Children

What is Pre-Departure Accommodation? It’s a detention centre. The 2.5m palisade fence with electronic gates surrounding the site and the 24-hour security leaves you in no doubt that this is a prison. A prison for migrants. Cesar’s detention centre gives lie to the Government’s claim that children won’t be detained. It’s run by G4S and Barnardos and opened this month. Who benefits from the centre? The landowner who rents the land to the UKBA. G4S, the security firm responsible for the death of Jimmy Mubenga, whose chief executive, Nick Buckles, is paid almost £5,000 a day. And Barnado’s...

A report by a think tank linked to the Lib Dems has suggested that parents who pass a parenting test should be paid more in Child Benefit. Those who can show they have completed a "five-a-day" programme - reading with their child for 15 minutes, playing for 10 minutes, talking with the television off for 20 minutes, giving praise and providing a nutritious diet - should it suggests receive extra money on top of their Child Benefit. CentreForum which produced the report describes itself as "an independent, liberal think tank" but in reality has close links to Lib Dem members of the Government...

A little while ago I attended a regional meeting of the United Left in the Unite union. Myself, a woman comrade, Rhiannon, and her six-year-old daughter Star were there. We had political debates on Unite and the Labour Party, Libya, reports from the executive and from the United Left AGM. The most surprising thing was how Rhiannon and Star were treated. Afterwards I emailed some of the United Left people with the following: “I just wanted to say I was very surprised at how Rhiannon was spoken to at the meeting. “Someone said that in politics you get lots of unpleasant things said and that you...

Penelope Leach, best-selling author of books on parenting, talks to Janet Burstall and Belinda Weaver of Workers' Liberty. Click here to download article as pdf .

In defending broadcasting comedian Frankie Boyle's “joke” about the eight year old disabled son of Katie Price, Channel 4 essentially had this to say: Price had already exploited her son by putting him in the media spotlight, so why shouldn't we? What a rotten, self-serving argument. You don't have to endorse Price's celebrity antics to recognise that making a joke at the expense of a child is wrong. This is Frankie Boyle’s “humour”: "Jordan and Peter Andre are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey — eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him." He went on to say some...

The government’s promise to end the detention of child asylum seekers has been exposed as a lie as plans to close a special needs school to convert it into a “pre-departure accommodation facility” were revealed. The centre, in Pease Pottage, Sussex, will be surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and detainees will be transported in and out of the site in UK Border Agency vans. This is the detention of children by another name; the only possible beneficiaries are the landowner who will rent the site to the UKBA and whichever multinational firm the UKBA chooses to run the centre. Britain’s racist...

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has started talking about “allowing” transracial adoption (he means white parents and non-white kids). The underlying message is “right on” social workers are keeping non-white kids “locked up” in the care system. One recent report said that the government wants to change the law that ensures children can only be placed with parents of the same ethnic background. But there never was a law. There was only ever government guidance which stated that social workers should take in consideration a child’s race, ethnicity, cultural background. Well, shock horror! All...

On Monday 24 May, a jury at the Old Bailey found two boys aged 10 and 11 years guilty of the attempted rape of an eight year old girl. According to the prosecution lawyer the boys had assaulted her in a block of flats, in the lift and in the bin shed before taking her to a field and raping her. The boys’ defence called it in all likelihood a “game of I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” that may have gone too far. Much of the media coverage has backed up this latter view, criticising the use of the criminal justice system on children. We should abhor the use of an adult legal system to...

Amanda McKenzie works as a social worker in London. Tell us a little bit about the work you do. I’m a social worker for an inner-city London borough. I currently work in a team working with adults with learning disabilities. My specific job involves working with people with learning disabilities who also have mental health problems, and I also work with learning-disabled parents. A lot of the services related to this type of work, such as care home provision, have been privatised but my work is still directly run by the local council. Do you and your workmates get the pay and conditions you...

As the teachers fight it out for more resources and events take an ugly turn in The Ridings School, the debate about disaffected youth has grown narrower and narrower. When the government used to think there was such a thing as society, pupils who were not doing well at school were a cause for concern. Now that the government says society costs too much, the arguments are no longer about how reforms could be made, but about how to discipline pupils into accepting schooling. The issue has been privatised: disaffection is now a personal, moral weakness which can be beaten out of children or...