Smith: Use voluntary and charitable organisations to tackle child abuse

Two separate sets of figures released today show a 44% rise in crimes of child cruelty over the past decade and a 1.7% rise in the number of children's hearings over the past year, to 43,614. This is the highest number since the system began.

Liz Smith MSP, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education & Lifelong Learning, said:

"These are chilling statistics and more evidence of broken lives and a broken society. There are now 2nd and even 3rd generations of mothers and fathers with little or no parenting skills because if the way they themselves were brought up.

""We must be prepared to think ahead. If not, all we are doing is engaging in ‘sticking plaster' politics trying to fix broken things now with such bits of solution or part solution as we can cobble together.

"There is no simple solution because the causes are complex, complicated and deep rooted. There may be generations of drug or alcohol dependency, poor education and no employment.

"But in Scotland we do have a host of voluntary and charitable organisations more than able to help young people develop into being effective parents. These must be utilised to optimum effect. No one political party has all the answers and indeed all of us must be prepared to engage and debate, before one of Scotland's creeping problems is totally irreversible."

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