supernanny

[Bart Meerdink]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Schijnt een TV-serie te zijn, En nu in het VK ook serieus voorgesteld in
de praktijk voor het weer op de rails krijgen van probleemgezinnen zo
lijkt het...

(Vergelijk ook mijn postings over 'Life Counseling' op deze lijst)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2070308,00.html

The Sunday Times  	March 05, 2006

Antisocial families to get 'supernannies'
PROBLEM families are to be assigned full-time “supernannies” in the
government’s latest attempt to curb antisocial behaviour.

Ministers are to send disciplinarians to impose order on chaotic
households, in an echo of the television reality show, Supernanny.

Specially trained social workers, using similar techniques to those of
the Channel 4 series, will be assigned to individual families for up to
15 months.

The Home Office will not officially call them “supernannies”, but
ministers say there will be “no escape” from them as they spend
“morning, noon and night” with parents and their youngsters.

They will arrive early each morning to ensure the household is out of
bed and youngsters sent to school. Their tasks will include ensuring
children are properly fed and dressed, and encouraging layabout parents
to find a job.

Hazel Blears, a senior Home Office minister, said: “What makes this
project distinctive and different is that a lead person ‘grips’ the
household and the range of services and professionals that are involved
with the families.”

The scheme will, however, be seized on by opposition politicians as the
ultimate expression of the nanny state. David Davis, the shadow home
secretary, ridiculed the move and said the money would be better spent
on other measures.

The scheme is aimed at antisocial families who can bring misery to their
neighbourhoods. It is the latest phase of the government’s respect agenda.

Ministers have been impressed by a project in Dundee in which “intensive
rehabilitation” work with problem families had high success rates.

Those targeted in the scheme were taught parenting skills, cookery,
budgeting and anger management. They were also coached in “roles and
responsibilities within the family” — a technique used by Jo Frost, the
star of the Supernanny show.

Antisocial families are currently monitored by up to 10 different local
authority agencies — allowing those determined not to change their ways
to play different bodies off against each other.

Under the plans, such families will be put under the full-time
supervision of a single case worker, who will only move on when there is
evidence that households are responding.

Case workers will be ordered to do whatever it takes, within the law, to
gain access to the family home every morning. They will stay until any
young children are put to bed in the evening and until they are
confident any older children are off the streets.

A Home Office source said: “These workers will be with the family
morning, noon and night. If they have to shout through the letter box
and bang on doors to get through the door, that is what they will do.”

Blears said: “Our aim is to help people change their behaviour to stop
the damage they cause to communities.”

The case workers are likely to be social workers with extra experience
in healthcare, nursing or child protection. They will be expected to win
the confidence of their family by helping them to solve a simple
problem, such as a gripe about their housing.

Ministers say the scheme, which will cost about £15,000 per family, will
pay for itself because councils will not have to take the children into
care. The Dundee scheme saved youngsters from being sent to foster homes
in 85% of cases.

Davis said: “Less than 12 months ago Tony Blair said, ‘I cannot raise
someone’s children for them.’ Now it appears he is trying to do just that.”

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