A team of "supernannies" is to be sent to some of Britain's most deprived areas to help parents control antisocial children, Tony Blair revealed today.
The parenting experts will be sent to 77 areas with high levels of unruly behaviour, teenage pregnancies and truancy from school.
The £4m scheme will also force the parents of disruptive children to attend parenting courses.
Writing in the Sun newspaper, the prime minister claimed the initiative would tackle the root causes of crime and disorder.
Full article from the Guardian
What do we have here?
Do we have any reasons to believe that this is actually going to work? Or is it just another move to please the Sun and the Daily Mail's readers?
The plans coincide with a government-commissioned Mori poll revealing that 85% of people think bad parenting is responsible for bad behaviour.
Are parents always the root of all evils? As a parent myself I would like to believe this is the case, I would like to have some degree of control over my offsprings. As I think I'm quite a reasonable and responsible individual then I should not have any problems. But I'm not that naive. There are too many factors that I cannot fully control that affect my children's behaviour.
I know that there are some very bad parents out there, not just around the corner in the council estates, but also among the well educated workalcoholics for instance. But can people be taught how to be better parents? You can definitely teach people how to change nappies or improve how to manage small crisis better, but how do you teach them how to bond, how to care, how to be respected and how to be less selfish? I don't think you can teach those things unless the person wants to change. I don't know, I'm always cynical about any form of social engineering and nanny state syndrome. Especially when the state does the nanny bit only when it's convenient.
