The Scottish Parliament has passed a bill that assigns one social worker to every child in Scotland.
The controversial measure, Known as ‘Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill’, was passed in Edinburgh last week with a vote of 103-0 with 15 abstentions. It allocates a ‘named person’ with unspecified powers to each child.
Christian groups in Scotland have spoken out against the controversial proposal.
A Free Church of Scotland spokesman said there has not been “sufficient evidence” to apply the plans universally or to ensure “parents are protected from undue interference by the state”.
Among the other organisations that have spoken out against the move are the the Law Society of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates, the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said, ‘This is a massive and expensive intrusion into family life. It comes from the totalitarian philosophy that the State owns the nation’s children.’
Christipher Booker, writing in the Telegraph, said: ‘In fact, the Bill is remarkably vague about the powers to be given to these “named persons”. Will they be free to arrive unannounced at the family home to check on how a child is being treated by its parents, when it goes to bed, what food it is given, what political or religious opinions it is being brought up with? In other words, the Bill gives no idea of how this hugely ambitious scheme, estimated to cost Scotland’s local authorities up to £138 million a year, will work in practice. And most worrying of all, to anyone familiar with the failings of our existing “child protection” system, is how often the most damaging errors can arise when professionals are charged with reporting to social workers their suspicion that something in a child’s life might be amiss.’
The bill was framed in an attempt to bring under Scotland under obligations stipulated in the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The UN Convention includes a provision to assign a specific government worker to every child at birth.
Normally a social worker is only assigned to a child in cases of child abuse or neglect. Once this bill is implemented, there will be a named guardian for every child in Scotland from when the child is born to when they reach eighteen.
Tories have warned that the bill will almost certainly be challenged. Liz Smith, the Tory spokeswoman for young people, said “If this goes through, it will almost certainly be subject to legal challenge.
“That is because it is a measure that will intrude on family life, and divert resources away from those who really need help.”
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This bill for Scotland is totally outrageous: Wholly meddlesome in family life and will achieve virtually nothing apart from an enormous cost to the taxpayer.
It negates the full and proper responsibility of every parent and where there may be poor parenting allows those to sit back and think ‘the state’ will do everything for me!
Further it assumes that Social services can never make mistakes where children are concerned. This is palpably not the case given some recent appalling cases in the UK where children have died due to the failure of Social services and other related bodies. These cases have been severely criticized in the courts.
Alison Ruoff
This Bill does give us grave concern as to the interference by the State that it could make possible.
The Bill has been passed but we are thankful the Christian Institute has lodged a legal challenge.
So please pray for a very good outcome from this Court case.
Please also pray with us regarding independence ‘Your Kingdom Come, Lord and your will be
done’.
The Marietta Higgs Cleveland child abuse scandal has already been forgotten.
If our rulers were really concerned about child abuse they would support the married family because most abuse is perpetrated by ‘ Mum’s latest boyfriend’. Every study confirms that children with absent fathers do less well on every measure-education, employment, mental health, crime, drugs etc.
The epidemic of fatherlessness would not be possible if successive governments had not enabled and funded it. That is where our leaders could at least try to do some good, but with all main political parties committed to the sexual revolutionary agenda, what hope of their recognising its harmful effects?