Conservative approach ‘could help so much’
The Conservative approach to policy could do much to tackle the problems of modern day society, the shadow secretary of state for the family said today.
Opening a Conservative party seminar on children in care, Theresa May said the state’s failure to provide children in care with a hope for the future was a “scandal” that required urgent action.
There was considerable hard work being carried out in schools and by social workers and foster parents to improve children’s chances in life, but more needed to be done, she said.
And Ms May insisted that it was problems such as these that the Conservatives should be focusing on if they were to win back voters.
“So long as we fail to come up with radical solutions to the ills that are affecting modern society, then we will fail to leave the British public with our vision of a caring, compassionate society,” she told the meeting of charity workers and child welfare organisations.
“By being seen as not addressing the issues that effect society today, we allow ourselves to be perceived as out of touch with the views of society.”
She said the Tories’ approach to politics, based on local decision-making, working with voluntary groups and civil society, “can add so much to the quality of so many people’s lives”.
“But if we are to do so we must first remind ourselves that there are no Conservative issues – there are just Conservative instincts, values and methods. That is why it is so important that we should address issues like the one we are discussing today.”
More than 61,000 children are currently in care, an increase of a fifth since 1997 and the highest level in more than 20 years, she said. One in eight of these were moved to a new placement three times last year, 12 per cent of whom were aged under two.
But this was just the start of the “harsh realities of life in care”, Ms May said. Six in ten children in care leave without having achieved a single GCSE, falling well short of a government target of 75 per cent.
“This is a scandal that none of us would accept for our own children. Yet every day, we accept it for the children of others. Children that we the state, are supposed to care for,” she said.
