Sins of the children?

THE recent news that the forthcoming Juvenile Justice Bill will give judges the power to call parents before the courts to account for the wrong doings of their children, and that parents may be forced to pay compensation for damage caused by their offspring, has caused both exultation and dismay.

But according to Michael McDowell ID, there's nothing innovative in these provisions they already exist in the 1908 Children's Act, which the new bill seeks to replace.

The Children's Act already contains provision for the penalisation of parents. It isn't used because there have been doubts about its constitutionality... I have no doubt that the minister (Austin Currie) in drafting the legislation is aware that if he dropped the provision there would be a hullabaloo," says McDowell, adding that the issue is likely to become a major political football the School Attendance Act, parents can be summoned before the local district court to answer charges that their children are truanting from school. Parents who are found guilty of failing to send their children to school can be fined. In extreme cases, where the guardianship of children is deemed to be insufficient or improper, the children may be placed in residential care.

On the face of it, it sounds perfectly reasonable to expect parents to exert control over their children and to be responsible for any damage they may cause. Anyone who has ever had a car stolen by a joy rider, a handbag snatched by a youngster in downtown Dublin, tyres slashed or windows smashed by young vandals will, at the very least, wonder about the roles played by parents in the rearing of those young miscreants.

On another level, many of us can identify parents often from well off homes who leave children unattended to roam the streets for hours on end, who fail to impose appropriate curfews or who simply never know their offspring's whereabouts. "If that kid gets into bad company and into trouble," we say, "it will be all down to the parents."

Many people meanwhile, hold the view that the threat of a fine will be enough to persuade some parents to clean up the parental act and instill in them a sense of responsibility towards their children.

"Involving families in the control and formation of their children is a good thing and there should be some legal underpinning of this. It might even give some leverage to parents over their children, but imposing fines won't achieve anything for dysfunctional families, says McDowell. Social workers, child care experts and the National Parents' Councils agree that fining low income parents who are struggling to put bread on the table is counter productive. And the logical extension of failure to pay sending parents to prison only means that more children will end up in care.

And if the parents are relatively well off, should they lose their livelihoods in order to pay compensation for their children's actions. Take the son of a publican say, who burns down a school should that parent be forced to forfeit the pub? "In theory it sounds fine but are we willing to go the whole hog?" asks McDowell.

If the fining of parents becomes the norm, parents will start to take out insurance to cover the costs of the damage caused by their children. "If a general law of civil liability was introduced parents would have to take out insurance.

But then people would start bringing actions in circumstances where previously they would not have dreamed of doing so," he says.

"Many people argue that well off parent should be forced to pay for their children's misdemeanours, but the real problem is one of parenting and the Foxrock parent is just as likely to have poor family management skills as the parent from a disadvantaged area," says Fionnuala Kilfeather, who is chairperson of the National Parents' Council Primary.

"This issue has to be approached by examining the difficulties and stresses parents find themselves under and their lack of parenting skills," she says.

Parent bashing is ultimately an ineffective method of reducing juvenile crime, according to experts.

"It's vital that we accept the co relation between social deprivation, educational disadvantage and crime," says Eoin Keenan, who is director of Barnardos, the child care agency.

"Children who suffer social deprivation are more likely to suffer difficulties at school, are more likely to drop out of school without qualifications and are more likely to be unemployed. By remaining outside the system they are more likely to drift into drug abuse, crime and unstable relationships. . . Research shows that a harsh juvenile justice system doesn't break the cycle of crime and that more preventative and early interventionist approaches are more successful.

"Children who are poor are not badly parented, but poverty makes parenting more difficult. It would therefore be wrong for government to place all the responsibility on parents when government policies, which permit high levels of poverty, make parenting more problematic," he says.

Initiatives that support families and enable children to survive in the school system and achieve their potential, are the key to a reduction in Juvenile crime, Keenan argues. But he warns that parents must be involved in these initiatives. "The professionals won't always be around and it's essential that the relationships between parents and children are worked on from an early age. .. The approach needs to be developmental we need to work alongside parents and help them develop their own capacities and skills."

Barnardos' director regrets the relatively low level of parental involvement in the Early Start programme, which supplies pre-school education in a number of disadvantaged areas.

"We would like to see higher levels of parental involvement in Early Start and any form of preschool provision. Parental involvement in a playgroup is more effective than providing a sophisticated pre-school environment for the children and separate courses for the parents," he says.

"In principle it's reasonable to expect parents to be responsible for their children's actions but politicians can use it as a rhetorical device to shift the blame for what's happening back onto the parents," says Robbie Gilligan, who lectures in social work at TCD's department of social studies.

"It's too easy to blame the parents you have to look back at why and when things start to go wrong in the parent child relationship. It's not simply about parental indifference, laziness or malice. Some people have never learned how to be good parents because of their own experiences they themselves may have been badly parented or were institutionalised for example. Parents who are illiterate, chronically ill, depressed or are having problems in the relationship with their partners may also experience difficulties in dealing with their children. .. Some parents have very few, or even no supports, they can call on."

EVEN by the time a child is two years of age, a number of parents are beginning to lose control, Gilligan says. "Getting children on the right track and giving them self reliance and self discipline depends on managing their eating and sleeping patterns and temper tantrums from an early stage. Most parents cope with this, but some people find it a formidable task and lack the inner strength and confidence to stand up to their children. Every time there's a confrontation the kid wins," he says.

Many of the children who eventually get into trouble come from families where parental control has been lost. Parents need detailed help and encouragement at an early stage and at community level to enable them to deal with their children in an appropriate manner, he says.

According to Gilligan, the social services are busy dealing with the effects of juvenile delinquency, while the causes remain untouched.

"We need a national debate on the role of men in child rearing. . Many situations go wrong because of the father's attitude and behaviour towards his children he may be ineffective, may reject them or lash out in fits and starts. Not knowing the identity of their fathers can cause problems for some chil....... Children need fathers who are interested in them, even if they don't live with them," he stresses.

"We need to look at the issue in the wider context of family support rather than family blame," confirms Noirin Hayes, who is the DIT's head of social studies. "It's too simplistic to say make the parents responsible. We need community based family support services that emerge in co-operation with the community... The State owes it to families to finance comprehensive family support in every community not just in designated areas. It may represent a serious infrastructural investment but no more than the £750 million they're giving to the potholes and in the long run it could have an enormous impact."

Nick Killian, who is PRO of the National Parents' Council Post Primary (NPC-PP), sees some merit in giving older children from the age of 14 community service, instead of fining their parents. Meanwhile, the NPC-PP is calling for the establishment of a national partnership forum, in which parents, teachers and school managers will work out national norms of behaviour and sanctions that could be adapted at local level.

"Parents and schools have to work together to create agreed codes of discipline and sanctions if the parents are on board there will be no problems," he says.

All the signs are that if the minister, Austin Currie, is bent on making parents criminally responsible for the actions of their children, he's backing the wrong horse.