Journal Live - Blog Central

We're still failling children in social care

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:19:56 +0000

THE failings of Britain's care system have been many over the years. Meant as a safety net for children, social care has unarguably failed in its duty to look after children and in many cases put them in worse situations than those they were taken out of.

On Monday night these failings were illustrated excellently through the eyes of the actor Neil Morrissey who looked back at his time in a care home in the BBC documentary Neil Morrissey: Care Home Kid.

It was a compelling, human piece of television as Neil uncovered not just his own life but the lives of other children at care homes in the 70s and 80s.

Classless society? I don't think so...

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 08:45:30 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

DOES it matter what class our children are? With new statistics showing 71% of the country regard themselves as middle class it would appear a classless society is moving closer.

The study, conducted by the think tank Britain Thinks, shows a steep rise in the country's aspirations, with almost three quarters of those surveyed considering themselves as middle- class compared with 27% in the 1980s.

The research shows only 24% of people describe themselves as working class.

I'm surprised so many people consider themselves middle class because I know many middle class people who still like to think of themselves as "working class heroes".

We trust our children to teachers - so why are we cutting their numbers?

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:15:43 +0000

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SCHOOL is an incredibly important time in anybody's life. Education gives a person the ability to succeed. To be equipped with the skills for everyday life.

Qualifications are the bits of paper which equip you with the proof you have a level of learning and the playground is the place in which children learn about society. Forming relationships, dealing with authority, developing emotional intelligence.

Being an overprotective mother can be bad

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:49:22 +0000

Image by Graham and Sheila via Flickr

HOW much stress should you expose your children to? Taking my son away on yet another outing, this time to relatives in Sweden, my mother-in-law made comments to the effect of "children like routine".
She's far too polite to say it to me directly, but I know she thinks I do too much with Otis.

How do you control internet access for your kids?

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:06:07 +0000

IT CAME to me when the Joker, as played by Jack Nicholson, was making Kim Basinger cry on TV.

My husband was watching Batman when Otis looked up and said: "nasty, turn it off".

He wasn't joking either, and my husband and I had to acknowledge that the time has come when we can only watch age-appropriate TV in front of our son.

How do you control internet access for your kids?

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:06:07 +0000

IT CAME to me when the Joker, as played by Jack Nicholson, was making Kim Basinger cry on TV.

My husband was watching Batman when Otis looked up and said: "nasty, turn it off".

He wasn't joking either, and my husband and I had to acknowledge that the time has come when we can only watch age-appropriate TV in front of our son.

Caring for the elderly isn't an "option"

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:45:27 +0000

GOOD, basic care is a human right which should begin with a child's first cry and end with a person's last breath.

Which is why a report by the Health Service Ombudsman this week, showing some horrific neglect of elderly patients in the NHS, is so shocking

How do you stop toddlers eating rubbish?

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:29:40 +0000

I FEEL like a bad mum. I went away this weekend and Otis ate a significant amount of rubbish including pizza, sausages, crisps, a cookie, breakfast cereal and two fudges.

As much as I intended to lovingly feed Otis home-cooked meals, two things have stood in my way. One, time to cook from scratch and, two, Otis' reluctance to eat healthy food.

Otis loves potato waffles and cried out last night at my parents' house for "pizza and potato waffles" much to my shame.

Other foods Otis loves are fish fingers, biscuits, chocolate and more breakfast cereal, which sometimes sends me to despair.

Tiger Mother?

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:26:52 +0000

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I'VE been following with fascination the furore going on around a new book claiming Chinese mothers are better than their Western counterparts .

Amy Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother extols the virtues of strict parenting with an emphasis on academic achievement.

Her argument is strict discipline and heavy parental involvement make Chinese children higher achievers than their Western counterparts.

It's an alien concept to those of us brought up in a more "hands-off" manner

And how was Christmas? Well, we're not getting divorced...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 08:20:33 +0000

HAPPY New Year and how about a New Year divorce? Maybe not. After our Christmas experience which, we decided, was "pockets of niceness in a cloud of stress", my husband and I are celebrating getting through the past two months and managing to hold on to our marriage.

After two months of building work, which was meant to take two weeks (and is still unfinished), a massive leak through the kitchen ceiling over Christmas, three weeks of living with in-laws and all the pressures of festive merry-making we're frankly glad we're both still talking to each other.

Divorces always increase after Christmas, and for the first year I can see why.

Family chaos is what makes Christmas....

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 08:58:10 +0000

HAPPY Christmas everyone! I mean that, I really do. Despite being an atheist who moans on about how consumerist our society is (while simultaneously being incapable of not buying into it) I really do love Christmas.

My Christmases are traditional and will always be that way. No matter what disasters/fallouts have occurred in the preceding weeks there will still be the family stuck in a room together opening presents and doing festive activities (such as crying, being sick, hungover or sulking).

I don't hold much truck with the idea of spending Christmas apart because, especially since having children, I've realised how important families are, no matter how awful they are at times (and I definitely include myself in that awfulness).

Let sleeping babies lie

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:10:28 +0000

CAN I share a secret? I'll whisper it: I did sleep training with my son. There you go. It's a guilty secret women throughout the world share and it's one which keeps their families together and allows them to continue with their busy lives.

Among the women I know it's about the six to nine-month mark they finally stop attending to their little one's every single cry and teach them to settle themselves.

It's a difficult thing to do, but goodness does it make everyone feel better.

Festive family fireworks

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:23:47 +0000

CHRISTMAS time with the family ... driving hundreds of miles to spend a joyous week in each other's company?
I wish it were so, but let's face it, that's not the case really, is it? Most people's family Christmas contains at least one or two periods of shouting or crying.

I can see why families used to live on the same street as each other. It is great to be around your loved ones, but to do it successfully, spending short periods together frequently seems to me to be the best way to go.

This alien situation many of us find ourselves in, where we live hundreds of miles from each other and find ourselves spending a week in each other's company 24/7, once a year, really isn't the most desirable of situations.

Frayed tempers, high stress levels ... we're just not designed to live in each other's pockets. Take any relationship. It takes years of living with a partner to iron out differences in upbringing.

For goodness sake stub it out...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:27:28 +0000

OUR children are being killed by smoke. Parents need to take responsibility for their habit and protect their youngsters.

Since the smoking ban came into force it seems ludicrous that people were ever allowed to smoke in pubs and restaurants.

Thankfully, the days of emerging from the local reeking of cigarette smoke and with smarting eyes are long gone.

But clean-smelling clothes are one thing, safeguarding children's health is another and last week a comprehensive study by the World Health Organisation found passive smoking still causes almost 600,000 deaths every year.

One-third of those killed are children, often exposed to smoke at home.

Well done the Pope, more please.

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 07:57:25 +0000

THANKFULLY the Pope has taken a step towards the 21st Century in saying condoms can by used by male prostitutes as "a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality"*.

[*I came into work this morning to news the Pope has clarified his comments to include "hetrosexual men, women and transsexuals", which needless to say I think is absolutely brilliant.]

These comments are long overdue but some would say they don't go far enough.

In my opinion, effective contraception is one of the great inventions of our times. It means people can choose to have babies when they are able to cope with them psychologically, physically and monetarily.

It results in fewer unwanted children in the world. And far fewer cases of Aids.

Contraception is an empowering tool for women and society as a whole and one of the great discoveries of the 20th Century.