Children's money

The media tried hard to whip up a storm of indignation about the demise of "Child Trust Funds", former Home Secretary David Blunkett even said that scrapping the funds was 'an act of betrayal' - although he didn't say who was being betrayed.

The storm didn't really happen. Let's see why.

The payments started in 2002 and a nice website in nine languages made sure everybody knew their entitlement. All ...

Eligible children born on or after 6 April 2005 will receive their £250 voucher shortly after Child Benefit has been claimed and starts being paid.

As well as the Child Trust Fund (CTF) voucher, children in families with lower incomes will get an additional payment from the Government.

Those on lower incomes (and receiving benefits) were eligible for an additional £250.

Then, at age 7

Your child will get a £250 Age 7 payment. And if you were receiving the maximum amount of child tax credits, (or its equivalent, if you claimed Income Support or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance) when your child had their 7th birthday, your child will get an additional £250.

So, if the parents were receiving state benefits their child would get £500 at age 7, but those whose parents were paying income tax would only get £250 - seemed a bit unbalanced really.

The theory behind it was, of course, a noble one - give a child a nest egg and parents will be encouraged to add to it, but back in 2005 Barry Collins described opening an account with the voucher as a paperwork nightmare.

We Rigbys always thought it was a bit mean that babies were being given money for being born whilst at the same time older 'children' were being forced to pay whopping amounts of money to go to university and pensioners were having their pensions payments taxed.

So, they've gone. And good riddance? It would seem so, according to Tony Hazell

I never saw why I should effectively be asked to write a cheque for £250 to someone else's child.

On a professional level, CTFs are a jaw- dropping waste of public money, poorly targeted and not even popular among those they are aimed at.

How else can you explain that almost a quarter of people - 23 pc - couldn't be bothered to cash their voucher and had the money invested by the Government on their child's behalf?

Then there is the prospect of a generation of 18-year-olds being handed a cheque to do with as they will - a great deal for used car dealers and publicans, but a crying shame for the rest of us.

Sections of the investment industry were doing well out of them, charging 1.5 pc a year for basic tracker funds.

CTFs were saddling future generations with £320 million-ayear of debt - plus interest on the cost of borrowing the money.

In effect, Labour was handing out gifts of borrowed money to children then leaving them to foot the bill.

So, good riddance then, to another bad scheme.

....

Emotional abuse.

A mother is being chased around Europe for telling her five year old daughter that she was born by caesarian section and had been seen cuddling her daughter for 'up to ten minutes'. The police have used force to enter the family home and social workers would like to take the child away from her parents because they believe she has suffered 'emotional abuse'.

The McCanns, both with medical qualifications, say they have told their five year old twins that their older sister was taken away whilst sleeping, unattended, in a holiday apartment. They said it was 'a bit like stealing' and the twins 'know someone has taken her'.

Mrs Rigby can't help wondering which of these children is happier going to sleep in their own bedroom, and she wonders whose fault it might be.

....

Please pass this on.

This was spotted on ARRSE after landing there following a google search for something relating to the previous post.

It's true, it's real and it's more than mean - and it needs publicity, so if you do read this please mention it in your own blog, or to your friends and neighbours if you don't have a site of your own.

Copied from the forum :-

Apologies if I'm stepping on any toes, but I've come accross a case which could really do with our help.

WO1 Mac McGearey is serving with 1 RTR. His daughter, Ciara, desperately needs specialist care, but the family has been shafted by Edinburgh Council who are taking them to court.

When Ciara was 3 days old, she contracted meningitis, leaving her blind, unable to speak and suffering from a number of other disabilities. Since she was 6 months old, she's been receiving specialist treatment from the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh.

However, Mac was posted to England and she obviously had to move schools. Ciara went to a non-specialist school and didn't receive the level of care she needed, so when an opportunity came up for an Edinburgh posting, Mac took it and moved his family back. However, the council refused to fund her place at the Royal Blind School and instead offered a place at another non-specialist school.

An indepdent tribunal concluded unanimously that the Royal Blind School was Ciara's best option, and that had Mac not been in the Army, she would still be attending. They then ordered that Edinburgh Council make funding available immediately.

Rather than comply, Edinburgh council elected to take the case to court at a cost of up to £160,000 in legal fees (Ciara's education at the RBS would be approx. £38k per year).

Mac's walking 500 miles to raise the money needed to keep Ciara in school until the court case.

If you can spare even a couple of quid, please make a donation or sponsor Mac's walk. The appeal is being run by the Scottish Poppy Appeal, and there's more info - pics and the story in Mac's own words - on the links.

There is more to read within the forum thread here and also in reports from the Scotsman and a piece by Alex Massie in the Spectator.

Here are a couple of snippets from the Scotsman :-
15th Jan 2010

A tribunal, which was set up under the Additional Support for Learning Act, ruled in November that the Blind School was the best option for Ciara.

However, bailiffs arrived at Ciara's home on Friday to issue a summons to the Court of Session, after the council lodged an appeal against the decision.

and 29th Jan 2010.

The council's education department wants Ciara, who lost her sight when she was only three days old after suffering meningitis, to go to the council-run Oaklands Special School, which does not specialise in blindness.

A tribunal, which was set up under the Additional Support for Learning Act, ruled in November that the Blind School was the best option for Ciara.

Calls for the council to withdraw its appeal against the ruling were yesterday rejected.

A motion was submitted in private to the full council meeting by Councillor Jason Rust asking the council to withdraw its appeal.

It was backed by his fellow Tory councillors, along with the Greens and Labour, but the administration voted in favour of continuing the appeal and it won on the casting vote of Lord Provost George Grubb.

Sometimes we Rigbys think we are going through tough times, but nothing like this

According to an ARRSE poster :-

This Warrent Officer Class 1 has turned down a Queen's Commission (and its pay and pension!) so his daughter can get the best education she can. That's love and nails for you!

Shame on you Edinburgh Council, shame on you!

Yep, that about sums it up!

 PoppyScotland link to sponsor Mac's walk is here

...............

A "section leader within Edinburgh City Council's finance department"  was, incidentally, in the news only yesterday, for something quite different.

Pyjamas and fluffy slippers.

Having identified All Day Pyjama Syndrome (ADPS) in 2003, and a couple of years after a school asked parents to wear day clothes when delivering their children, a Tesco store has decided to ban shoppers who are wearing pyjamas or other nightwear.

It seems unreal, but the BBC says so, and so do the Mail and Guardian, so it must be true.

The lady chosen to be spokeswoman for the nightie-wearing folk of the St Mellons area of Cardiff could, probably, have been chosen more wisely because she complains that

"I think it's stupid really not being allowed in the supermarket with pyjamas on.
"It's not as if they're going to fall down or anything like that. They should be happy because you're going to spend all that money." 

Ah, so she thinks a shop should never turn away a customer, it doesn't matter how they're dressed - it's all about taking money.

Apparently some pyjama-wearers think Tesco is waging a class war.

One mother said: ‘This is just pathetic and shows how snobbish some people can be.
‘Do they have any idea how difficult it is to get three kids off to school when you are a single parent?

Goodness me, getting three kids off to school sounds really hard, it's probably terribly tiring too - so tiring that Mum has to go back to bed afterwards.

How is it that 'snobs' don't do this?

Let's put it into perspective - schools only have to be open for teaching for 190 days a year, not at weekends. Schools tend to open at the same time each day. It's a routine that should be relatively simple to master - especially for an adult.

Tesco employees who also happen to be parents can manage to get up, sort their kids out, and still be there to provide a service to these wannabe pyjama-wearers - and many Tesco staff will also be 'single parents'.

So taking a giant leap in logic, perhaps only a few, if any, of these pyjama-wearing 'single parents' go to work. Maybe they're just taking some time out, or maybe they are stay-at-home Mums who have never needed to go to earn - so have never had to plan ahead, never had to get themselves up, have breakfast, get dressed for work as well as get child or children dressed, breakfasted and ready for school and/or before taking them to the childminder early enough to be in work before the boss complains.

Maybe these ladies were part of the group we Rigbys breakfasted with a year or so ago - a whole tribe of them, wearing fluffy slippers, short nighties, embroidered pyjamas and so on.

There really is nothing wrong with wearing your nightwear when eating breakfast - at home. But there is something wrong when you can't be bothered to put on 'day' clothes before joining a number of complete strangers in a hotel dining room.

It looks as if our opinion is borne out by the comments on BBC's HYS.

There was a time when people made sure they were dressed according to the occasion - work clothes were for, err, work, casual clothes were for evenings and weekends, or whatever free-from-work time there was. Things slackened off, possibly at about the same time as tracksuits became 'fashionable' - but it's unlikely that those tracksuits were worn in bed as well as out of doors.

There was a time when people would make sure they got washed and dressed before they went further than either the back garden or the doorstep, and they also made sure that their nightclothes were worn only in bed - to make sure they weren't dirty, to make sure that there weren't 'outdoor things' in bedding.

It does seem incredible that 'these days' there are people who will happily get out of bed and mix with other people - strangers - in what are very public places without even making sure they are clean and tidy as well as properly covered up. Especially when every man is a potential rapist or child abuser.

To go food shopping without even bothering to wash the sleep from your eyes seems a little lackadaisical and is also probably unhealthy - but they don't seem to care.

A comment from an unnamed 'mother' :-

‘I can't see what is wrong with pulling a coat over your pyjamas to drop the kids off at school then stopping in the shop for a loaf of bread.

Sorry dear, I can, and so can people on Mumsnet .

On Facebook a group of, currently 10,640, people want to ban pyjamas from the streets of Liverpool.

The unnamed mother continues :-

‘I won't be bothering with Tesco anymore, I'm off to Aldi.’

And Aldi in Cardiff will welcome the great unwashed?

Let's wait and see, shall we.

Did you read the one about ...

... the Mummies and Daddies who go to, and stay at, University with their children?

No, not a joke, it's for real. Look here!

Not only do Mummies and Daddies make sure their children have packed their toothbrushes and teddy bears, iPods and televisions, they also

... [sleep] on the floor in halls of residence for several days to help their youngsters 'settle in' ...

In some universities it's got so bad that they have ...

... had to persuade 'helicopter' parents - who hover over their children's lives - to leave their sons or daughters so they can experience independent living.

So when they've reached the tender age of eighteen - adulthood - old enough to vote in a general election or go to Afghanistan and get killed - some Mummies and Daddies don't think their little darlings are old enough to go and live in a safe, supervised, hall of residence.

Or maybe the parents have forgotten how embarrassed they were of their own parents or maybe the parents themselves aren't mature enough to allow their own children to, well, to grow up and become adults.

Odd sort of country we live in, isn't it?

ISA - safeguarding children from adult "children"?

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Mrs Rigby read a post on Witterings from Witney about the "Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006" and how it would affect the writer ... who lives in sheltered accommodation so is classed as "vulnerable" yet would need to register for clearance because they are a driver for "vulnerable" people.

So we have the ludicrous situation whereby I, as a 'vulnerable adult', living amongst 'vulnerable adults' and driving 'vulnerable adults' must, as a 'vulnerable adult', submit myself for checking to enable me to continue my work with 'vulnerable adults'!

Mrs R wonders how the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will react to children who are still in school past the age of 18, and therefore come into daily contact with those younger than themselves who are not considered "adult" in our law.

It happens quite often - all that it needs is a child to be born in September making them the oldest of their school year group. They reach their majority at the beginning of their last year at school, can vote, but can't leave full time education until they've taken their final A-level exams the following summer.

During that year they could all too easily mix with younger children, especially if they attend a school that takes children aged 11-18.

How will government deal with this anomaly - of having young adults mixing with children, some of whom will be classed as "vulnerable" because of various disabilities - adhd, dyslexia etc.? The new regulations say that all adults who come into "formal" contact with children must pay their money and register.

Attending school is a formal arrangement, it is a legal requirement. The government put in place legislation that forces children to stay in education until the age of 18 ... those entering secondary school in 2008 were the first.

Was there also a statutory instrument to ensure that they are CRB checked the moment they hit 18?

Just a thought.
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