Smacks of failure

THe Scottish Government’s proposed ban on smacking children will be viewed in different ways by different people, although polls seem to show the vast majority of Scots are very much against it.

Whatever our personal opinions on the subject, one issue should be paramount in the minds of those who are proposing this interference into both the role of the parent and family life in general.

If it becomes illegal to smack children, any infringement of the law should trigger a joint police and social work investigation. Naturally, this would lead to a series of interviews in order to get to the bottom of what actually occurred.

There would be subsequent case conferences, reports to the procurator fiscal and resultant court action if that was deemed necessary. The bulk of this work would surely be carried out by social workers and police family protection officers.

Adding this to the work that would be generated by the Scottish Government’s ill-conceived Named Persons scheme, and you can be certain of one outcome: an epidemic of stressed and burnt-out social workers and specialist police officers.

These people already deal with crushing volumes of gruelling casework relating to the most genuinely vulnerable and at-risk children in our society.

Adding a host of unnecessary referrals to their caseloads will, surely, result in significant levels of staff sickness and errors due to work overload. The most vulnerable children in society, who so desperately require regular monitoring by social services, are the people who will fall victim to such a situation. each and every one of these children deserves better.

A. MORRISON, Dyce, Aberdeenshire.