Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

[Bored Of Education]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Well, children who go into care are ones for whom no suitable adoptive or foster parents can be found, so they tend to have serious issues to deal with.

That is simply not true. Children often can't be found adoptive homes for the reasons of being male, over 2 and/or being mixed-race.

Foster parents are part of the care system that I refer to and, with the greatest respect to TG's mum, statistically children come out of foster care, not just children's homes,with a greater chance of being unemployed or in jail

And obviously being grouped with other kids in the same situation doesn't help.

These hostels don't seem to be as much of a last resort.

Can you see the flaw in your argument in those two statements?

[Guest]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

E10 Rifle wrote:

I was also intrigued by Brown's intention to crack down on Britain's "50,000 most chaotic families". Is there a chart? And if I was in the 50,001st most chaotic family, surely now would be the time to go properly fucking mental.

Amusing aside there.

Assuming hostels are 'bad' just wondering where is all the money currently, to build/ convert housing to accomodate all these single mothers, who ultimately (& who can blame them?) are all expecting publicly-managed social housing?

[Bored Of Education]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Trident

[Tubby Isaacs]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Future borrowing. Building social housing saves money.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Academies. 67 opened this term alone.

[Etienne]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

That is simply not true. Children often can't be found adoptive homes for the reasons of being male, over 2 and/or being mixed-race.

Well, it's only "not true" because you're arbitrarily designating foster parents as part of the care system. Which they aren't either in a) common usage and b) in context of a debate over whether collective accomodation for young women is the equivalent of putitng them into care.

Of course children who have foster parents have statistically worse outcomes than children who aren't removed from their families and placed into the temporary care of others. How could it be otherwise? What does it say about the rights and wrongs of the hostel proposal?

As to the supposed contradiction between realising that children in care tend not to do very well and the value of having 16 and 17 year old single mothers in hostels, there is no contradiction. Children are put in care because there is no alternative except to let them live in patently unsatisfactory homes. This proposal works on the same assumption - it's not questioned that it'd be far better for them to be within a stable and loving family situation, this is for those without that option.

And as I said before it's not my argument anyway, my instinctive position was to oppose it. I just mentioned that my mother who works in the relevant sector disagreed with me.

[Bored Of Education]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

To be fair, I've bollocksed that up and been all over the place this last page, Etienne.

Foster parents being part of the care system is not something I have arbitarily made up, it is true but, as you point out, it is irrelevent to this thread. Just a pedantic cul-de-sac on my part

My point about the contradiction was your worry about all the children been all together which would be the same in these single women hostels. Children in these hostels may not neccesarily be children with particular issues like, for instance, children in care homes but there will still be problems with them all together, I would have thought.

From what I have heard in the coverage of this, these hostels will become magnets for people who want to exploit single women but, obviously, your mother's point is more than valid.

One issue I have is what happens when these women cease being single i.e. they get a boyfriend? Do they give up their place in the hostel or are men allowed there? If they do have to give it up, after how long with their boyfriend?

[Guest]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

Future borrowing. Building social housing saves money.

Whilst I'd agree, do you seriously think there's any great political will to do this?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Facing an electoral wipeout, there should be.

[Guest]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

But cynically, it's not going to be a great vote-winner and will be seen by the media as further appeasing 'benefits culture'.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

If by benefits culture, you mean paying huge sums to private landlords, this policy would strike a rather useful bill against it, and indeed against the poverty trap.

[Guest]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Agree there should be permanent public housing built rather than funding the private landlords(through Housing Benefit payments) but just don't think there's great political will to do so, at least quickly.

[David Agnew]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

I it has the ability to be a fantastic idea, but as this is an idea floated by Labour three times since 1997, it's unlikely to ever get off the ground, and only be described in such a way to pay lip service to the tutting twats who read the Mail and the Express.

A good way to do it would be to not say these buildings are hostels or halfway houses or anything that implies that these women are towards the lower end of society.

Have them as apartment blocks where you have young mothers, who have left home and otherwise be on their own, where - as Etienne says - they become a target. Within this apartment block you have two flats that don't get used for living purposes.

One is staffed at all times by a care/social workers. They won't live there, but they will be avaible for help on a 24-hour basis (so shift working). Similar to residential homes to the elderly, but a lot more hands off. They're there in order to help the mothers if they have concernd with the children, so that the mothers can get help as and when they'd need it, as they would from their family.

The other flat is a 24 hour creche. You either have registered childminders working shifts, and/or train the mothers up to become childminders. This gives some of the mothers a first job in order to give themselves experience to become a childminder when they leave - it gives the other mothers a chance to have their children cared for while they can get a job or education themselves. And because the childminders will be based in the apartment block, it gives the mothers a chance to get to know - and more importantly trust - the childminders.

So in otherwords, you still give the young mothers social housing, but you don't give the housing a name that stigmatise it, and you also give the mothers 24 access to the sort of social services that young mothers without the support of a family need.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Schoolgirls getting knocked up for council flats

Yes, I'm in agreement with most of that.