Blog
Keeping you up to date on the progress of the Named Person scheme and the NO2NP campaign.
Slick article fails to convince parents
Posted 9 years ago
Reading comments at the end of web articles isn’t always the most wholesome of pastimes. But every so often, scrolling to the bottom of the page is the best way to find nuggets of wisdom.
Take, for example, a recent comment section on Third Force News (click here).
The article
Calum Munro used to be Policy Lead to Highland Children’s Forum. He wrote an article about how much he admired the Named Person scheme.
According to Calum, if families are left without a single point of contact, they will be “prey to a return to the old ways of being passed around from service to service”.
The comments
Here’s how people responded.
“My child with additional support needs was ostracised and bullied by the adults who should have protected her in Highland Council and Health services. The named person met with others, shared sensitive information and made detrimental decisions which have excluded her from education and made her ill. Consent to this was never sought and complaints have not been answered.”
“The Named Person is putting parents under unimaginable stress by failing their children.”
“If there was more time and effort spent in meeting the most urgent needs of those children who so desperately need it, and in Highland I can personally name SO many who are being systematically failed, rather than time wasting on political point-scoring by the insistence that this scheme will benefit all children, some kids, like mine, might not be in a limbo land of not coping in his (admittedly wonderfully supportive) mainstream school and abandoned to a life of home ed by default as there is no provision anywhere for him.”
“You had testimonies ‘from people who were driven to the edge of a mental health crisis by chasing support and having to constantly repeat their tale.’ I had the opposite problem- I asked for my son’s ‘medical’ files- hospital, the SLT and OT. What I discovered there was not our story- there were errors, personal opinions, judgments and comments which have no place in professional MEDICAL files!”
“Objections to the NP service are not based on whether families who want one or need one are going to get one. They are based on the fact that every child is going to get one, whether wanted or needed.”
These are only extracts from the comment section. If you’ve got time, be sure to read them in full (here).