Children from middle-class families are not learning to talk properly because they no longer interact with their working parents, according to the Government’s new ‘communication champion’.

Telegraph | Jan 1, 2010

By Chris Irvine

Jean Gross, a former education psychologist set to take up the position next month, claims that because of working parents, children are subjected to second rate childcare, as well as lose out on traditional social interaction of family mealtimes and bedtime stories.

Mrs Gross, who is set to publish research showing how difficulties in learning to talk are an issue with all social classes, said half of children in some areas were starting school unable to form sentences together. In some cases, she says, she has seen native English speakers struggle as much as “a child who has Bengali as their first language”.

“All of us are so busy. Some middle-class families don’t sit down and eat with their children”, she said.

“Adults lead increasingly busy lives and many are not able to spend as much time talking to their children as generations before.

“Our brains have not evolved to learn from machines. Babies are primed to respond to a face, and to recognise their parents’ faces.”

Although Mrs Gross said she understood the “realities” of modern parenting, she said: “I still think parents staying home and looking after their own children is ideal, or making sure a grandparent or trusted person will give a child that one-to-one intense development of language.

“But it’s more to do with the quality of the setting than the structure.”

Daily Mail | Jan 1, 2010

By Laura Clark

Middle-class children are struggling to learn how to talk because working parents are unable to offer them the quality time which is crucial to their speech development, a key government adviser has warned.

They are often left in second rate childcare and no longer benefit from the social interaction of family mealtimes and bedtime stories, according to Jean Gross, the first ‘communication champion’.

Parents should avoid daycare for under-twos unless it has well-trained staff who offer plenty of one-to-one attention, she said.

Children tend to do best when looked after by their mothers or another trusted adult, she added, and those placed in centres which neglect early education may suffer delayed speech development.

A further impediment was the trend for youngsters to spend time in front of ‘machines’ such as TVs and computers instead of interacting with adults.

Mrs Gross, a former educational psychologist who will take up her new position next month, spoke as assessments of five-year-olds revealed 18 per cent – more than 100,000 – have fallen behind the expected level of speech development for their age.

She said 50 per cent of youngsters in some areas are starting formal schooling unable to link words together or even understand simple instructions.

In many middle-class homes, busy parents often struggled to find time to read bedtime stories or eat with their children, she warned.

Mrs Gross, who is preparing to publish research showing how difficulties in learning to talk span all social classes, said: ‘All of us are so busy. Some middle-class families don’t sit down and eat with their children.

‘Adults lead increasingly busy lives and many are not able to spend as much time talking to their children as generations before.

‘Our brains have not evolved to learn from machines. Babies are primed to respond to a face, and to recognise their parents’ faces.’

In other cases, families were reliant on childcare that appeared to be good quality but in fact concentrated on ensuring nappies were changed regularly and children were feeding, while failing to promote language development.

‘I still think parents staying home and looking after their own children is ideal, or making sure a grandparent or trusted person will give a child that one-to-one intense development of language,’ she said.

‘But it’s more to do with the quality of the setting than the structure.’

She said she understood the ‘realities’ of modern parenting meant many mothers could not afford to stay at home because of hefty mortgages and the cost of raising a family.

But parents should instead seek childcare with as much one-to-one interaction as possible.

Mrs Gross also emphasised some children had speech difficulties despite growing up in supportive homes with high levels of exposure to language.

These children needed more support from local authorities to overcome their special needs.

Mrs Gross said many white British pupils are like foreigners in the classroom.

‘I see children who are just as adrift as a child who has Bengali as their first language,’ she said.

‘There are children who are said to be native English speakers but they are not, their language is so restricted.’

Daily Mail | Dec 3, 2009

By Chris Brooke

Heartbroken: Lisa Hessey was told she would have her parental rights taken away in court if she opposed a decision to place Zak in care

Like many toddlers, Zak Hessey was a fussy eater who refused his mother’s healthy home cooking.

Concerned about his falling weight, his parents sought the advice of doctors. That simple act triggered a shocking chain of events that led to the youngster being put into foster care for four months.

Paul and Lisa Hessey believe in the long-term benefits of healthy eating and rejected advice to feed their two-year-old son high-calorie snack food such as chocolate, crisps and cakes.

To their horror, social workers put Zak into foster care ‘to assess his needs’ and allegedly threatened the couple with the loss of their parental rights if they fought the decision in court.

‘I was absolutely devastated, I broke down in tears,’ recalled Mrs Hessey, 48. ‘I was scared out of my wits. I phoned Paul to tell him and he just broke down on the phone.’

But they went to court and, after four months, Zak returned home with the blessing of social services, who accepted he had good and caring parents.

Zak is now putting on some weight, but his eating problems were not cured by his time in the care of ‘experts’ and, much to the annoyance of his parents, he has acquired a taste for junk food.

Mrs Hessey, of Bolsover, near Chesterfield, said: ‘I thought I was doing the right thing going to the best people for advice when Zak began to lose weight.

‘Instead they basically accused me of neglecting him and implied it was all my fault. I have four other children and they are perfectly healthy, it was just that Zak was refusing food for some reason. They said I should just feed Zak chocolate, cakes and junk food just to get calories into him. But I objected, saying that was only a short-term answer and not a proper solution.

‘The Government and doctors are always drumming into parents the importance of healthy eating – yet they were telling us to feed Zak all the wrong things.

‘That is obviously what they were doing when he was in foster care so now it is hard to get him to eat anything else.’

Mrs Hessey and her 48-year-old husband, a lorry driver, took Zak to see a paediatrician at Chesterfield Royal Hospital in July. He was 20 months old and weighed 1st 3lb.

Mrs Hessey, whose four other children are under ten, said she was happy for Zak to be admitted for a two-week hospital assessment and was hit by a thunderbolt when she went to collect him on July 24.

She was taken into a room with a nurse and social worker who apparently told her: ‘We would like Zak to go into foster care to assess how he feeds. You have legal rights but be warned if you oppose this we will go straight to court and have all your parental rights taken away.’

Mrs Hessey said: ‘They kept saying, “If you love Zak and you want the best for him then you’ll agree to this”. They said we had been negative about eating. That was because they had been telling us we should feed Zak crisps, chocolate and cakes to get calories into him.

‘I was questioning that approach. We eat proper home-made food at our house and just have chocolate and cakes as a treat.’

She agreed to Zak going into care after hearing to the possible repercussions if she objected. Initially she and her husband couldn’t see Zak for six days.

After hiring a solicitor, they were allowed three hours a day with him during the week in the company of a social worker.

The first hearing before the family court in Derby was on September 2 and the case was adjourned for two weeks. Interim care orders were imposed and Zak returned home following a third court hearing on November 18. By this stage social workers had lifted their objections – and he had put on only 1lb.

Mrs Hessey said: ‘Social services did a complete about turn. They admitted that in foster care Zak was exactly the same with his food as he was at home.

‘They said we were very good parents. I still find it hard to come to terms with how we have been treated.’ Derbyshire County Council said: ‘We only take a child into our care either with the consent of the parents or following very careful consideration by a court.’

A spokesman for Chesterfield Royal Hospital said: ‘While we understand Mr and Mrs Hessey’s distress, Zak’s welfare was paramount and we believe we acted in his best interest.’

Men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies.

Daily Mail | Oct 28, 2009

By Fiona Macrae

Human eggs and sperm have been grown in the laboratory in research which could change the face of parenthood.

It paves the way for a cure for infertility and could help those left sterile by cancer treatment to have children who are biologically their own.

But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of children being born through entirely artificial means, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies.

Opponents argue that it is wrong to meddle with the building blocks of life and warn that the advances taking place to tackle infertility risk distorting and damaging relations between family members.

The U.S. government-funded research also offers the prospect of a ‘miracle pill’ which staves off the menopause, allowing women to wait longer to have a child.

It centres on stem cells, widely seen as a repair kit for the body.

Scientists at Stanford University in California found the right cocktail of chemicals and vitamins to coax the cells into becoming eggs and sperm.

The sperm had heads and short tails and are thought to have been mature enough to fertilise an egg.

The eggs were at a much earlier stage but were still much more developed than any created so far by other scientists.

The double success, published in the journal Nature, raises the prospect of men and women one day ‘growing’ their own sperm and eggs for use in IVF treatments.

The American team used stem cells taken from embryos in the first days of life but
hope to repeat the process with slivers of skin.

The skin cells would first be exposed to a mixture which wound back their biological clocks to embryonic stem cell state, before being transformed into sperm or eggs.

Starting with a person’s own skin would also mean the lab-grown sperm or eggs would not be rejected by the body.

The science also raises the possibility of ‘male eggs’ made from men’s skin and ‘female sperm’ from women’s skin.

This would allow gay couples to have children genetically their own, although many scientists are sceptical about whether it is possible to create sperm from female cells, which lack the male Y chromosome.

The U.S. breakthrough could unlock many of the secrets of egg and sperm production, leading to new drug treatments for infertility.

Defects in sperm and egg development are the biggest cause of infertility but, because many of the key stages occur in the womb, scientists have struggled to study the process in detail.

Researcher Rita Reijo Pera, of Stanford’s Centre for Human Embryonic Stem Cell
Research, believes new fertility drugs are just five years away.

However, safety and ethical concerns mean that artificial sperm and eggs are much further away from use.

Dr Reijo Pera said any future use of artificial eggs and sperm would have to be subject to guidelines.

‘Whether one builds the boundaries on religion or just on an internal sense or of right and wrong, these are important. In this field, it is not “anything goes”.’

Scientists at Newcastle University claimed to have made sperm from embryonic stem cells earlier this year but the research paper has been retracted.

Dr Allan Pacey, a Sheffield University expert in male fertility said: ‘Ultimately this may help us find a cure for male infertility. Not necessarily by making sperm in the laboratory, I personally think that is unlikely, but by identifying new targets for drugs or genes that may stimulate sperm production to occur naturally.

‘This is a long way off, but it is a laudable dream.’

Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said that IVF should be the preserve of married couples.

‘The question is, why are we creating artificial gametes (eggs and sperm) and aborting 200,000 babies a year when there are many, many couples willing to adopt?’

Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, warned that any flaws in the artificial sperm or eggs could be passed on to future generations.

Anthony Ozimic, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: ‘The use of artificial gametes in reproduction would distort and damage relations between family members.

‘There are no instances of any major medical advance achieved by abandoning basic ethical principles such as safeguarding the right to life.’

• Families made to pay to access own bank account
• Homes of elderly raided in search for documents
• 3,000 complaints in first 18 months of new system

Secret court seizes £3.2bn from elderly… and even forces furious families to pay to access own bank account

Daily Mail | Oct 25, 2009

By Jason Lewis

Threatening: The Court of Protection's anonymous London tower block

A secret court is seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State – against the wishes of their relatives.

The draconian measures are being imposed by the little-known Court of Protection, set up two years ago to act in the interests of people suffering from Alzheimer’s or other mental incapacity.

The court hears about 23,000 cases a year – always in private – involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets.

The cases involve civil servants from the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), which last year took £23million in fees directly from the bank accounts of those struck down by mental illness, involved in accidents or suffering from dementia.

The officials are legally required to act in cases where people do not have a ‘living will’, or lasting power of attorney, which hands control of their assets over to family or friends.

But the system elicited an extraordinary 3,000 complaints in its first 18 months of operation. Among them were allegations that officials failed to consult relatives, imposed huge fees and even ‘raided’ elderly people’s homes searching for documents.

Carers trying to cope with a mentally impaired loved one, forced to apply for a court order to access money, said they felt the system put them under suspicion as it assumed at the outset that they were out to defraud their relatives.

Opposition politicians said the system, set up by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, needed to be overhauled to take account of the fact that most people were ‘honourable and decent’ and had their loved ones’ best interests at heart.

The Government now says everyone should establish a lasting power of attorney to state who should look after their affairs should they become incapacitated – although most people will be utterly unaware of this advice.

Only 60,000 people in Britain have registered these ‘living wills’ with the authorities, and the problems begin when someone is suddenly, unexpectedly mentally impaired.

Without this document, relatives must apply to the courts and the anonymous OPG, part of the Ministry of Justice based in an office block in Birmingham, is required to look into the background of carers to decide if they are fit to run the ill or elderly person’s affairs.

The organisation has 300 staff, costs £26.5million a year to run and is headed by £80,000-a-year career civil servant Martin John, a former head of asylum and immigration policy in Whitehall. It prepares reports for the Court of Protection, based in a tower block in Archway, North London.

In many cases relatives have to complete a 50-page form giving huge amounts of personal information about themselves, their family, their own finances and their relationship with the person they wish to help care for.

The majority of applications are decided on the basis of paper evidence without holding a hearing. But applications relating to personal welfare, or large gifts or settlements, may be contentious and require the court to hold a hearing to decide the case.

These hearings, before a senior judge, examine evidence and witnesses, who can be compelled to appear. The court has the same powers as the High Court, but is closed to all but the parties involved in the case and their lawyers. The Press and public are banned.

The presiding judge then decides whether a family member can become a ‘deputy’ acting for their mentally impaired loved one. If no one is available, or if the judge decides a family member is not suitable, the court can appoint a local authority or in some cases a solicitor to carry out the task.

The OPG then charges an annual fee of up to £800 to supervise the activities of the deputy, whether they are a family member or a professional appointee.

The court takes over control of people’s finances, which means deputies – whether a relative or not – must get authorisation to pay expenses such as rent and household bills on their behalf.

Only if a relative is given power of attorney before a person is mentally incapacitated will they be able to avoid applying to the court and the OPG for the right to control their assets later.

Any cash controlled by the court is held in the name of the Accountant General of the Supreme Court and administered by the Court Funds Office. In some cases money is voluntarily lodged with the court.

The current Court of Protection replaced a previous body with the same name which had more restricted powers and was overseen by the High Court. The new body can rule on property and financial affairs and decisions relating to health and personal welfare, without referring it to a higher court.

But relatives caught up in the system say they are suddenly confronted by a legal and bureaucratic minefield.

Children’s author Heather Bateman was forced to get permission from the court to use family funds after an accident left her journalist husband Michael in a coma.

In a moving account of her family’s ordeal in Saga magazine, she wrote: ‘Michael and I were two independent working people. We had been married for 28 years. We had written our wills, both our names were on the deeds of the house we shared in London and the Norfolk cottage we had renovated over the years.

‘We had separate bank accounts and most of the bills were paid from Michael’s account. Now, to continue living in the way we always had done, I needed to access the money in his account.

‘The Court of Protection brought me almost as much anger, grief and frustration into my life as the accident itself. [It is] an alien, intrusive, time-consuming and costly institution, which was completely out of tune with what we were going through. It ruled my waking moments and my many sleepless nights.’

Mrs Bateman even had to apply to the court for permission to pay the couple’s daughter’s university fees.

She added: ‘I could write as many cheques as necessary up to £500. But if I needed to access more I had to get permission from the court.’

Sunita Obhrai’s mother Pushpa has lived in council-run sheltered housing for 15 years. About two years ago, the 76-year-old widow started to become forgetful and once left the oven on, and the fire brigade had to be called.

Miss Obhrai claims that without her knowledge the local authority, Buckinghamshire County Council, were appointed to run her mother’s affairs.

Full Story

The analysis showed that mothers who worked full-time had the unhealthiest children, followed by those who worked part-time.

London Times | Sep 29, 2009

by Sam Lister

Children brought up by mothers who work are less healthy and more likely to have poor dietary habits and a more sedentary lifestyle, research suggests.

Mothers in full-time work, including those who work flexible hours, were found to have children who eat too few portions of fruit and vegetables, watch more television and consume more fizzy drinks than the children of mothers who stay at home.

The research, published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, involved more than 12,000 British schoolchildren born between 2000 and 2002 who are part of the Millennium Cohort Study. Trends being explored include the rise in childhood obesity and policies that have encouraged women to return to work.

Researchers questioned mothers about the hours they worked and their children’s diet, exercise and activity levels when the youngsters were aged 5. They also asked how long their childdren spent in front of a TV or computer. About 30 per cent (4,030) of the mothers had not worked since giving birth but the rest (8,546) were employed. On average they worked 21 hours per week and for 45 months.

Catherine Law, of the Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Institute of Child Health, University College London, told The Times the analysis showed that mothers who worked full-time had the unhealthiest children, followed by those who worked part-time.

Making use of flexible working arrangements while in full-time employment did not appear to improve a child’s habits, she added. “We have seen the rising rates of childhood obesity and the rise in initiatives to get women back to work, and that is what this research explores,” Professor Law said.

The latest research backs findings from 2007 in the Millennium Cohort Study suggesting a possible link between parental working habits and child health — suggesting that children at the age of 3 were more likely to be overweight if their mothers worked. Both studies took into account factors that might influence the results, such as socioeconomic background, single-parent families and household income.

Researchers on the latest paper concluded that with approximately 60 per cent of British women with a child aged 5 or younger in employment, more support was needed. “For many families the only parent or both parents are working. This may limit parents’ capacity to provide their children with healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity,” they said. “Policies and programmes are needed to help support parents.” and create a health-promoting environment.”

Professor Law said that while the work did not prove a causative link between maternal work and child health, it showed a definitive association which needed to be considered by policymakers.

She said that factors requiring further investigation included the quality of childcare, such as agency standards and care provided by grandparents or other relatives.

Other areas for investigation included whether the link was associated with children’s habits while the mother was at work, or whether it might be a consequence of the time pressures on parents’ when back in the home, she added.

She said: “Many working mums will recognise the challenges [identified in the study]. Every mother wants to ensure the best for their children and going to work may help that.

“This is not a single factor, but it does appear to contribute. What policymakers need to understand is that what might be a solution to some issues may create others. There are upsides and downsides.”

Lucy Lloyd, of the Family and Parenting Institute, said the findings should not be used to undermine working mothers, but as a basis for more work on helping them. She said that a better system of health visitors, who could set advice on dietary and lifestyle habits, was in need of funding: “What they [children] are given outside the home will set the standard for what they will expect at other times.”

Ministers are under intense pressure to scale back plans for a “big brother” child protection database which will force millions of parents to undergo paedophile and criminal checks.

Telegraph | Sep 12, 2009

By Laura Donnelly and Patrick Sawer

In a major blow for the Government, Britain’s largest children’s charity, the NSPCC, criticised the regulations for parent helpers which it said threatened “perfectly safe and normal activities” and risked alienating the public.

Esther Rantzen, the founder of the Childline charity; paediatricians; teachers; children’s authors; politicians and members of the public also joined the growing coalition opposing the Vetting and Barring Scheme, which could lead to one in four adults being screened.

Ministers even came under attack from one of Labour’s most powerful voices on child welfare.

Barry Sheerman, Labour chairman of the Commons’ children and families select committee condemned the way the policy was being implemented and demanded that Children’s Secretary Ed Balls “get a grip on this”.

Next month parents in England and Wales who take part in any formal agreement to look after children – even if it is as little as once a month – will be told they have to register with the new Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) – at a cost of £64. From next summer, parents who have failed to register with the ISA could face prosecution.

Critics claim parents will be wrongly labelled as criminals. Others fear that those who currently give up their time to help out in schools and clubs could give up rather than go through the hassle of registering.

Wes Cuell, director of services for children and young people for the NSPCC, said: “The warning signs are now out there that this scheme will stop people doing things that are perfectly safe and normal, things that they shouldn’t be prevented from doing.

“When you get this degree of public outcry there is generally a good reason for it. I think we are getting a bit too close to crossing the line about what is acceptable in the court of public opinion. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Mr Cuell said that while it was important to strengthen rules to protect children from potential sex offenders, over zealous interpretation of such rules could threaten the civil liberties of thousands.

The NSPCC’s concerns were echoed by Esther Rantzen, the founder of ChildLine.

“This is less about protecting children than about organisations protecting themselves. Of course we need to be alert to the safety of our children. We don’t want a convicted child abuser taking a job as a tennis coach, a youth worker or a police officer. But we have to be sensible about this and I don’t think we are.”

Prof. Alan Craft, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the state had already gone too far in creating a culture which restricted freedom for young families. He said: “We have created a climate where adults feel they can’t put an arm around a child who is upset, and there is a real danger that this move takes us yet further down that road.”

The new rules lead on from increased child protection procedures which followed the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002. Last week, Sir Michael Bichard, the scheme’s architect, suggested that ministers should revise the guidelines.

Mr Sheerman yesterday joined the pressure on the Government: “Ministers have got to get a grip on this.

“The policy, as I understand it, is not as draconian as it has been made out to be by the civil servants. My understanding is that it would be vetting at a pretty formal level. This is a cock-up and they have given a false impression and the sooner the minister gets a hold of this the better.”

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “This scheme is wildly over the top. How are we supposed to create a country fit for our children if we regard every adult looking after children as a potential threat?”

The Conservatives have already pledged they will curb the ISA’s powers if they win the next election.

Teaching professionals expressed their dismay yesterday at the new regulations.

David Lyscom, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said: “It is a knee-jerk reaction to the issue of child protection which will be full of unintended consequences. This is another example of the Government using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, in Berkshire, said: “The scheme is as crazy a Government response as I have ever come across. It will not catch evil people who do these unspeakable things and it will divert resources away from other areas of child protection.”

Parents’ groups and children’s authors also joined in.

Margaret Morrissey, the founder of family lobby group Parents Outloud, said: “The issue is the need to protect children from people who work in schools who have constant access to them. What we have now is so far removed from the issue it is ridiculous. “

Philip Pullman, author of the best-selling Dark Materials trilogy of children’s novels, said: “It’s dispiriting and sinister. Why should I pay £64 to a government agency to give me a little certificate to say I’m not a paedophile.”

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said schools might be “quite suspicious” if volunteers dropped out because of the new vetting procedures.

“I just think people would express suspicion if parents had been working with children for quite a while, then said ‘well I’m not going to do it because I’m going to be checked’ because people who do volunteer understand the need for safeguarding.”

Additional reporting David Harrison, Melissa Kite and Julie Henry

Now Big Brother targets helpful parents as one in four Britons are to be vetted for giant child protection database

Daily Mail | Sep 11, 2009

By James Slack

Parents could face a £5,000 fine for driving their children’s friends to a sports event or Cub Scout meeting.

They face punishment and a criminal record if they have not been vetted first by a massive new government agency.

An astonishing 11.3million people  -  one adult in four  -  are likely to come under the watchful eye of the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

Target: Parents will face a £5,000 fine for driving their children’s friends to sports events or Cub Scout meetings when the new Independent Safeguarding Authority is launched next month.

Launched next month, it will be the biggest vetting and clearing system in the world.

Every person who comes into regular contact with children or the elderly, through work or volunteering, must be approved by ISA officials checking for criminal convictions, disciplinary action and even unproven allegations.

It goes way beyond the current Criminal Records Bureau system, which covers only 6million people.

For the first time, 300,000 school governors, dinner ladies and parents who visit schools or nurseries to read to children will be involved.

It will even apply to parents who, at the request of organisations like junior football teams or the Guides, give their children’s friends lifts to or from events.

If they do so without first being vetted by the ISA’s 200 staff, they could be fined up to £5,000 and given a criminal record.

The clubs themselves will face a £5,000 fine – potentially enough to ruin them. Parents who host foreign pupils on school exchange trips will also have to be vetted.

MPs and academics fear the change will have disastrous consequences.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘We are going to drive away volunteers, we’ll see clubs and activities close down and we’ll end up with more bored young people on our streets.’

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: ‘We are in danger of creating a world in which we think every adult who approaches children means to do them harm.

‘The creation of the world’s biggest checking system is a disproportionate response to the problem it is trying to solve.’

The Office of the Information Commissioner said there were ‘inevitable’ security risks in collecting large amounts of personal data.

Philip Pullman, best-selling author of His Dark Materials, has already pledged to stop giving readings in schools in protest at the scheme.

He has called it ‘corrosive to healthy social interaction’ because it will encourage children to see everyone as a potential rapist or killer.

The scheme was recommended by the Bichard report into the Soham murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by school caretaker Ian Huntley.

Huntley was given the job because allegations of sex with underage girls were not passed on.

The Home Office said: ‘The Vetting and Barring Scheme does not cover personal or family relationships, so parents making informal arrangements to give lifts to children will not have to be vetted.

‘However, anyone working or volunteering on behalf of a third party organisation – for example, a sports club or a charity – who has frequent or intensive access to children or vulnerable adults will have to be registered.

‘We believe this is a commonsense approach and what parents would rightly expect.’

Registering with the ISA will cost £64 in England and Wales, although unpaid volunteers will be exempt.

Registration will be needed for activities which involve contact with children or vulnerable adults three times in a month, every month, or once overnight, as well as jobs in places such as schools, prisons and children’s homes.

In a ‘belt and braces’ approach, everyone currently working with children and old people will have to be vetted, even if they have already been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Those whose jobs involve mandatory enhanced CRB checks will continue to undergo them.

An enhanced CRB check costs £36, which means that, on top of the £64 ISA fee, being cleared to work with children could cost £100.

More new-born children need to be taken into care to stop them being damaged beyond repair by poor parents, according to Martin Narey, chief executive of the children’s charity Barnardo’s.

‘More babies should be taken into care to protect them from poor parents’

Telegraph | Sep 6, 2009

Mr Narey called for less focus on ”fixing families that can’t be fixed” and for social workers to be more pro-active about removing children at risk.

His comments come in the wake of last week’s court case involving two young brothers from Doncaster who viciously attacked an 11-year-old boy and his nine-year-old nephew. The siblings were under the care of social services at the time.

Mr Narey told The Observer: ”We can’t keep trying to fix families that are completely broken. It sounds terrible, but I think we try too hard with birth parents.

”I have seen children sent back to homes that I certainly wouldn’t have sent them back to. I have been extremely surprised at decisions taken.

”If we really cared about the interests of the child, we would take children away as babies and put them into permanent adoptive families, where we know they will have the best possible outcome.’

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The former director general of the Prison Service added: ”If you can take a baby very young and get them quickly into a permanent adoptive home, then we know that is where we have success.

”That’s a view that is seen as a heresy among social services, where the thinking is that if someone, a parent, has failed, they deserve another chance. My own view is that we just need to take more children into care if we really want to put the interests of the child first.”

Mr Narey acknowledged his views would be seen as ”illiberal heresy” but argued that if social workers intervened quickly, ”we would see far fewer problems”.

Doncaster Council is carrying out a Serious Case Review into the circumstances of the brothers, who lived in Edlington, South Yorkshire.

The pair admitted causing their victims grievous bodily harm with intent. They denied a more serious charge of attempted murder but the prosecution accepted their pleas and said there would be no trial.

The boys will be sentenced at a later date, probably in early November, after a series of reports have been prepared.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader who has established the Centre for Social Justice, repeated his calls for early intervention after the case came to light.

In this July 13, 2009 photo, Sarab village resident and opium addict Islam Beg, center, offers his opium pipe to his grandson after having an early morning smoke in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan. In dozens of mountain hamlets in this remote corner of Afghanistan, opium addiction has become so entrenched that whole families, from toddlers to old men, are addicts. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

AP | Aug 9, 2009

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

SARAB, Afghanistan — Open the door to Islam Beg’s house and the thick opium smoke rushes out into the cold mountain air, like steam from a bathhouse. It’s just past 8 a.m. and the family of six — including a 1-year-old baby boy — is already curled up at the lip of the opium pipe.

Beg, 65, breathes in and exhales a cloud of smoke. He passes the pipe to his wife. She passes it to their daughter. The daughter blows the opium smoke into the baby’s tiny mouth. The baby’s eyes roll back into his head.

Their faces are gaunt. Their hair is matted. They smell.

In dozens of mountain hamlets in this remote corner of Afghanistan, opium addiction has become so entrenched that whole families — from toddlers to old men — are addicts. The addiction moves from house to house, infecting entire communities cut off from the rest of the world by glacial streams. From just one family years ago, at least half the people of Sarab, population 1,850, are now addicts.

Afghanistan supplies nearly all the world’s opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, and while most of the deadly crop is exported, enough is left behind to create a vicious cycle of addiction. There are at least 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in Afghanistan — 50,000 more than in the much bigger, wealthier U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a 2005 survey by the U.N. A new survey is expected to show even higher rates of addiction, a window into the human toll of Afghanistan’s back-to-back wars and desperate poverty.

Unlike in the West, the close-knit nature of communities here makes addiction a family affair. Instead of passing from one rebellious teenager to another, the habit passes from mother to daughter, father to son. It’s turning villages like this one into a landscape of human depredation.

Except for a few soiled mats, Beg’s house is bare. He has pawned all his family’s belongings to pay for drugs.

“I am ashamed of what I have become,” says Beg, an unwashed turban curled on his head. “I’ve lost my self-respect. I’ve lost my values. I take the food from this child to pay for my opium,” he says, pointing to his 5-year-old grandson, Mamadin. “He just stays hungry.”

Beg’s forefathers owned much of the land in the village, located beside a gushing stream at the end of a canyon of craggy mountains in Badakshan province, hundreds of miles (kilometers) northeast of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

He once had 1,200 sheep. He sold them off one by one to pay for drugs.

The land followed. He’s turned his spacious home, once lined with ornamental carpets, into a mud shell. He grows potatoes in rows in the last of his fields and each time he harvests the crop, he has to make a choice — feed his grandchildren, or buy opium. He usually chooses drugs.

Basic necessities like soap long ago fell by the wayside.

“If we have 50 cents, we buy opium and we smoke it. We don’t use the 50 cents to buy soap to clean our clothes,” explains Raihan, Beg’s daughter and the mother of the 1-year-old. The toddler wears a filthy shirt and no underwear. “I can be out of food, but not out of opium.”

The country’s few drug treatment centers are in cities far from villages like this one. And even those able to get themselves to the cities are often unable to get help. The drug clinic in Takhar province, the nearest to Sarab, has a waiting list of 2,000 people and only 30 beds.

So the villagers are drowning in opium. They begin taking it when they are sick, relying on its anesthetic properties — opium is also used to make morphine. Sarab, a village located at 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) and snowed in for up to three months a year, is a day’s walk over mountain paths to the nearest hospital. The few shops in town do not even sell aspirin.

“Opium is our doctor,” says Beg. “When your stomach hurts, you take a smoke. Then you take a little more. And a little more. And then, you’re addicted. Once you’re hooked, it’s over. You’re finished.”

When his grandson Shamsuddin, 1, cut his finger in the door jamb, Beg blew opium smoke into the child’s mouth, a common practice in this part of the world which is now resulting in rampant child addiction. He doesn’t want his grandchild to become an addict, but he says he has no choice. “If there is no medicine here, what should we do? The only way to make him feel better is to give him opium.”

From a single smoke, they progress to a three-times-a-day habit that spreads. When Beg began using opium, it wasn’t just his wife and daughter who followed suit. It was his brother. Then his brother’s wife. Like an epidemic, it makes its way across the village.

Health workers say that to treat the addiction, they need to treat the entire community. Last year, the Ministry of Health took 120 addicts from Sarab to a facility in a town one day’s drive away to be treated. Three months later, they found that 115 of the 120 had relapsed.

“First my neighbor started doing opium again,” explains Noor, one of the women treated, whose eyes are dark caves. “Then my cousin. Then my husband. And then after a while, I also started.”

Most of the addicts spend $3 to $4 a day on opium in a part of the world where people earn on average $2. They sell their land and go deeply into debt to maintain their habit.

“I used to be a rich man,” says Dadar, a man who looks to be in his 70s and whose family of seven is addicted. “I had cattle. I had land. And then I started smoking. I sold the cattle. I sold my land. Now I have nothing.”

He wears an old windbreaker encrusted with dirt. His wife pulls back her lips to show a mouth full of diseased teeth. Their grandchildren have knotted hair and ripped clothes stained with muck.

Because they’ve sold their cattle, they no longer eat meat. When they sold the last of their land, they also lost their wheat, potatoes and greens. Their diet now consists of tea and the occasional piece of bread given by a neighbor.

Village chief Sahib Dad says even those who are not addicted are forced to pay a price.

“When a person gets addicted, he has nothing to eat,” says Dad. “That affects his neighbor because the neighbor is forced to give over a part of his food. For this reason, all of us are poorer.”

After selling their land, some families resort to even more desperate measures. They take loans from the shopkeepers who sell them drugs. Then they sell their daughters, known as ‘opium brides,’ to settle the debt. They lease their sons.

“I know he is angry with me. But what can I do? I have nothing left to sell,” says Jan Begum, who has sent her 14-year-old to do construction work for the drug dealers. “I tried to stop, but I can’t. Whenever I do, the pain becomes unbearable.”

The problem is compounded by Afghanistan’s neighbors. Iran immediately to the west has the world’s highest per capita heroin use. The heroin labs there, as well as in Pakistan to the east, use opium imported from Afghanistan. These countries are now exporting heroin addiction back to Afghanistan in the form of returning refugees.

Like opium, heroin in Afghanistan is biting off whole families. Gul Pari, 13, watched her mother get high on heroin when she and her brother were in elementary school. Now she lies in a bed in a drug treatment center for women in Kabul. Her 15-year-old brother Zaihar is across town in a rehab facility for men.

Their bodies are like brittle sticks. The 13-year-old tries to push herself up on one elbow, but her thin arm cannot hold her up, so she falls back onto the pillow. Her emaciated brother leans against a wall to steady himself.

What will happen when they go home is unknown. They live with their mother — a recovering heroin addict — under a tarp in the yard of an abandoned house.

Mohammad Asef, a health worker at the clinic taking care of Zaihar Pari, says he is worried about the boy’s chances of recovering. “In America people go and get high in the park. In Afghanistan, they do it in the home,” says Asef. “They bring it inside. They burn it on the family stove. Everyone sees. So everyone is affected.”

In Sarab, villagers who are not addicted keep their distance from those who are. They don’t invite them into their homes. They discourage them from coming to village meetings. It’s as if they are trying to quarantine themselves.

Beg says that for him all hope is lost. Even after he is buried, it’ll take 70 years for the opium to ooze out of his bones. His hope, he says, are his grandkids — the only people in the family who are not yet addicts.

As Beg is getting high on a recent morning, the 1-year-old crawls over and starts playing with the opium pipe. He picks it up and shakes it, as if it were a rattle. Then, imitating his grandfather, he raises the pipe to his mouth.