Education

“I’m Telling Your Social Worker”

Photo by Atlas Green on Unsplash

It’s a phrase we don’t expect to resort to or ponder upon. The use of social services has increased over the past couple of years, specifically to overcome issues within the family involving young people, aged 12-16.

It begs the question: are we edging towards a generation of reluctant young people? Why are parents now unable to relate back to their children and build an understanding?

Parents, particularly those in what is considered to be a broken family, are struggling to keep track or maintain control over their young ones. More often than not, many struggling parents are utilising the social services provided in the UK. However, it can be argued that these parents are in fact relying on the social workers to relay information and get a hold of their children again. Many parents, living in a state of ignorance, fear or indifference towards their deviant children, have turned towards the help of external forces in order to control family matters.

The relationship between young people and their parents is seeing a great deal of strain as times have changed. Now, parents are not home as often and are instead busy working due to the current economic difficulties many people are facing. Children are put under stress by schools since the new curriculum – weighing down the divide as both parents and children struggle to see eye-to-eye.

Social services are there to help build relationships between the parents and children – overcoming the lack of communication or straighten out any misunderstanding. Now, the same groups are used to do the sanctioning and disciplining for the parents.

However, there has been a new swoop of parents undergoing a programme introduced and aimed towards helping gain and develop parental responsibility. Groups such as the Social Mobility Commission, who had commissioned the ‘Helping parents to parent‘ scheme – pushed forward the idea to provide high-quality child-care and training whilst keeping the parents centre-stage. The idea of development is key, emotionally and physically, for young people to have a stable lifestyle. According to Dr Clarke, managing director of ‘Family Kids and Youth’, the schemes presented to help parental behaviour can help build a healthy family relationship which would ultimately help to develop the child’s social, behavioural and cognitive skills.

As a society, we need to think about building our bonds with children and gaining that level of consideration and trust. They’ll thank us for it.