James Daly (Tory MP says most struggling children in his area are ‘products of crap parents’, 29 December) doesn’t address what lies beneath the “inadequate parenting” he refers to and what has contributed to the problem of children lacking “stability”.
His Conservative government got rid of the excellent Sure Start scheme introduced by Labour to help parents understand how to relate to their young children when they perhaps had no good model of parenting themselves.
His Conservative government abolished so many youth clubs, which could provide a sanctuary for teenagers to play sports or discuss their problems with a counsellor rather than resorting to gang violence on the streets, which may well have contributed to some of these problems.
His Conservative government could have provided more resources for child and adolescent mental health service teams to help children with emotional difficulties, as well as giving their parents support, which would have lessened the number of children having to wait months for the urgent treatment they need.
Being a parent is hard, especially for those who have suffered most throughout these years of austerity and decline in public services, and who have been living with the added anxiety of rising costs of food and clothing and the exorbitant rise in rents, which has resulted in so many families now living in temporary accommodation.
This, of course, adds to a child’s sense of insecurity. If the government were more in touch with the effect of these issues, it could have seen how much families have been affected and addressed these problems rather than, as Daly does, condemning “crap parents” for children’s struggles.
Penny Elder
Retired psychoanalytical psychotherapist
• Attributing “kids who struggle” to “crap parents” is as hypocritical as it is contemptible. Are these the parents of children who struggle because of budget deficits for special educational needs and disabilities? Are they parents of children in schools denied a full complement of staff because of the crisis in teacher retention and the decimation of learning support staff?
Is the clamour for extending free school meals evidence of feckless parents, or of a level of impoverishment that food banks cannot keep pace with? Is disquiet at dwindling, inaccessible nursery and pre-school provision just the ungrateful voice of the low‑paid, despite them facing the second‑highest childcare costs in the developed world?
Obsessed with parents, Daly dismisses all other considerations. He cannot allow, for example, the connection that professionals and campaigners, including an all-party parliamentary group, have long made between a sharp rise in adolescent knife crime and massive cuts to youth services.
Neither has he time for those advocating strategies to improve social cohesion or identifying causes of its erosion (Youth violence isn’t an incurable disease – my work with young people proves it, 10 October).
Instead, Daly lauds “stability” as a defining characteristic of the family, while supporting a government that has weakened the structures on which the most vulnerable depend for that stability. He may have reason to reflect on the quality of parenting that produced his warped sense of propriety.
Paul McGilchrist
Cromer, Norfolk
• This woman blames crap Tory MPs for a struggling country.
Eleanor Jardine
Hertford
• How many “crap parents” showed their misjudgment in voting for James Daly? He may have a point.
Jude Carr
London
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