Abused and exploited children: who is to blame?

http://www.itn.co.uk/home/44971/Asian+sex+gang+jailed+for+over+70+years

A gang of Asian men have been charged with grooming young white girls for sexual abuse in Rochdale.

Some time ago a group was jailed for something similar more locally in Oxford, though in the Oxford case the girls may have been trafficked.

Last night on Newsnight a poet, Lemn Sissay, and a children's Commissioner discussed the situation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01hhd8s/Newsnight_11_05_2012/

The poet said we were all, as a society, as a collective parent, responsible for failing to safeguard our children.

I think he was right.

But we have very little say in the matter as ordinary members of the public.

It isn't as if we could throw out the local government officials in charge of child care.

It isn't as if there was a political party offering to change the spending priorities of local or National Governments.

We have very few journalists willing to tell us the truth about these things.

In Denmark children in care are offered care homes with something akin to alternative parenting. It works. Children there grow up safely.

In this country we do not invest in that kind of care.

We ask that teachers get better pay. No one thinks we should pay care staff  a good wage.

What you end up with is young inexperienced adults being asked to be the main carers of vulnerable teenagers only a few years younger than themselves.

You have managers who build their careers out of keeping their budgets down.

The children want to be loved and cared for.

Maybe we should not be too surprised they turn to these Asian predators, in the absence of quality care in children's homes.

Care is low status and low waged in this country.

The higher you go in social work the less contact with children you have. You fill in the forms that are a substitute for real safeguarding. You tick the boxes.

The whole approach to managing abandoned vulnerable children is flawed.

How do I know this. I worked for many years in social work as a consultant and trainer.

I have been a consultant and training officer to  a large group of children's homes.

More recently, I have witnessed the privatization of child care, hiving off children to PLC's for shareholder profit.

We see a town like Margate over run with farmed out children from London boroughs.

The management cultures are a bit like Macdonalds.

It might work if children were hamburgers.