How does government intrusion on family privacy help kids if, as you say, the bureaucracy that is supposed to act on the information is inefficient and overworked? If the case workers can't deal with the cases they have now, how does creating a big database on everyone help? Wouldn't it just create more leads that they can't follow up on?

Yes, some terrible things are done to children in private. But the solution isn't to eliminate privacy. In my experience, educators and physicians already look for the signs of abuse and report suspicions. There just aren't enough resources devoted to the problem and/or the state policies for dealing with a child in an abusive home are ineffective. Don't take away everyone's privacy because some people are bad parents--I won't have privacy, and kids will still be abused.

"Seriously, isn't there a better way to ensure the safety of at-risk children, like, say, hiring more well-qualified people to investigate abuse claims?"

What does "well-qualified" mean in this context? Do you have any idea the caseload these people take on? I do pro bono work as a lawyer in this field. I have about 4 clients and it is, seriously, the most bureaucratic, inefficient mess I've ever seen. I can't imagine doing it full-time. Caseworkers have dozens and dozens of the same kinds of cases. It is unfair to blame people who do work (for SHIT pay) that many, many people would not/could not do.

My concern with the program would be losing the forest for the trees with the program, but I see no problem with the state "intruding" on familial privacy. Some horrific things have been done in private and children are completely defenseless.

That's a toss-up.

I don't think Louisiana is alone in underfunding childrens' services agencies. It's a problem in many states, and I agree, it's where the reform needs to start. There should be adequate funding and staffing, better organization and tracking, and accountability for outcomes. Right now, it's just a zoo.

I've found that people's interest in properly supporting social services for live children is inversely proportional to their obsession with the unborn ones. Ditto for education and evolution. It's pretty easy to get all worked up about "values" that don't cost anything, and much harder to get excited about spending actual money to improve actual people's lives. It's also much easier to get excited about fancy new initiatives and "solutions," rather than investing the money to make the old initiatives and solutions actually work. Kind of like immigration "reform." We could solve illegal immigration if we wanted to hire enough border guards and immigration enforcement personnel, but it's easier to get all worked up about passing tough new laws and increasing the penalties for laws we can't enforce. This UK database is just more of the same--rather than see why a kid who was already flagged as at risk was left in a bad situation, they want to create a great new nanny-state database so they can collect information on more kids that they won't be able to follow up on.

Anyone else find it fishy that the same crowd who would sacrifice a grown woman's life and/or livelihood for a zygote ardently demands the freedom to hit the resulting child?

I don't know what the system is like in the UK, but here, these workers need help, in the form of a decent wage and more investigators to spread out the workload, so that each worker can devote the appropriate amount of attention to each case.

I'm in Louisiana, which is like #2 in everything bad and #49 in everything good (thanks, Mississippi!), so I'm sure this doesn't apply everywhere. But when you actually look at what these social workers are asked to do - the sheer volume of cases they have to take on, the truly traumatic things they deal with regularly (autopsy on an 18-month old, anyone? interviewing a 6 year old about being raped by his/her dad?), the huge responsibility they have to make fair assessments of whether or not abuse has occured and what to do about it if it has - take that and weigh it against, say, my mother's salary at retirement, after 30 years of this, which was around $40k. That's for the most experienced investigator in the office.

The point is, yes, the answer is probably in fixing the system that's supposed to protect these kids. And there are grossly incompetent workers out there. But, just like with teachers, there are good ones who either get overloaded, can't handle the low pay, and/or burn out after 2 or 3 years.

I would love to see our Family Values™ government learn a lesson from this drastic move in the UK, rather than imitate it - stop wasting time and money on gay people and abortion, and maybe help some actual living children for once.

I'd hazard to say that there are laws on the books that ought to halt child abuse in its tracks, but as people have mentioned already: they aren't enforced. If I hit you on the street, I would be arrested and charged with battery or assault or both. If I hit my husband in our house, I'd be arrested and charged with battery, assault, domestic violence, or so on. Yet if I hit my child, even in the middle of Times Square, even though I'm much larger than them and very capable of killing them physically, I'm not arrested. In fact people will proudly proclaim my right to hit my child and will denounce anyone who questions the practice of hitting children as being soft on discipline. Nevermind how inconsistent this is is, viewing it from the outside one is forced to admit that children are obviously not viewed as human beings in this culture since they are denied the rights our society claims to give to everyone.

A child has no freedom of religion, they have freedom of their parents' religion. A child has no freedom of speech when they have something to say (I think we can agree that a child throwing a tantrum is more or less the immature equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater). With circumcision so widely practiced, it's evident that a child does not have a right to bodily integrity or even to equal protection under the law from sexual assault. Of course it would be sexual assault if I attacked a grown man on the street with a scalpel, expertly circumcising him! In other words, out society affords children no rights or protections from their own parents, condoning even child battery (what would happen if you or I grabbed someone and spanked them on the subway??), then we question why abuse happens?

From personal experience and straight from the very books advocating using the rod, corporal punishment wears off. The wooden spoon that worked when they were five fails when they're seven and the parent who has no other coping mechanisms is "forced" to upgrade to something more severe. A significant number of people don't know when to stop, after all they've already crossed the line into hitting another person which we simply don't do in other aspects of our life. Children die from overzealous disciplining.

Unlike in the case of this intrusive spying program, I would argue parents don't have a special right to hit people so cracking down on domestic abuse (which is any hitting when between adults, but only egregious hitting when between an adult and child??) seems appropriate. Countries that have updated their laws to make them more consistent in this regard had a generation of unruly, undisciplined children and have now adjusted. Sweden is a good example, it's simply unacceptable there today, the nation is very child-friendly, civilization has not collapsed, no one has had their rights infringed upon, children have their rights protected, and child abuse has dropped. I'm not sure what impact, if any, this has had on neglect, emotional abuse, or sexual abuse, although I hear they now have programs focusing on educating parents in good communication. Yelling, demeaning and haranguing became unacceptable to them, but only after they'd taken the physical abuse wool from over their eyes.

For my part, I would never hit a child, there's no excuse, and I'd press charges on any relative that tried hitting mine. "Discipline" is no excuse for abuse.