Cuts to welfare for parents of truants?
GetUp today has posted to its blog about the Governments plan to cut assistance to the families of truants.
My comment on the blog is the first one and I will copy it here;
Christian
August 26th, 2008
I had a relatively rough childhood. My dad left, my mum had terminal cancer and as a young teen, I was not keen on school and I just didn't go. We had truant offices come around and try to make me go, they threatened us with fines and all sorts of things. I felt stupidly guilty because I wanted to be near my mum who was really sick (and I think she wanted me there too, but would never say that - she urged me to go to school). In the end, it didn't work but surely made our lives so much more stressful. School was never understanding of our situation and I never felt I could delve into my issues with them anyway. Maybe thats what the government should look at improving? Had the government cut the piddly amount of assistance they were giving my mum, it would have been devastating. I can see this causing a lot of issues for a lot of desperate families and I daresay it will cause domestic violence in a lot of those households.
That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the plan. I think that more time, money and effort should be spent trying to give kids a more supportive environment to grow up in.
Surely it would not only cause fewer issues for families in these situations, but provide more jobs if there were to be more community centres and local hands-on assistance. Manly’s Youth Centre has (or, maybe, had) a program called HELP (Helping Early Leavers Program) which was extremely beneficial to me when I was about 14 and this type of thing needs to be more widely available and people need to be aware that these things exist. But, this is the governments response to programs like HELP.
Things need to change, and now.
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