Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Mixed messages on the smacking ban
The last time the smacking ban was discussed in the Welsh Assembly there was a small but vocal minority who spoke and voted against it. There has been a fuss recently about whether the Assembly should have the power to introduce such a ban itself, however not all AMs on the government's side appear to be in favour.
This extract from the transcript of the Assembly's Finance Committee on 17 January suggests that not only does a leading Plaid Cymru member still believe in old fashioned punishment but also he has a rather unusual view of the way that social services help vulnerable children:
Mohammad Asghar: I know that, in local government, social services take the biggest chunk of the budget. Ethnic minority children are taken away unnecessarily. If a parent hits a child, the child is taken away; there have been many such cases in Newport. It would save local authorities and the Government tens of thousand of pounds if they did not keep children in different boarding places and spend money on keeping them away from their families. The family hits the child to discipline them. In the long run, these children are becoming criminal, and ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of this. The law is one thing, but reality is another. The social and moral responsibility belongs to us, as parents, so why can you not give councils some hard-line instructions not to take ethnic minority children unnecessarily to children’s homes, because their parents want to discipline them in that way.
It is unlikely that these were the sort of efficiency savings the Finance Minister was referring to when he said that local councils need to cut their cloth according to their means.
This extract from the transcript of the Assembly's Finance Committee on 17 January suggests that not only does a leading Plaid Cymru member still believe in old fashioned punishment but also he has a rather unusual view of the way that social services help vulnerable children:
Mohammad Asghar: I know that, in local government, social services take the biggest chunk of the budget. Ethnic minority children are taken away unnecessarily. If a parent hits a child, the child is taken away; there have been many such cases in Newport. It would save local authorities and the Government tens of thousand of pounds if they did not keep children in different boarding places and spend money on keeping them away from their families. The family hits the child to discipline them. In the long run, these children are becoming criminal, and ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of this. The law is one thing, but reality is another. The social and moral responsibility belongs to us, as parents, so why can you not give councils some hard-line instructions not to take ethnic minority children unnecessarily to children’s homes, because their parents want to discipline them in that way.
It is unlikely that these were the sort of efficiency savings the Finance Minister was referring to when he said that local councils need to cut their cloth according to their means.
