At Risk of Significant Harm

On Friday the Guardian reported that the Department of Education is consulting on privatising children's services including Child Protection. I am not sleeping so well.

Now the bottom line of privatisation is that individuals will profit financially. Personally I'd like to re-nationalise everything, however I feel there is a very fundamental difference between privatising services such as the railway and privatising public services. There are private sector companies already running sexual assault referral centers, just pause on that a moment shareholders are therefore making money because rape exists. If you privatise Child Protection...

If the consultation is a consultation maybe I don't have to worry as the companies likely to be involved are massively unpopular. But as a letter from senior social workers said 'We are very concerned that the government consultation, launched with a very short period of only six weeks,'

The companies who are likely to bid for these services include some currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. The Howard League have done a good job of summarising some of the appalling things that have happened under their watch you can read them hear.

Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 places a duty on Local Authorities to investigate and  make inquiries into the circumstances of children considered to be at risk of ‘significant harm’. Privatising out Child Protection particularly to the likes of G4S and Serco will on the balance of probability be putting our children at risk of significant harm.

A parent who left their child in the care of someone they new to have a track record of abuse, or who did not provide their child with enough food, or who deliberately let them watch porn would probably find their children where subject to a child protection plan.

The government however is concidering handing over its children to the watch of capitalists, 
has cut support to in and out of work families to the extent that many cannot afford to provide their children with the basics, and are ok with page 3. 

You can sign a petition set up by Children and Families England here and you can respond to the consultation by 30th May.

And if anyone can think of a creative way were we can make a referral to social services for all children because of a risk posed by the state or the media (without causeing them havoc cause they are massively overworked) then your brain has got there before mine. 

It's not a shortage of knives in the kitchen!

I believe in good men. I am married to one. I read a great blog today from a good man. It moved me deeply. It is profoundly feminist to believe in good men. We wouldn't do what we do if we didn't deeply believe in the whole complete humanity of men. 

I also believe in human men. Men who stay silent or laugh awkwardly at rape jokes. Men who feel nervous about the inevitable loss of power equality will bring. Men who have a serpision that they have privilege but aren't sure how to find out how it functions or what they should do about it.  Men who believe in the equality of women but still regularly speak over them.

Just as I don't understand what it means to be white, don't always take every opportunity to empty myself of that privilege because I'm human, fallible, selfish and negligent. But the call on my life is to move forward to grow, to change, to learn.

The challenge and offer of the women's movement  for men is full humanity because while some of us aren't free none of us are free. 

Bellow is an extract from a speech Andrea Dworkin gave to a group of male politicians. This international women's day I thought it was a great appeal that powerfully explains the relevance of the women's movement to men.

'The things the men's movement has wanted are things worth having. Intimacy is worth having. Tenderness is worth having. Cooperation is worth having. A real emotional life is worth having. But you can't have them in a world with rape....

You can't have equality or tenderness or intimacy as long as there is rape, because rape means terror. It means that part of the population lives in a state of terror and pretends--to please and pacify you--that it doesn't. So there is no honesty. How can there be? Can you imagine what it is like to live as a woman day in and day out with the threat of rape? Or what it is like to live with the reality? I want to see you use those legendary bodies and that legendary strength and that legendary courage and the tenderness that you say you have in behalf of women; and that means against the rapists, against the pimps, and against the pornographers. It means something more than a personal renunciation. It means a systematic, political, active, public attack. And there has been very little of that.

I came here today because I don't believe that rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we are not just in armed combat against you? It's not because there's a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.'