Editorial
| Date | 28 March 2019 |
| Pages | 69-73 |
| Published date | 28 March 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JAP-04-2019-053 |
| Author | Bridget Penhale,Margaret Flynn |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Bridget Penhale and Margaret Flynn
Welcome to this second issue of the year. As usual, we initially present some information from
recent news sources that link to the world of safeguarding and public interest in this topic.
To start this issue, although we have been advised that the end of austerity in the UK is in sight, its
impact lives on and is seen in many aspects of society. Where would we be without crisis
management and Brexit? Some might imagine that things would be better without these aspects…
It was encouraging that during January, Ofsted proposed to overhaul its inspection
framework[1]. It will emphasise th e quality of young pe ople’s education and address the
“off-rolling”–that i s the exclusion –of le ss able pupils to bum p up the examination le ague
tables. And, this has been followed by some suggestions and a government consultation
proposing that the re should be a nationa l register of childr en who are home-sch ooled. The
apparent intenti on of such an initia tive would be to ass ist local councils to take action when
standards of such educational provision appear to be poor, or if children are identified as at risk
in the home setting[2].
We learned about the wisdom of Citizens’Assemblies last year when Fintan O’Toole[3] set out
the ways in which an experiment in “deliberative democracy”addressed the Republic’s
seemingly intractable divisions concerning abortion. It involved 100 “ordinary”/demographically
representative people giving up five weekends to hear from experts in medicine, law and ethics,
to women who had been affected by Ireland’s restrictive laws and to lobbying groups. It gave
participants the means to have difficult discussions. “If democracy can create the context for that
humane exchange to happen over and over again, it can withstand everything its enemies throw
at it”. Although O’Toole laments that Westminster’s Conservative Party did not favour the
approach over a referendum, we wonder what would it take for such an assembly to consider
the distribution of funding for public services?
The succession of horrifying murders arising from knife crime persists. From the pitiless murder
of 14-year-old Jaden Moodie during January to those of Jodie Cheney and Yousef Ghaleb in
March –both 17 years old. Rising knife crime has coincided with cuts to the UK’s youth services.
In 2018, in the West Midlands alone, there were 690 child victims of knife crime[4].
The limited impact of scandals is being played out in the wake of London’s Grenfell Tower
tragedy. The hunger for change is being muted by the owners of buildings wrapped in
combustible cladding who are desperate of offload the bills for replacing the cladding onto
leaseholders. There are 437 buildings in England with “Grenfell-style cladding systems”. It turns
out that during 2015, the government was warned of the dangers of flames passing through
concealed cavities –but the advice was kept confidential until early February[5]. Although the
government has paid £400m for cladding removal from social or residential buildings which are
18 metre or higher[6], those in privately owned buildings tend to be in dangerous properties
which are believed to be un-mortgageable. “Social Housing in England after Grenfell”is a
milestone document by Shelter’s appointed social housing commission. It makes the case for a
strengthened regulator with the powers to inspect private and social landlords; the outlawing of
no-fault eviction with limited routes of redress. It concludes that building high-quality housing in
mixed communities is in the national interest. If this is a catalyst, we might claim that Grenfell
halted a dysfunctional housing market.
The harsh context in which Universal Credit is being “rolled out”was exposed by four single
mothers during January. Their legal victory confirmed that the DWP has been incorrectly
DOI 10.1108/JAP-04-2019-053 VOL. 21 NO. 2 2019, pp. 69-73, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1466-8203
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THE JOURNAL OF ADULT PROTECTION
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Editorial
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