Whoever dreamt up Labour's Mobile Mammas scheme needs shooting, not so much for the policy but for the title. As Richard Hazlewood has noted it sounds more like a takeaway pizza van franchise than a scheme to support working parents. Rather a sexist term too. It suggests that men would not be allowed to join the scheme; given Rhodri Morgan's comments that single mothers would be the main beneficiaries of the scheme surely a few Mobile Pappas might provide the children of single mothers with a welcome male role-model.
What Mobile Mammas are are community nursing assistants who come in to your home to look after your kids when they are sick, so you don't need to take time off work. Rhodri claims that these assistants won't be strangers but people that you and your children get to know and trust. But surely only children with long term illnesses (who have community nursing assistance already) could get to know and trust their Mobile Mammas - you cant build up a relationship with somebody who pops around just once or twice a year when your off school with the bug.
When my kids have been feeling poorly only their Mam and Dad are good enough to comfort them, even people they know well like their Nain or an aunty are a poor second best to Mam and Dad. Telling a mother that she can't stay with a sick kid who's pining for his Mam, that she'll have to call in a virtual stranger instead, seems to me to be an extremely callous policy.
It doesn’t appear to be a very well thought out policy on public health grounds either. Fresh from looking after little Mary who has the flu - Mobile Mamma comes to our house to look after little Johnny with a broken arm, spreading the flu germ in the process to add to poor little Johnny's woes. Thanks but no thanks!
As Numpti is likely to be out of a job after May 4th, he might consider taking his Mobile Mamma's scheme to BBC 2's Dragons Den to see if he can get some backing for it as a little home spun business. That would be a much more appropriate place in which to try and sell the scheme than is an Election Manifesto launch.
POST SCRIPT
As the scheme is to be part funded by the Department of Works and Pensions, this is not actually an assembly election pledge announcement, but an announcement of a Westminster government pilot scheme
Another blog post on this subject Ordovicius: "Labour Insults Working Families" say Plaid
yes I agree that this policy is laughable. It certainly appears sexist from the outset, even when you don't know what it entails. Today already in the WM, child carers have come out against this policy which shows that there are grave concerns about it's implementation.
ReplyDeleteNext they'll be lookin after kids, while the mum is out on the town, n dont say im talkin sh*t cos i've met too many teenage mums who send their child to a complete stranger just so they can get a "deserved?" night out!
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