Together with NCH and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, we established the Commission on Families and the Wellbeing of Children. It was chaired by Sir Michael Rutter and considered three core questions:

  1. How and to what extent should the state intervene in the care and upbringing of children and what kind of reciprocal arrangement, if any, does it have to support families?
  2. To what extent is it right for parents to be held responsible for the actions of their children? Where should their responsibilities begin and end?
  3. How far and in what way should the role of the state in supporting and intervening in families be formalised and made transparent?
The Commission held a public consultation on these issues and it sparked a lively debate. The report, Families and the State, published in October 2005, reviewed the evidence on children's health and development and on interventions to support families. Some recommendations are controversial: we want:
  • the age of criminal responsibility to be raised
  • to establish a review body to make the decisions on benefit rates, rather like devolving the interest rate to the Bank of England.

We proposed that the government should

  • abolish the defence of reasonable chastisement so children have the same protection in law as adults against assault
  • make clear the age at which children may legally babysit.

We advocated

  • changes to family law to protect children but urged that state intervention should be strictly limited to the grounds set out in the Children Act 1989
  • that the Child Index should not be established.

We recommended

  • a new emphasis on prevention in family services
  • a reconfiguration of midwife and health visitor services to offer families support at the time they need it and want it most
  • shared accountability and budgets in adult and children's services so the children most at risk through parents' illness, addiction, or suffering the effects of violence, can be identified and supported.

Most of all we recommended that children and young people, particularly in the public care system, should be able to get the counselling and therapeutic help they need if their families are unable to help.

We are currently working to take the recommendations of the Commission forward with support from NCH and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

For reports and information on our seminar - Progressive Inequality, 16 February, 2007 - click here.

Last updated: 13th May 2008 at 10:05:18