ALISTAIR Gaw, president of Social Work Scotland, and Martin Crewe, director of Barbardo’s Scotland (“Fears over named person proposal”, The Herald, April 28), cannot hide from the fact that those implementing the Named Person scheme want GPs, housing officers, and even firefighters, to feed low-level information on families to the Named Person – information that comes nowhere near the threshold of a child protection or welfare concern.
The Government reaction to NO2NP’s claims was revealing: “We are clear that we want everyone to take responsibility for protecting and promoting children's well-being.” So it’s not just professionals they want to recruit for the Named Person project. It’s everyone.
Mr Crewe sat on the Getting it Right for Every Child (Girfec) Programme Board whose unguarded minutes led to last week’s headlines. He remained part of its implementation support group after the board was disbanded. The minutes of the programme board discuss how to implement the Named Person scheme. Hence, in plain English, it was a Named Person implementation board, whatever Mr Crewe may call it.
Mr Gaw claims the Named Person proposals have been “scrutinised at every turn”. The fact that the public is only now learning about the scheme, and reacting against it very, very strongly, suggests this scrutiny was seriously deficient. Politicians and “experts” don’t always get it right.
Mr Gaw’s claim that the Named Person is about “acting early to protect our most vulnerable children” fundamentally misunderstands the legislation. The word “vulnerable” does not appear. The key concept is “wellbeing” which Government-funded guidance defines as “another word for how happy you are”. So the Named Person is to monitor children’s happiness. This is an almost comically broad concept, wide open to subjective judgements about even the most trivial parenting decisions. Government training tools urge “intervention at even the lowest level of concern”. As the police have repeatedly identified, this risks taking the focus away from vulnerable children, rather than helping them.
Simon Calvert,
NO2NP,
29 Canal Street, Glasgow.
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