ancient area of law and grew up to reflect the fact that some people make patently and dangerously wrong decisions which put their children at risk. The court has long had the power to step in to protect the vulnerable from the stupidity and misjudgment of others.

In passing it is worth noting that the wardship jurisdiction was invented by the courts themselves when they felt they had to act. It is by no means unique in this respect. There is a massive body of law known as "Equity" which was invented piecemeal over many decades to provide a framework of rights and responsibilities because people were acting so unfairly towards others that the courts felt the need to step in. More recently, Judicial Review developed to provide a check against the arbitrary or irrational exercise of powers by local authorities and other public bodies.

The staunchest libertarians might find it difficult to accept the right of the State, through the courts, to invent interventionary powers of this kind. No doubt they would applaud Judicial Review because it gives a remedy for the little man against the State, but both Wardship and Equity involve the State interfering in relationships between individuals without any democratic mandate at all. These jurisdictions grew up to prevent one person acting in a manifestly unfair way towards another. At the margins everyone has different views of what is fair and unfair but the core concepts are embedded in our culture, such as it being unfair to gain a commercial benefit by misleading someone or to cause a child to suffer avoidable pain. If no one else steps in to uphold the common standard, the courts will sometimes do so and will always try to give a remedy where they feel "no, you just don't treat someone like that".

So, what has this got to do with Hannah Jones? When an apparently suitable donor heart was available in the summer of 2007 she decided she did not want a heart transplant. She discussed it with her parents and they agreed with her decision. The choice she faced was one nobody would wish for - to die soon or to live longer but with great uncertainty and with the risk of constant intrusive medical procedures. I know little about her parents but have seen nothing to suggest that their decision to reflect their daughter's wishes and refuse consent to a transplant was anything other than rational, fair and balanced. Had this happened a hundred years ago the matter might well have come in front of the Wardship judge just so that he could be satisfied the decision was taken after considering all relevant circumstances, but there would have been no prospect of him overturning the parents' decision once he saw that they were sensible people who reached what they believed to be the right decision for their child. After all, Wardship was all about stepping in to protect a child in danger, not to substitute a judge's opinion for a fully considered parental decision.

Of course we are not living in 1908 but in 2008 and oh how things have changed. The old Wardship jurisdiction is no more (I believe it still exists in some very limited circumstances but is hardly ever used) and has been replaced by child care proceedings. Every local authority spends a fortune each year on social workers, counsellors, advisors and all the other paraphernalia of the modern welfare State. When Hannah's parents informed the hospital that they did not wish to use the donor heart that had become available the child care team span into operation, threatening to remove their daughter from their care unless they submitted her to the transplant. They started court proceedings to seek to enforce their opinion of what was best for Hannah and only after nine months did they capitulate and accept their approach was doomed to failure.

The news reports do not tell us how the local authority came to its decision but they don't need to because the procedure it always the same. Dozens of meetings would have been convened at which the case was discussed among social workers, doctors and lawyers. Dozens of reports and memoranda would have been drafted and considered in which the substance of the decision about Hannah's heart transplant would have been secondary to the desire of the child care "professionals" to have their chosen course of action upheld. Legal advice would have been received from the Council's own in-house child care lawyers and from one or more external independent solicitors and barristers. The cost to the local authority in terms of fees paid to outside advisors and salaries to the staff involved would have been hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It is easy to scoff at this and consider it all to be a total waste of time and money, but that would be to overlook the need to do exactly what the old Wardship judges did - oversee the way the vulnerable are treated by those responsible for their care. All we have to do is change the facts a little and assume Hannah's parents are thick, pie-munching, welfare-sucking crack addicts and she herself had a "don't care" attitude to it all. The picture then is of a thirteen year old with no view of her own and a decision being taken on her behalf by people who would not appear capable of reaching a considered opinion. No rational person could criticise a local authority for using its supervisory powers to take the matter to court and seek a ruling which did take everything into account.

The problem, of course, is that the supervisory powers of local authorities seem to have become something else. Instead of stepping in only where parents cannot cope or cannot act responsibly, their presumption seems to be that their opinion is the default position and should be given preference to all other views. I know not whether there is any hope of this arrogant approach changing in the future, somehow I doubt it because every bureaucracy is self-perpetuating and breeds an inflated sense of its own importance and worthiness.

What should not result from this case is calls for local authorities powers in this field to be reduced or abolished. The problem is not in the existence of the powers but in the way they are used and that is always subject to the ultimate decision of a judge. The current system is not infallible. There should, in my view, be far greater review by the courts at an early stage so that a wrong-headed approach by local authority employees does as little damage as possible. Nine months is far too long to take to conclude that people like Hannah Jones' parents are perfectly capable of reaching a decision which, it must be stressed, is their responsibility. But one bad case does not justify dismantling a system of protection which has been in place for centuries.

Are we cleverer than we were?

Today I want to start by saying something with which, I think, everyone will agree. Some people are better at sports than others. We know this because we all witnessed it as children and have continued witnessing it ever since.

When a dozen boys gather at a park to play football the two captains make alternate picks until each side has six members and week after week the same boys are picked first and the same boys are picked last. There is nothing nasty about it. Everyone knows Jimmy is the best player so he is picked first, then Tom and so it goes on until only Ed and Charlie are left, and Charlie is almost always picked ahead of Ed. Occasional variants might arise by which Ed becomes first pick on his birthday or he is picked ahead of Charlie because one of the captains likes him more, but the overall pattern is always the same. And it is the same for the very obvious reason that the boys have different levels of skill.

Some would consider this exercise in team selection to be a divisive practice which humiliates Ed and Charlie week after week. It is nothing of the sort and we only need to ask Ed and Charlie to know this because, you see, Ed and Charlie know why they are picked last. They do not turn up at the park in order to be the best players, they turn up because they enjoy the game. They do not pass the ball to Jimmy or Tom because they do not want to dribble forward and score spectacular goals themselves, they do so because they know Jimmy and Tom can do it and they cannot. One of the great joys for Ed and Charlie comes when they have a particularly good game, when a tackle is executed perfectly or a long pass lands in the perfect spot, on those days they get more praise from their teammates than anyone else because all recognise a special achievement. They are not humiliated by being the two worst players, if they felt humiliated they would not turn up at all.

Sporting achievement is not all about basic physical coordination, that is obvious; technical skills are required as are physical fitness and concentration. However, no matter how fit you are, how much coaching you receive and how well you can concentrate, your level of physical coordination will determine how far you can go in your chosen sport.

Recognition that there are different levels of skill helps us to engage a lot of people in regular sporting activity. Take cricket clubs as an example. At the top level we have the England team, full of people with a standard of skill possessed by only one in tens of thousands. Then there are County Cricket Clubs comprising those who play for England and those who play extremely well but not well enough to play for their country. Next come the County Leagues from which some players will move up to play for a County but most will not. All these strata of the game involve players of very substantial skill. Within such a select group there are still discernible bands separating the very good from the exceptional from the brilliant. Not surprisingly, there are very few in the top band, more in the next and far more in the next again.

The level below County League standard is more difficult to define because the number of participants is much larger. There are many clubs like my own in which the best players in the First XI could hold their own in the County League but most could not. We run a number of teams on Saturdays and Sundays (as well as many junior teams). There are dedicated players of reasonable skill who only ever play in the Saturday Third XI or the Sunday Second XI because they would struggle at a higher level but, by playing against players at their own general level of skill, gain great enjoyment from the game.

What is probably not known very widely is that clubs at the lower levels of the game also make room for those who simply do not possess the level of basic physical skill to make a meaningful contribution in any match. They will not play often, perhaps just a couple of times each season, but if they are keen to play and are prepared to stand up and say they would like a game they will be accommodated. By organising cricket in a way that reflects different abilities we maximise the benefit for all those who want to play. Movement between the different levels is not only possible it is to the advantage of the higher ranking clubs, thereby allowing those who improve their game to achieve their potential. The same applies to football, rugby, hockey and the rest.

Exactly the same pattern arises when we look at academic ability rather than sporting skill. Some people are staggeringly clever, some are irredeemably thick and the vast majority are somewhere in between. We do not need any studies by governments or think tanks to establish this obvious fact because we have all witnessed it at every stage of our lives. We have also witnessed clever people who are lazy and average people who worked hard, each might gain the same grades at one level but at the next level the lazy clever person can cope and the hard working but not very clever person cannot. Everyone finds their level, but only if the standard of measurement recognises different abilities and says "you can go this far but no further".

The task of schools, so far as academic study is concerned, is to recognise the different abilities of the pupils and seek to get the best out of them. In the same way that physical coordination provides the absolute limit to what a sportsman can achieve, so what we usually refer to as intelligence sets a limit to academic achievement. Also, in the same way that good coaching, fitness training and enhanced concentration can improve sporting performance, so good teaching and motivation can enhance academic achievement. But to what extent, and how do we measure it?

There is a lot of rubbish spouted about exams. Formal written tests have their limitations but there has to be some measure of attainment, some way of letting others know what each pupil can do. Until a better method than exams is found, I will support them (yes, I know this is a self-fulfilling prophesy, but this is my blog so it is allowed.)

For generations we have had tests at age 16 ("O"-levels, now GCSEs) and tests at age 18 ("A"-levels). In recent years there has been a seemingly unstoppable upward movement in average grades awarded. More and more children at 16 are gaining passes at grades A-C in their GCSEs and more and more are gaining As at A-level. The government claims these figures show their education policies have increased standards in schools, their critics claim the exams have been made easier in order to manipulate the statistics so that the government can take credit.

It is obvious that easier exams will improve average grades but so will harder work and an improvement in teaching standards. The difference between making exams easier and improving teaching standards and greater industry is that the latter two factors can only do so much. The pupil of average intelligence who is taught badly might get a grade D whereas good teaching might result in a C and a combination of good teaching and very hard work might squeeze into the bottom of the B bracket, but that pupil should never be able to attain a grade A because his intellectual ability cannot cope with the more difficult aspects of the subject which must be understood in order to justify a top grade.

I find it difficult to accept that children work so much harder and are taught so much better than in times gone by that exam results should improve by several percentage points each year. To me it just does not make sense. Perhaps on average they do work a bit harder and they are taught a bit better, but my idea of common sense leads me to conclude that a modest increase in average grades would result from that and a plateau would be reached fairly quickly, not a year-on-year upward leap. I find myself forced to conclude that the standard of achievement required to secure each grade has been reduced.

This conclusion appears to be shared by some of the country's most distinguished Universities who feel unable to accept "A"-level grades at face value because they have experienced growing numbers of students with straight As who have been far below the standard of straight-A students a generation ago. Employers also complain that young people with high grades at GCSE are incapable of reading, writing and doing basic arithmetic.

The tragedy of grade-inflation is that it cheats everyone. It cheats the pupils because they are given a false impression of their ability when the truth would benefit them more in their future lives. It cheats employers who take on young people only to find they are not up to the job and have to let them go; thereby evidencing the need for young people to know the truth about their limitations. It cheats colleges who have to undertake remedial teaching to bring new charges up to the true entry-level for their course. It cheats true straight-A students who lose places at their university of choice because someone with pretend straight-As has been given a place (and so it goes down the scale with courses requiring AAB, ABB, BBB and so on). It cheats past generations who see their C grades now being awarded to the barely literate. Perhaps worst of all it cheats those at the bottom of the intellectual pile, those with no formal qualifications at all. They appear now to be deemed officially worthless.

Who is responsible for teaching children?

I start from what I believe is an indisputable principle, namely that parents are responsible (in the causative sense) for creating children and, therefore, they are responsible (in the legal and social sense) for bringing-up those children.

We all know that some parents are simply not up to the task of rearing children and that others encounter difficulties they do not have the capacity to overcome without help. Society must make a choice between upholding the sanctity of parental responsibility and intervening, by compulsion if necessary, to try to cure or alleviate problems. In past generations it was the grandparents, aunts and uncles, or village elders who would step in to fill the void and such interventions still happen very often. Where there is no other option the organs of the State have residual powers including, in extreme cases, forced removal of children and their placing for adoption. The role of the State should always, in my opinion, be one of last resort. That does not mean there is no place for experienced nurses or social workers to give advice to an expectant mother where the signs are that she might not be able to cope when the baby arrives, but it does mean that compulsory intervention should be limited to situations in which there is both a real problem and a real chance that the State can make things better.

It is noticeable, however, that the growth of State services over the last 50 years has led to many believing that the State is primarily responsible for certain aspects of rearing children. I believe this to be a fundamental misconception, a misconception seen most vividly in the field of education. If you were to ask 100 people in the street who is responsible for educating children I guess a majority would say the State. This is not so, parents are responsible for educating their children just as they are for housing, feeding and clothing them.

The State's proper involvement in education is two-fold. First, in its capacity as the mechanism through which we seek to maintain certain standards, the State has a role in laying-down a minimum standard for education. In this role its position is the same as in law enforcement, we have certain collective standards which the law upholds (not to kill, not to steal, not to assault and so on) and the State enforces these standards by prosecuting and punishing offenders. Giving children a basic education is another standard which we adopt collectively because accumulated wisdom tells us it is beneficial for all. The only collective mechanism through which we can enforce that standard is the State, so the State must have the power to step in where children are not being educated to a proper standard.

The second role of the State is to provide schooling but in this respect the proper role of the State is limited. Where parents can provide education at home (either themselves or by the use of tutors) there can be no objection to them doing so provided the standard of that education does not fall below the national minimum standard. Similarly, where parents pay for their children to attend privately run schools the State's only role is as enforcer of a national minimum standard. It must be accepted that the vast majority of parents cannot afford private education for their children and do not have the means or the time to educate their children at home, so we all pay taxes and we delegate to the State the role of providing formal education. It must always be borne in mind, however, that the State is simply acting as delegate, it does not provide schools because it has an innate duty to do so, it provides them because we pay an element of our taxes in order to pay for that service. The mere fact that the State provides the vast majority of school in the UK does not give it primary responsibility for education, that duty rests first last and always on parents.

To suggest, as is done regularly by dinosaurs of the political left, that parents should not be allowed to pay for their children's education or to teach their children at home it to say that the State bears primary responsibility for children. This relegates parents to the role of servants of the State. Government is always at its best when it is reminded constantly, and with penalties for recalcitrance, that it is the servant of the people.