Rotherham Foster Carers

@panda12 wrote:

UKIP, and its supporters have views which IMHO are unsuitable for bringing up young, impressionable minds.

Mummy…daddy. Are you really a member of a party that wants to leave the EU?

@mrs_teapot wrote:

I dont understand this damned if you do damned if you dont attitude.

These foster carers haven’t suddenly become different people overnight… the people they are today are the people they were yesterday or the day before when the children were placed with them.

So it takes an anonymous phone call for them to suddenly be unsuitable? Im sorry I dont get it… truly if today they are not suitable but yesterday they were… who is selecting child placements? …. and shouldn’t we be focusing on their ineptitude?…OK these carers are members of a political party… but that’s because of their beliefs and values…. surely that’s what is focused on in the selection process when recruiting people to do the job?

They might not have become different people overnight, although religious and political conversions do occur. However they might not have revealed their political conversion and some ‘concerned neighbour’ might have reported them.

The selectors might have done everything required of them, but not discovered this particular aspect – lets face it, it’s hardly the most disastrous thing to happen to foster kids.

However once something is reported, the policy tends to be to play it safe by acting pre-emtively rather than begin a drawn out investigation. Thus anonymous report => action => consequences.

We might not like it, but ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ is not an attitude, but a reality of public service. If the Council had acted cautiously and in future years been sued by the kids because of harm done while being cared for by people who repeatedly told them they shouldn’t be in the country in the first place, their selection process would be criticised by some as being not thorough enough. If they take the kids away, then they are criticised by others as being ‘PC’ or acting hastily. Sure the children’s welfare should come first, but current emphasis on budgets and media attention turn that sentiment into a slogan in some circumstances.

@wordsworth60 wrote:

Sure the children’s welfare should come first, but current emphasis on budgets and media attention turn that sentiment into a slogan in some circumstances.

Terry is right, it is desirable to take random strings of words out of context when trying to find a meaningful quotation.

Trouble is, when Labour politicians make discriminatory comments it seems at odds with the party’s policies, so labour voters Per Se are not seen as having views which, if acted on, would harm the kids. But when UKIP leaders say things which are discriminatory it can seem in harmony with the party’s policy on immigration, especially when the policy doesn’t explain the non-discriminatory nature of it’s policies very well.

Why should it? Because if it really wants to change things rather than just protest, it will need to attract votes it doesn’t currently get.

As for reporting parents, unfortunately not all complaints are founded. Some are mischievous. But even when the complaints are ill-founded, the council will act on them, and I know couples who have had foster kids taken from them on the basis of lying, malicious, unfounded, anonymous allegations.

We still don’t quite know if the complaint was restricted to support for UKIP, or whether it included more harmful allegations.

But I’d like to thank Terry for his defence of UKIP. I naiively thought they were against the UK’s EU membership, but he has opened my eyes, and I dare say the eyes of others to a much wider aspect to the party and some of its stauncher supporters.