Much is being said about early intervention with needy families. Most public services are skirting around the needs and are ineffectual. Unless inadequate parents are engaged with full face on with strong purposefully modelling both of acceptable parenting and daily life structures and experiences for young children we will continue to fail large numbers of needy children in our society.
We need intensive intervention with families where the risks and issues are obvious. This means in-home direct involvement from 7:00am to 11:00pm. It needs to be about every aspect of daily life - from awaking, personal hygiene, eating, manners, behavoiur, leisure and the key responsibilties of parents. It needs to be modelling, challenging, parameter setting - its needs to be transformational - it needs to be the Jeremy Kyle in your face intervention and follow through.
It needs intensive high quality publicly funded specialist practitioners who themselves are rigerously trained, challenged re-refreshed and quality assured. Too many of our so-called professionals cruise into work, take a public salary and do no more than act and behave as they would at home or at leisure. We should be compensating people for adding value beyond their own daily strole in life. This should not continue - we need to spend our public funds on people who add value, who dress for the part, who apply skills and thinking which is planned and purposeful, who behave as skilled practitioners at work, who deploy technique, who have standards, who learn and self evaluate. We need to pay for professional practitioners - does it matter what they job title is - who do not roll into work as if they have come from clearing the garden with little distinguishing obvious features from the client group we seek to assist.
Young children 0- 5 especially the under three's in a large number of families - in a civilised society need a much higher quality of parenting and developmental experience than is currently the case in many so-called advanced countries of the world.
Lets get real, lets dump kidding ourselves than the public funding of much of what we do is of any use. Lets revolutionise the approach - lets intervene properly, systematically, lets really change the life chances of vast numbers of innocent children being born into neglect, quasi-love, squallor, deprivation (emotional and physical) and being shaped for a cycle of repeat anti-social experiences and existences.
We need highly skilled publicly funded practitioners who will be alongside children and parents all day long - shaping the day, challenging unacceptable behaviour and actions, requiring acceptable standards and behaviours. This needs to be about every aspect of daily life for children, the personal hygiene - not just hand washing, but the teeth brushing, the toilet routines, the dressing routines, the laundry routines, the eating and meal routines, the play and recreeation routines. In essence ecery need family needs an intensive life coach for their waking hours to shape a new beginning and a proper beginning for newborn children - where inter-generational evidence exists of need.
Lets us apply the rigour and employee training of McDonalds to the training and development needs of our workforce - lets do it right rather than kid ourselves. Lets give the role to organisations - voluntary sector, community based, even private companies on a results based or defined ourtcomes based funding package. Lets do away with the battalions of employees in public service who float in and out of work daily, many with a life approach bordering on a view that the public purse owes them a vast income. Let's view public funds as scarce and precious - to be used wisely and with absolute care for the benefit and outcome of use.
Early intervention is a necessity than large swathes of young children cannot afford to be deprived of.
