Has the UK become a country that really doesn’t like children?

This is no country for children. Pious politicians pretend “children are our future”. But the UK seems to prefer its past. In rights and priorities, children are standing at the counter waiting to be served, as adults shove them out of the way, with a cascade of reports revealing our collective neglect of children.

The National Audit Office on Thursday reports on the crippled finances of local government, funding cut by half, despite skyrocketing demand for social services, especially for children. Vanishing early prevention with overstretched social workers causes an alarming rise in children in care reaching an unprecedented 72,670 last year. Every study shows why: poverty, lack of housing, neglected parental mental health.

Even the assumption that every child goes to school turns out to be wrong, as Ofsted warns today. It has no power to protect growing numbers of “home educated” children, who are sometimes either put into unregistered religious schools or simply abandoned. The government puts parents’ rights to “home school” before children’s rights, without protection from parents who may be psychotic, obsessive, cultish or religious sect-driven.

Source: theguardian