Re: Government to put CCTV in your home
 

Does anyone have a ball park figure as to the amount of money, for the country as a whole, that is annually spent on CCTV installation, maintenance, wages and the like?

Re: Government to put CCTV in your home
 

total bulls..t.

Re: Government to put CCTV in your home
 

That they did it at all was shocking enough.

---------- Post added at 12:57 ---------- Previous post was at 12:54 ----------

Yes it's an assessment centre. Watching people with CCTV cameras is just a bit too Orwellian for my tastes. I think assessing a child's happiness and general demeanor ought to be enough to assess his or her parents abilities. Certainly putting a camera in their bedroom went too far.

Re: Government to put CCTV in your home
 

It's not enough though, not by any stretch of the imagination.

These centres aren't used for normal parents, they're used for parents with disibilities that can effect how they look after their children, especially those with severe learning difficulties. You cannot tell from a young childs demeanor how good their parents are at looking after them. If you could then Baby P would never have happened.

You also have to be aware that these centres actually give the parents a chance to keep their children. In many cases if they couldn't be assessed like this then their child would be taken away from them and taken into care at birth.

It wasn't THEIR bedroom, it was a bedroom at the assessment centre. One that in many cases is probably also used for young babies in cots in the same room as the parents. It wasn't a case of "we'll put a camera in here to see how well they sleep" it was a case of them being put in a room that happened to have a camera in there, due to what the room is used for.

Re: Government to put CCTV in your home
 

It's more than enough!

I know what an "assessment centre" is. Baby P was a whole different thing. His mother did not have learning difficulties and they were not in an assessment centre. And a social worker ought to be able to tell enough about a child's parents' parenting skills by observing that child's demeanor and how he or she interacts with his or her parents openly.

If parents really do need the kind of help that is offered by these centres, I'd question whether they are ever going to be fit parents. But if this is not just a hopeless gimmick, we'll see the assessment centres' success rates. I wsh them every success.

It was THEIR bedroom for the duration of their stay, and and their child slept separately in a nursery. The intention might well be good, but what are social workers? Voyeurs? The cameras should never have been switched on.

Re: Government to put CCTV in your home
 

No, his mother didn't. Yet social workers, despite visiting the family many times, were unable to tell that the parents were incapable of looking atfer him by the childs demeanor alone. Which is my point, you're claiming observation of the childs behaviour alone is enough to tell if parents are capable, but time and time again social services have been unable to use the childs demeanor to make the right call. Obviously it's not enough.

These things are also about a child at birth, not several months or years down the line, you leave a child with an incapable parent at birth and the first thing you know could be when the child is dead from neglect, you might not even have chance to check their demeanor, and with babies it's incredibly difficult to tell if anything is wrong anyway.

So CCTV observation is wrong, but judging someone as not being a fit parent based on a learning disability alone is ok? These centres are an alternative to taking children into care immediately, they give the parents a chance to show they are capable when otherwise they'd have lost their children based on their disabilities alone.

My aunt is deaf with severe learning difficulties, she had a child, and before he was even born he was put on the at risk register, and as soon as he was born they wanted to put him into temporary foster care until they could get a place in an assessment centre to see if she could cope. If the assessment centres didn't exist she'd never have got that chance.

In all likeliness they didn't know how to switch the things off, and never gave it a second thought.

Re: Government to put CCTV in your home
 

But social workers should have been able to tell after visiting the family many times. Baby P suffered months of cruelty and they apparently believed his mother's excuses. Perhaps things might have been different had his case worker been more experienced and less overworked. Time and time again the signs have been perfectly obvious and social workers still make the wrong call.

That's not in dispute, but what do you suggest? What is enough? Would you support the use of CCTV cameras in private homes for instance?

CCTV observation of someone in a place where they are entitled to expect privacy is wrong. In an assessment centre, provided the subjects know they are under CCTV observation and not in a place where they should be entitled to some privacy, it's acceptable. I'm dubious about how effective assessment centres will be, but I did not say they should not exist, indeed I said I wished them every success. I can see that they might be especially useful in disability cases where a parent might otherwise lose their child, and I'd never judge someone's fitness as a parent on their disability alone. That would be absolutely monstrous.

But social workers also overreach themselves. What do you think of this case in which a family "agreed" to spend time in an assessment centre?

You trust the state a lot more than I do.