Teaching and nursing unions have criticised Home Office plans to make their members responsible for reporting concerns that young people may be involved in knife crime.
The teaching union said that schools have had to cut councillors and pastoral support at the same time as youth services and police funding have been cut.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he would hold a consultation on whether and how to introduce a “public health duty” for teachers, medical staff and police officers to report concerns.
He said this would mean multiple agencies are “focussed on and accountable for preventing and tackling serious violence”.
The general secretary of the National Education Union, Mary Bousted, said:
“Neither the blame for or the solution to violent crime can be laid at the door of schools or front-line hospital staff. Schools already have strong safeguarding practices in place and staff will be altered to any issues of concern.
“The problem is what happens after issues of concern have been identified. Schools have lost pastoral support, special needs teachers and school councillors.”
“Too many families and communities have suffered the devastating consequences of violent crime. It needs real solutions put in place to prevent yet more incidents occurring – solutions that address the causes and not just the symptoms.
“The Home Secretary should accept the impact the decimation of youth services has had, leaving very few safe places for children to go outside of school hours or during the holidays.”
Local authority youth services funding has decreased by about a third since 2014/2015 – as local authorities budgets have been cut by central government. Boustred continued:
“The severe cutbacks to support services to deal with behaviour issues that occur in and outside of schools are also a major issue. Schools sometimes, but always reluctantly, have to exclude pupils.
However, the illegal off-rolling of pupils who too often drop through the system with no adequate safety net to catch them cannot be justified. To stop this happening schools need the resources, support and funding to cope with pupils with additional needs and we need an accountability system that does not penalise schools who are working with children with complex needs.”
The Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield also said schools “don’t often feel that they’ve got the tools or the systems” to know what to do with children who might be involved in, or at risk of, violent crime.
The Royal College of Nursing also criticised the plans, saying they could put people off from seeking medical help for their injuries.
The consultation will run until May 28 – and the government is inviting submissions from the public, especially those with relevant experience.
Joe Lo is a freelance journalist and a reporter for Left Foot Forward
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2 Responses to “Teachers and nurses hit out at Home Office knife crime plans”
Alasdair Macdonald
This is what the Home Office – and especially under the reactionary Mr Jack Straw – has always done with regard to crime: find someone to blame and use the media to shout the blame from the rooftops, especially if those being blamed are social workers, teachers, charity workers, anyone in public service. And by the very act of blaming, the problem is thereby ‘solved’, I.e. it is no longer the news because the scapegoating is the news. Mr Ed Balls made a balls of this by sacking a head of social work – an action which was, of course, ultra vires – of a local authority where a child had died at the hands of violent parents.
I support the actions of the teacher and health service unions in this scapegoating action.
Knife crime is, of course a serious problem in parts of England. Austerity and institutional racism and the effective ‘privatisation’ of schools, with their exclusion policies are mainly the causes and need to be alleviated. Then rehabilitative work is required. There are good examples around the world, not least in Scotland, but, since Mrs May is contemptuous of Scotland, the lessons to be learned will not be taken.
Patrick Newman
At last, the government has been forced to confront the awful consequences of its social policies in general and austerity in particular. Knife crime is the extreme manifestation of the crisis in law breaking and the attrition of public services in large cities and urban areas covering police, housing, education, health and community services. What kind of society is being developed when the lawlessness in London and other cities see young teenagers turned into drug runners. How could she sit as chair of the seminar on knife crime and mouth all the cliches and platitudes you can imagine when it’s her government that has played a major negative role in bringing the current street crisis about.