Though Cowards Flinch

Martin Narey is the Chief Executive of Barnardo’s, and he is all over the front page of the Observer today with his call to ‘Take more babies away from bad parents’ (not that he actually uses these terms).

Naturally enough, in the ‘centre-left’ blogosphere, as defined by Iain Dale, the usual suspect is all over the story in a flash, displaying the highest level of moral indignation he can muster, and revelling in another opportunity to keep his trolls happy. 

His trolls are very happy, rushing in unopposed and unchallenged to condemn poor people in the Gorbals as a pointless underclass for whom sterilisation is by far the best option.

Yes, for this lot condemnation of Nu Liebour’s  ’nanny state’ is great, except when it come to the, erm, nanny state, where the state decides to take your children away if you can’t cope as well with grinding poverty as other people can with nice lives.  Well, not quite the nanny state, as you don’t get them back at night.

All good centre-left knockabout stuff, but let’s get back to Martin Narey and Barnardo’s for a moment.

Anyone who actually bothers to keep up with stuff, rather than just look at the front page of the weekend papers to see if there’s anything to tag along with, will know that this isn’t Martin Narey’s first such call for greater use of social work powers to remove children from their parents.  He made pretty well the same call on 24 January 2009 in the Sunday Telegraph, although there his call was more focused on the need to increase places in residential care rather than, as on this occasion, the need to increase adoption of babies.

In that piece, he writes: ‘It is important not to overreact in the aftermath of Baby P’s tragic death, the horror of Shannon Matthews’s dreadful childhood or the recent concerns over Doncaster.’ 

Yes, that’s the Doncaster case which has been in the news this week, shortly after which Narey chooses to do The Observer interview, and which is fully referenced in that article.  It may be important not to react, but Narey’s certainly happy to time his press coverage to maximum effect.

So why is Narey so keen to press the case in such a public arena, rather than just get on with presenting his evidence to the social work community that they need to be ‘braver’ in their decision making?

Well, I think Harry Fletcher assistant general secretary of the union for family court staff  may have been on to something when he said last time around: ‘Barnardo’s have a vested interest in residential homes because they run some of them.’

This time around, with the focus on adoption, it’s worth noting that Barnardo’s Fostering and Adoption Service  ‘work on behalf of, and in partnership with, a large number of local authorities across the UK. We are keen to develop new services………’

Just for clarity, that means that they have contracts for delivery of fostering and adoption services.   The overall income from contracts and public grants was £119m in the year to March 2008, up by around £8m on the previosu year, and that compares with £51m from fundraising and £27m for trading. 

While the annual accounts don’t give a breakdown between services, it’s fairly clear that fostering and adoption is an important area of Barnardo’s current business, and one itsk een to gorw under its fairly aggressive expansion strategy adopted since Martin Narey came in from the Prison Service in 2005.

Now I actually like Barnardo’s, and have been directly responsible for bringing in some of the money set out in the annual report.  They are respectful employers and the work I have seen is of a high quality; while I know nothing of their fostering and adoption service, I think some of their more developmental work, and work with young people, around confidence and rights, is excellent.  

I accept therefore that much of what drives Martin Narey to say what he’s been saying in recent months is out of genuine concern for the welfare and human rights of children in the UK, and that there is an acceptable interrelation between this commitment and a business strategy to do more of what Barnardo’s does by getting more local authorities to sign up to contracts for their services.

Nor do I have a huge problem with Martin Narey using the press cleverly, though I think timing his press releases as he does pushes it a little too far in the direction of cynical manipulation.  

The balance between a child’s right and the right of the family is a difficult one to achieve, and that is a big reason why the early articles Convention on the Rights of the Child are so complex.  There is validity, therefore, in seeking to open up debate about that balance.

I do think, in his desire to open up debate, Narey goes too far with his opening salvo, and overlooks utterly the negative conseqences of establishing state mechanisms which are much more keen to take children away.  Indeed such changes would impact negatively on some of the good work his own organization does with struggling, impoverished families, as  fear of the ‘social’ takes hold and all potentially helpful contact is avoided for fear of stigmatisation and removal of the child. 

Such stigmatisation is already a signficant factor in some Children’s Centre settings (this will be the focus of a separate article), and it’s worth noting that Barnardo’s holds major contracts for Children’s Centre delivery in Devon and Cumbria, at the very least.

Equally, and relatedly any move towards a greater willingness by the state to take children into care as an earlier option carries all the obvious risks of class bias amongst the ‘state agents’, of precisely the type that was displayed by the media over the tragic McCann case.

Opening up debate is fine, but it is important to look at all the reasons as to why it is being opened up, and to ensure that the debate once opened up is held responsibly.  I am not convinced that Martin Narey’s tactics meet those criteria.

But that, perhaps, is a judgment call, and one about which I could have a senisble debate with Martin Narey. 

What is much less acceptable, in my book, is for a supposedly serious Labour party politcian to lap up what he reads in the Sunday press, and present it without aforethought for the delight of his trolls and for his own narrow, career-focused  move towards the right in expectation of the gifts that might thereby come his way. 

Such self-serving shite has no place in the Labour party.  Not just my Labour party, anybody’s Labour party.  Tom Harris MP should take a look in the mirror.