The Socialist 24 June 2020

Workers must not pay the price

Lifting the lockdown: workers must not pay the price

Victory for Royal Glamorgan A&E!

Housing: act now to cancel Covid crisis rents and debt

Over 30% of children living in poverty

Fight back to stop Tories scrapping protections for children in care

International aid: Johnson's pie in the sky

Reading workers' movement responds to knife attack

News in brief

Them & us

Young people fighting back: Jobs and homes, not racism

Lessons from the Black Panthers: "We're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism - we're going to fight capitalism with socialism"

Towards an anti-racist school curriculum

Black Lives Matter protests: week three

South Africa: Building jobs and living wage campaign

Tories sinking in Wales but no enthusiasm for Welsh Labour

Why you should come to NSSN conference

Fully fund schools - stand firm on safety

P&O: defend every job - nationalise the ferries

Workers need a 'new deal' - at least £12 an hour now!

Renationalisation of the probation service

It's time to join the Socialist Party

Selling the Socialist: we're back!

Fighting fund: help us smash our target!

Call for an increase in PIP due to Covid-19

A timely read about a pandemic that overwhelms society

PO Box 1398, Enfield EN1 9GT

020 8988 8777

[email protected]

Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/1092/30962

Search the site	Printable version

Home | The Socialist 24 June 2020 | Join the Socialist Party

Subscribe | Donate | Audio | PDF | ebook

Fight back to stop Tories scrapping protections for children in care

Scrapping SI445 will remove important protections for looked-after children, photo Matt J Newman/CC (Click to enlarge)

Kristian O'Sullivan, Birmingham North Socialist Party

The Tories have been using Covid-19 as a smokescreen to launch rushed 'emergency legislation amendments' to attack and water down workers' rights, public sector funding, and to relax safeguarding procedures in our frontline services.

We see this with the relaxing of safeguarding for looked-after children in care in England, with the implementation of 'The Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 - statutory instrument: no 445' - more commonly known as SI445.

SI445 removes and weakens around 65 children's safeguards, without any evidence of their connection to the current serious health crisis.

Some of the most distressful changes come in the form of watering down responsibilities relating to social worker visits to children in care, removing six-monthly reviews, dilution of the duty on children's homes to ensure independent visits, and reports on children's welfare there.

These are just the tip of the iceberg of continued austerity cuts and deregulation tactics wrecking an already sinking childcare system. Cracks in the system are getting bigger by the day, as we have seen with a spike in the number of vulnerable children going missing due to safeguarding cuts during this pandemic.

This bill was snuck in through the back door, with zero public consultation or independent scrutiny. They didn't even pretend to care about child welfare and contact the relevant statutory body - the children's commissioner for England.

Rubbing salt into the wounds, the Tories state it 'had been requested' by so-called stakeholders. But strangely enough no one had come forward at the time to state they requested it. And in the aftermath, in a weak attempt to legitimise their actions via a department for education report, they listed organisations like Ofsted, which has itself said it never saw the full amendment draft!

Every single Tory voted to keep the bill, whooping and jeering as they stripped looked-after children's rights away for their 'own protection'! The government says SI445 is just a temporary measure, but no one with their head switched on believes this, and sees it for the lie it is.

However, neither the Tories nor parliamentary arithmetic should decide whose lives are worth protection and security.

This is why the Socialist Party calls upon all care-experienced communities to link up with the wider labour movement and coordinate protests, days of actions and industrial action with trade unions, anti-cuts campaign groups and everyone else willing to fight back to pressure this broken government to scrap SI445.

In this issue

Socialist Party news and analysis

Lifting the lockdown: workers must not pay the price