UK: Fattest children to be taken away from their parents

[Atomic Rooster]

Fattest children to be taken away from their parents - The Independent

By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent
Saturday, 16 August 2008

Dangerously overweight children will have to be taken from their parents and put into care because of Britain's worsening "obesity epidemic", council leaders have warned.

One million children will be clinically obese within four years on current trends, storing up future problems from heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure and diabetes.

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents 400 councils in England and Wales, predicted social services teams would have to take drastic action to improve the health of seriously overweight children.

Social workers have only become involved very rarely in such cases, considering the issue is best tackled by parents.

But the LGA warned that social services might have to treat very fat children as victims of "parental neglect" – just as malnourished children are.

It predicted that social services would have to intervene "more and more" with obese children. It added that councils would have to take action against parents who put their children's health at risk, with the ultimate sanction of taking the fattest boys and girls into care.

The LGA said Britain was fast becoming the "obesity capital of the world" and the increasing weight of the average citizen was pushing up council tax bills.

Kinda drastic, don't ya think?

 

[Rubber314Chicken]

know what?

its healthy to lose the weight. good reason for the parents to start feeding the kids good food. the parents are neglecting the kids health.

 

[Sin_After_Sin]

Taking the kids away from their families will only bring on depression from all concerned. Taking the children away is not the answer. The parents need to be educated in proper nutrition. These actions are definitely harsh.

 

[T-Man]

Yes, it is the parents that need to change their ways, it is not the kids fault they haven't been taught the right things.

 

[muz]

IM from england and whilst i can see the reasoning behind this initiaative i dont see it being the fairest option nor do i see it as the best use of an already stretched social services system

IMO at the moment this is simply a scare tactic to people as social services is already stretched as it taking care of children in worse situations such as where there are violent drug addicted or alcoholic parents not looking after their children and so social services dosent have that many resourses to plough into things like this where the childs health isnt in immediate danger .

And either way i dont think taking children whose otherwise familly life is nomral and runing that routine and normal family life they have by putting them into a care system which is a harsh environment and a lot of the kids in the care system in the UK dont end up in well paid jobs or getting decent grades at school is the best course of action to take educating the parents would be a much better course of action and much more cost effective and less traumatic for the child involved
I think sometimes the fact that children dont eat helaitly is down to one of three things
I dont always think the parentss are 100% to blame for this either though because work commitments could mean they dont have neough time in the evening to cook meals
The parents job, if the parents say works late in the evenings there mght not always be enough time to come home and cook a full healthy meal but this could be rectified by either chainging shift patterns at work or by learning some quick yet healthy recipes for food to cook . and offering support to single parents who also work a full time job say running play scheme centers where children can go after school and where they will be fed a healthy meal
The parents inexperience at cooking. I think this could be solved by educating aprents say use a local college to teach evening classes in cookery and soon the parents will be able to cook healthy meals ,sometimes people dont know how easy it is to cooke helathy food and think that you cant make nice healthy food but that isnt the case
laziness if this is the case then the best course of action to take would be to fine the parents money for not looking after their children properly

as putting a child into the care system in this country would be a terribly upsetting expereince for them and afterall social services main concern is the safety of the child

 

[Celegorm]

Drastic, yes but could it work? Yes. Think about just the scare factor here. Most families want to keep their kids. Under the threat of losing them don't you think that maybe, just maybe, the parents will work harder to get their kids healthier?

I agree with Sin, taking kids away isn't the best answer, but I love it as a scare tactic.

 

[muz]

Drastic, yes but could it work? Yes. Think about just the scare factor here. Most families want to keep their kids. Under the threat of losing them don't you think that maybe, just maybe, the parents will work harder to get their kids healthier?

I agree with Sin, taking kids away isn't the best answer, but I love it as a scare tactic.

yes but the things with scare tactics is you have to follow up cos i can gurantee there are a few parents out there who are either to lazy or dont care about their kids enough to change for them and then action will have to be taken but i dont think that will be the best thing to do cos the child will be the only one who suffers

 

[Celegorm]

yes but the things with scare tactics is you have to follow up cos i can gurantee there are a few parents out there who are either to lazy or dont care about their kids enough to change for them and then action will have to be taken but i dont think that will be the best thing to do cos the child will be the only one who suffers

That's true, but if the parents are too lazy or don't care then is the child really in good hands with the parent?

 

[muz]

That's true, but if the parents are too lazy or don't care then is the child really in good hands with the parent?

no they arent but there are much worse cases out there whose attention is required by social services and the social services system in this country is already overstretched and so i dont think adding a load of cases where kids arent in immediate danger is going to help the system at all

 

[Lac3y]

This will be a last resort. Only after the education seminars, court visits and social worker visits have failed will they be taken away.

And yes they should be taken away if all that fails. What else can happen? Would you rather the government just gave up? The parents of these children are obviously not capable of looking after their children.