Light touch needed on Birmingham City Council's help for parents
Council officials in Birmingham are looking to turn parents into partners as they set about improving the fortunes and prospects of the city’s children.
A new support strategy for parents has been produced by the local authority following its own partnership with a range of local organisations including Primary Care Trusts, child mental health services, schools and the police.
The aim is to improve the training of staff who come into regular contact with families, ranging from children’s centres to youth groups.
At the same time, so the strategy report says, parents will be empowered with the confidence and knowledge they need to cope more effectively for their children and access the full range of services that are available.
The move comes in the wake of the Audit Commission’s recent Comprehensive Performance Assessment, which judged the city council’s safeguarding procedures for vulnerable children at risk of sexual and physical abuse as ‘inadequate’ and downgraded it from three stars to two.
Clearly, anything the local authority does to focus on this critical area has to be applauded, particularly if it is able to draw on the expertise of agencies in other parts of the world from America to Australia.
And there can certainly be no harm in focusing on the more vulnerable members of our society, such as parents newly arrived in the country and those couples having to cope with children with learning or physical difficulties.
But it remains to be seen how effective such an approach can be without the council being accused of interfering in the lives of families.
All the good intentions would almost certainly be undone if the local authority adopted a Big Brother style approach to the problem. The proof of the pudding will clearly be in the eating.
