13th
February 2007
Is
Addicts’ Rights Culture Risking Inverclyde Kids’ Lives?
McNeil Demands Urgent Investigation
Action must be taken now to ensure that
children in Inverclyde are not being put at risk by a culture of protecting drug
addicts’ rights, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Duncan McNeil, has told
Minister for Education and Young People, Hugh Henry.
Mr
McNeil said the Executive must move now and find out whether the serious
failings identified in the recent HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) report on
Midlothian Council’s child protection services were endemic across the
country.
He
told Mr Henry:
“Inverclyde
is a similar size to Midlothian and has its own problems with drug abuse.
Given the well-documented management failures at the local authority, I
am therefore particularly concerned that the problems identified in Midlothian
could be lying undetected and leaving children at risk in my constituency.
I will, as you would expect, be making representations to the Chief
Executive of Inverclyde Council, but I would be most grateful for your assurance
that the Executive will, as a priority, take steps to assess the effectiveness
of child protection services in Inverclyde.”
Mr
McNeil said the Midlothian report confirmed what he and others had
long-suspected, “that there is a culture in our social services of looking
after drug addicts’ needs at the expense of their children’s.”
And, he told the Minister, “Experts in the field to whom I have spoken
share my fear that this culture is by no means confined to Midlothian.
The professionals’ default
position, I am advised, is that treating the parent equates to treating the
child. This, combined with a fear
of separating children from
parents, leads to professionals leaving children in dangerous households when it
is clearly not in their bests interests.”
He
continued:
“Given the danger in which
children are trapped if the attitudes uncovered in Midlothian do indeed pervade
services throughout the country, it is my strong view that we must know now
precisely what every local authority is (and is not) doing.
“In particular, we need to
know exactly how they are identifying substance misusing families and how they
are identified early. It is my
understanding, for example, that there is still no comprehensive register of all
births where the mother or father has a drug problem; it happens in some cases,
but not in others. Similarly,
multi-agency assessments of a family where parents have a drug problem are
carried out in some areas and not others and are repeated on a regular basis in
some areas and not others. And,
where methadone is being given to parents on a “take home” basis,
assessments of the home environment (as opposed to merely the addicts’ needs)
are carried out in some areas and not others.”
He
therefore called on the Minister to take, “urgent action to ensure all local
authorities are perfectly clear about their duties to prioritise the rights and
act in the interests of vulnerable children – even if this is at the expense
of the rights and interests of their drug addict parents – and that rapid
moves are made to identify potentially dangerous gaps in service provision.”
ENDS
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