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IT SOUNDS like a third world military junta - determining the social worth and potential economic impact of unborn babies is the latest in the Blair portfolio of ‘social inclusion’ initiatives.

As ridiculous as it sounds Blair wants to invest public money and profligate social care resources into identifying what most agencies, actually most individuals with any common sense, know poverty breeds social problems including crime.

Yes, shock horror; lack of opportunities and financial resource breed crime, crime breeds resentment within the public and, public resentment is a political tool. The key to any political aspiration is to harness public outrage in political rhetoric.

The fact that the Blair legacy will undoubtedly prove to have been founded on myth and misinformation will come to light only when politicians and policy advisors stop looking for the obvious and start asking the populous what life is like for them.

Crime and disorder are not new concepts – even Adam was guilty of the odd transgression. Part of growing-up is about pushing boundaries and taking chances. The young of today are just pushing a little bit harder than those before.

What makes a criminal? Can someone ‘break the law’ and yet avoid the label of being a criminal? Many politicians have done so, like phoenix they have resurrected themselves from the flames of their tarnished reputation and started anew.

Criminality is a state of mind; it is a belief that the rules and norms of society are not a tangible reality or meaningful to the individual. This is what social inclusion should be aimed at: helping the ‘alienated’ to feel they belong to society as a whole.

How does Mr Blair engender a sense of social belongingness – by tightening laws that are already moot, making sentences tougher, increasing the use of labelling and stigma, and making it harder than ever to ‘cut a kid a break’.

It is troubling enough to anyone with an ounce of integrity that we live in a society beset by the highest mental health rates in children and adolescents in the whole of Europe. Can this government not see that it shares responsibility for this?

The number of mentally ill youngsters falling foul of ‘social engineering’ laws and winding up in custody is on the increase. Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, Contracts or whatever are nothing less than compulsion orders that treat symptoms not the cause.

For Blair to allow such youngsters’ behaviour to be used as a reason to vilify their parents and legitimise putting young people in care without any attempt at provision of family intervention, support or services is verging on the criminally negligent.

If parents can’t cope with such behaviours how is the apparently malfunctioning and callous social services organisation going to do any better? The facts show care leavers have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and criminalised behaviour!

One might be convinced that there is a surreptitious motive for the recent pronouncement that young people coming into care have more behavioural problems, are we being prepared for yet another negative report on the care system?

The common-sense approach would be to enhance and increase the scope of services to families and to make agencies accessible. Under the current regime the opposite is happening, families would rather chew off their arm than let agencies in.

Worst of all the agencies is our so-called Social Services, which in itself seems to defy the trade descriptions act. In what sense are they social and in what possible way are they services? It is lost on most who are forced to use them.

Indeed, perhaps directly as a result of the effete leadership of Blair, Social Services has carved its’ niche in the social structure as ‘horse-people of the apocalypse’ riding before the storm. Potentially dreadful fates befall all who come in contact with them.

Abuse obsessed, budget drive, zealous and morally bankrupt the institution of Social Services seems to have moved not one jot since the days of ‘Cathy Come Home’; apart from Blair rewarding those who deliver the most children for adoption.

Pleas for assistance go unheard and yet those with learning disabilities find their babies removed from birth because of the ‘fear’ of emotional neglect. No attempt is made to support mother, father and child – its uneconomic and unthinkable.

Parents, at the end of their tether, fight tooth-and-nail to secure some form of intervention with unruly children. Exposed to the commercial culture that consumes childhood and surviving the inhuman environment of school young people rebel.

Feeding off their experiences and those of their peers the young acquire skills to allow them to survive. The lower down the economic ladder the more that has to be survived and the more their behaviour can be linked to this need to fit in or hide.

Behaviour is developed not born and perhaps Blair and his advisors would do good to read some rudimentary psychology texts. Our behaviour is the observable manifestation of our thoughts, feelings and actions – it communicates our psyche.

If the psyche of the young continues to fall on the deaf ears or closed eyes of politicians then problem behaviours will only get worse. Individuals can change their own behaviour but they cannot change another’s; it can be an isolating process.

Change must have an incentive to make it worthwhile and purposeful - if there are no benefits to the individual then they will stay stuck in the way they are. Behaviours only adapt to take advantage of opportunities, what opportunities are on offer?

If the labels of their indiscretions are to follow them all their lives, if they are on list after list of ‘potential’ risks then where is change worth the effort? If failing to have A star grades by end of secondary school means you have already failed, why try?

Channel 4 and 5 can employ the services of two ‘experts’ who, if the programmes are to be believed, can walk in and less than a week later effect dramatic change within families we must ask why aren’t social services doing the same?

Good god, ITV employ a bunch of quintessential older English nannies to do the same across the pond in America. The problems they have faced have been equal if not worse but the parents are not from such low socio-economic backgrounds.

Social Services have failed, time and again, to protect the young and vulnerable. They have even been seen to inflict abuse in order to coerce children to say what the social services need them to in order to validate their invasion of family life.

Multiple placements, multiple social workers, masses of bureaucracy and the distinct feeling of being isolated and alone are what most looked after children can look forward to. No familial sense of longevity at 16 they are out on their own.

We live in a blame culture: politicians blame parents; parents blame children; and, children blame themselves! Demonising that which politics does not really want to find a solution for is Blair’s stock-in-trade and young people are not immune.

My 80 year-old neighbour was quite upset not to be ordered out of our local shopping mall, she was wearing the proscribed ‘hoodie’, was black and wore the latest trendy trainers, alas her three-wheel walking aid gave the game away, she was low-risk.

The young are not so lucky, they face with regularity the sideward glances as they walk down the road, the tightening grip of old ladies on their handbags, all driven by the insatiable media frenzy to present the latest scapegoat for social ills – the young.

There are thugs out there, there have always been thugs out there. If life says that only the fittest survive and only the strongest have choice then you want to be the fittest and strongest, you will go to great lengths to prove it and retain it.

The spiralling requirements of belonging to a gang, no matter what its culture, codes or requirements has to be better than a life in isolation or as a victim. Gangs require constant reaffirmation of your right to belong.

If everything you experience from society says that there are rules to be obeyed and failure has a price, you follow the rules. If two sets of rules exist that are incompatible you choose the set that is most immediate to you.

If not following one rule means you get a label for life that’s one thing, if not following a rule means you may lose your life then it’s not difficult to decide which is more important. Young people have a will to survive and will do anything to survive.

Political culture does not recognise the divide, policy makers are immune from the realities of these young peoples’ lives. Penalties for not adhering to the prevailing view of how to behave have become more punitive than at any time in the past.

Custodial sentences are now encouraged as a ‘preventative’ measure and yet re-offending is increasing, perhaps because these young people have never been so safe or well cared for as they are inside?

Ask any child psychologist and they will agree that there is a heavy cost to demanding unswerving conformity from children – it could be viewed as emotional abuse. So why are the government allowed to get away with such policies?

The whole manner with which Blair and his government have approached the issue of childhood and family life is worse than anything I can remember. It is nihilistic and cuts to the heart of our freedom and right to have a family life.

Perhaps that is ‘our’ generations’ problem, the Thatcher years stripped us of our dignity and our investment in society. We turned into money grubbing, selfish and isolated consumers and we are now reaping the rewards.

New Labour was supposed to herald a new age and a return to social(ist) values, the truth is they are worse than the Conservatives who went before, at least Maggie didn’t lie about the fact that she could care less about us but more our economy.

We need to deal in the here-and-now, not the potential future generations. We need to sort out our own backyard before trying to clean our neighbours (or future neighbours). Politics lacks the will and integrity to tackle social issues head on.

Society as a whole is the problem, not any individual component. It is the prevailing attitudes and political mores that need to change and not a futile demand for unquestioning conformity to a system in which certain people don’t really belong.

By Fassit's Social Affairs Correspondent

-----Original Message-----
From: David Cameron CAMEROND@parliament.uk
Sent: 09 October 2006 13:01

Subject: RE: Blair portfolio of social inclusion

Thank you for emailing David Cameron - I'm replying on his behalf.

Thank you for writing and I do take on board what you say. I would just like to draw your attention to the Social Justice policy group which David Cameron launched when he became Leader of the Party.

The Social Justice Policy Group will help develop practical ideas to enable Britain's poor and under-privileged to climb the ladder from poverty to wealth.

- announcing the initiative during a visit to the Eastside Young Leaders

Academy in East London, David Cameron stressed the need for serious long-term thinking rather than piecemeal policies and short term solutions, and said: "Our Social Justice Policy Group will study the causes and consequences of poverty in Britain and will develop practical ideas to empower the least well-off to climb the ladder from poverty to wealth. It will examine the challenges facing young people and their parents -focusing on family policy, parenting and childcare, support during the early years and barriers to the fulfilment of teenage aspiration."

Other key areas of study will be the treatment and rehabilitation of young people affected by drugs and alcohol abuse, and the care of the
elderly and disabled, along with ways of empowering the voluntary sector, fostering social enterprise, and encouraging neighbourhood
revival.

To see their full details, please follow this link to their website;

http://povertydebate.typepad.com/

Thank you again for writing.
Yours sincerely,

David Beal
Correspondence Secretary
David Cameron's Office
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
www.conservatives.com