Tag Archives: Children

UK must spend more on the vulnerable

March 16, 2015MusingsArticle, Benefits, Children, Disability, Editorials & reply, Health, Letters, Main section, NHS, Politics, Poverty, Social exclusion, Society, The Guardian, UK news, Welfarediana Stone

Again this is very important and worth a wider audience.

This article titled “UK must spend more on the vulnerable” was written by , for The Guardian on Monday 16th March 2015 19.53 UTC

Day in and day out, we work with hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children facing many difficulties like abuse and neglect at home or problems at school. While the state currently spends nearly £17bn per year on social problems affecting children and young people, the support they get is often too little, too late. ncreasing early help for families should be a top priority. It will save millions of children from suffering needless trauma and will save money in the long run.

We want all political candidates in the 2015 general election to commit to championing early support for children and families.

Our charities understand the pressures on vulnerable children and families. That is why we are committed to providing a range of services at an earlier stage that help children and families cope better with life’s challenges. But we can’t do this on our own.

By making a commitment to early intervention, politicians can help lead a real, lasting, cost-effective transformation to the lives of vulnerable children across the UK, now and in the future.
Sir Tony Hawkhead Chief executive, Action for Children
Javed Khan Chief executive, Barnardo’s
Matthew Reed Chief executive, The Children’s Society
Peter Wanless Chief executive, NSPCC

• We write as organisations working with children and pensioners, disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, in- and out-of-work families, and those experiencing or at risk of homelessness. We have sent a letter to the leaders of the three main parties calling on them to commit to restore the value of all benefits, and to maintain this in real terms in the next parliament and beyond.

The UK’s social security system provides essential support to many of the people with whom we work. It should guarantee their dignity, protect them against poverty, and enable them to have a basic standard of living.

Adequate social security provision benefits all of society, not just those who rely on it at any one time. If we do not protect the value of all benefits, significant numbers of people will be unable to participate fully in society, an outcome that surely none of us desire.
Alison Garnham Chief executive, Child Poverty Action Group
Caroline Abrahams Charity director, Age UK

Heléna Herklots Chief executive, Carers UK

Lesley-Anne Alexander CBE Chief executive, Royal National Institute of Blind People

Jon Sparkes Chief executive, Crisis

Matthew Reed Chief executive, The Children’s Society
Javed Khan Chief executive, Barnardos

Mark Lever Chief executive, National Autism Society
Disability Agenda Scotland (six member organisations)
Jolanta Lasota Chief executive, Ambitious About Autism
Fiona Weir Chief executive, Gingerbread
Geraldine Blake Chief executive, Community Links
Howard Sinclair Chief executive, St Mungos Broadway
Sir Stuart Etherington Chief executive, National Council for Voluntary Organisations
Liz Sayce OBE Chief executive, Disability Rights UK
Rick Henderson Chief executive, Homeless Link
Aaron Barbour Director, Katherine Low Settlement
Andy Kerr Chief executive, Sense Scotland
Anna Feuchtwang Chief executive, National Children’s Bureau
Marcus Roberts Chief executive, Drugscope

• On 19 March I will protest against benefit sanctions with Unite Community outside the DWP, whose ministers are in denial about the link between suicide and sanctions. Most people are in debt when the sanction stops all their income. Debt is unavoidable because housing and council tax benefits have been cut leaving the remaining benefit incomes in work and unemployment to pay the outstanding rent, created by the bedroom tax and £500 benefit cap, and the council tax, plus court costs and bailiffs fees. Otherwise the sanction forces them into debt because they have no money on which to survive. That is the trap set by parliament for honest citizens who feel obliged to pay their debts; some despair and many call on their GPs. The NHS is now to receive an extra £1.25bn for mental health services while the DWP is creating an ever greater demand for them.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty

In answer to a parliamentary question by Stephen Timms MP, to the DWP, answered by Esther McVey MP, on how many people have been refused hardship payments since 2012, she answered that the information is not available. It is time that it was.
Gary Martin
London

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Can you give a child too much praise?

February 27, 2015MusingsArticle, Children, Family, Family features, Features, Life and style, Parents and parenting, Society, The Guardian, Tim Lott, Tim Lott's Family columndiana Stone

Interesting. My father was fairly scathing of anything I attempted to do. Certainly at no point can I recall him ever giving me any encouragement in anything: I do wonder if thats the reason why I tend not to be ever satisfied with anything that I do. I tend to look for faults. A bit of a pat on the back occasionally might have helped.

This article titled “Can you give a child too much praise?” was written by Tim Lott, for The Guardian on Friday 27th February 2015 13.30 UTC

My children are perfect. All four of them. Perfect and beautiful and clever. I bet yours are, too. Except, of course, they are not. In reality, my children and yours are likely to be reasonably average in terms of looks, behaviour, intelligence and charm. That’s why it is called average. Your belief in your child being special is more probably a biological imperative than an empirical fact.

A loved one, particularly a loved child, is edited as we observe them. Other people’s children are bratty; ours are spirited. Theirs are precocious; ours confident and self-assertive.

This is all natural and even touching when not taken too far. However, it is one thing feeding this propaganda to ourselves but feeding it to our children may be a little less desirable. We have the idea that – unlike my parents’ generation – we should build our children’s self-esteem as high as we can. Therefore, their random scribble is up there with Picasso, their C-minus is an unfortunate oversight on the part of the teacher, the fact that no one wants to be friends with them is because they are particularly clever or sensitive, the wart on their nose is a beauty spot.

Children see through this kind of thing very quickly and discount their parents’ compliments as a matter of course. As they grow up, they sense that the wider world judges them differently. This leads to a – hopefully gentle – cynicism about anything their parents tell them about their achievements. Perhaps that is OK – but I’m not sure it is good for them to have the currency of parental praise so devalued.

If parents were a little harsher sometimes, this could have two positive effects – first, when a compliment came, it would be more likely to be believed and, second, it would fit in rather more accurately with the picture of reality that the child is forming in their heads.

A lot of pressure is put on children who are told they are beautiful, special and perfect. Because then, where is there to go? Only downwards. They become hyperaware of their status in your eyes, and a danger must be that they fear failing you. To be overpraised by your parents is the counter side of being criticised all the time. Both can have negative consequences.

It is important to give your children the liberty to be flawed – to know that it’s OK to be imperfect, and that, in fact, we often love people for their flaws – perfect people (whom we can only imagine, as they do not exist) are easy to respect, but hard to love.

Now I am nearly 60, my main insight is that I am much less special than I once believed. This knowledge has actually been helpful in leading a more well-balanced life. I’d call it humility, if it weren’t very un-humble to attribute myself with the quality.

I certainly wouldn’t like to go back to attitudes that my parents, particularly my father, held, that to praise the child was to “spoil them” or make them bigheaded. However, the history of families is like the history of everything else – the story of overreactions. We praise our children to the skies, partly because we think it makes them feel good, but also because it makes us feel good. And perhaps it is more the latter than the former.

Having said all this, I am a terrible overpraiser, because I adore my children. I’m sure they have learned to take everything with a pinch of salt, but excessive love can be as big a burden as a shortage of it. My advice, at least to myself, is to ration not splurge. Then every compliment will count, rather than amounting to little more than a vaguely pleasing – but finally inauthentic – background Muzak, so persistent it isn’t even noticed.

• @timlottwriter

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.