Dee Thomas

Mother of four, Dee Thomas from Comrie in Perthshire, is concerned that the Named Person plans will diminish parental rights.

She said she first came across the Named Person scheme when her son was asked to fill in what he described as a “creepy and weird” survey at school – without her knowledge or consent.

Her later request to see the questions in the survey was rejected – with officials claiming that it might skew the results.

She later found out that questions included, “things like his perceptions of our family’s income, the seriousness of our family’s arguments, and whether he sometimes felt like he couldn’t go on – which is effectively a suicide question”.

“I was really disturbed when I found out he had been asked suicide questions and things about his self esteem because we’d always brought our children up to believe that they can be confident and happy and safe within their family context”, said Dee.

Dee is concerned that the responsibility for children is increasingly being put in the hands of the state.

She said: “I think that the Named Person provisions effectively reduce the role of parenting to that of a technician working with a toolkit of Government approved prescriptives.

“In effect it’s a tickbox scenario where you’re simply ticking off the things you have to do to bring up a child well”.

“I think parenting is as individual to each family as a fingerprint is to a person and the Government can’t prescribe how you should bring up a child”, she added.