Mr Narey’s statements came in the wake of last week’s court case involving two young brothers from Doncaster who viciously attacked an 11-year-old boy and his nine-year-old nephew. The brothers had been taken into care just three weeks before the attacks.
Narey, who is a former director general of the Prison Service, claimed he was not reacting to this case in particular, but speaking about child protection issues in the UK in general. He argued that more children should be taken into care from the moment they are born, stating: “We can’t keep trying to fix families that are completely broken. It sounds terrible, but I think we try too hard with birth parents.”
In a Government response to Mr Narey’s calls, Ed Balls, Children’s Secretary, rejected the idea that more newborn children should be taken into care and advocated working with the families in the first instance, to see whether problems could be resolved.
Mr Balls said: “I don’t think the right thing to do in these cases is immediately to put children into care .”
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