6th
December 2007
Reality Must Match Rhetoric on Kinship
Care, McNeil Warns Minister
The selfless men and women who care for
the grandchildren, nieces and nephews whose own parents cannot look after them
must not be let down by gaps in a new support system, MSP for Greenock and
Inverclyde, Duncan McNeil, has warned.
Speaking
in a debate in the Scottish Parliament on the new package of support for such
kinship carers, Mr McNeil told MSPs that important questions had to be answered
if what carers were to receive what they were being promised.
He
said:
“If
the Government – with the cross-party support that it has secured today –
announces this initiative and creates the expectation among carers that they
will receive this allowance, only for them to find out that they cannot access
it locally or that there are other barriers to receiving it, it will be a cruel
deception indeed.
“Worse
still, what if children's services, which are currently underfunded, come under
additional pressure, resulting in many children having to continue to live with
parental drug abuse? The minister
knows from our regular correspondence that I feel strongly about this matter. At
the moment, these children do not have their needs assessed, never mind met. What
if this measure overburdens existing services and means that people who are in
greater need slip further down the priority list? Is it simply a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul?”
Earlier
Mr McNeil had argued:
“A
national fostering and kinship care strategy is long overdue: the carers in
question are the least supported, the least well trained, the least well paid,
the least inspected and the most isolated of all child care workers.
“As
a result, we need to understand what new money is being made available.
How many carers will benefit? What
social work assessment will be required? Who
will meet the cost of those assessments? Given
the current workload of social workers and child services, is the capacity that
other members have mentioned available in the system? …
Will the allowance impact on other benefits that carers receive? Many of them
are elderly grandparents who receive, for example, housing benefit. Finally,
will the benefit be available in all local authorities?
Such questions need to be answered clearly.”
Many
kinship carers take on the role because they are the parent of a child who is a
drug addict and unable to care for their own son or daughter and Mr McNeil also
reminded the Chamber of the scale of the problem, saying that the minister's
announcement, “recognises that too many children in this small country of ours
need to be rescued from the dire circumstances of their parents' drugs
misuse.”
He
also repeated his call for a single Cabinet Minister to take responsibility for
protecting the children of drug addict, criticising the disjointed approach
taken across government:
“I
agree that the scale of the drug problem and its impact on families and children
is massive. Indeed, previous
Administrations and the Government have described tackling the problem as a
priority. The priority that it is
given was proved only last week when three cabinet secretaries gave evidence to
the Health and Sport Committee on the impact of drugs on society.
“Indeed,
four cabinet secretaries and, to my knowledge, three ministers, are involved in
the area. As a result, I am
concerned that the number of ministers who are involved will be a problem rather
than a solution.”
The
full speech is online at:
ENDS
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