Well, If You’re Bringing Up The Subject Of Magical Thinking, Anon…

I don't normally wander to the 'letters' page of the 'Guardian' but the response to Gaby's post drew my eye:

The narrative that the parents should have done more to let the authorities know about their son and that the authorities could then have done something is purely magical thinking.

Well, when it comes to magical thinking, there's nothing to beat the idea that people from another culture, one steeped in violence and misogyny, will adopt Englishness by osmosis once given asylum here.

You can certainly section patients who pose a risk to themselves or others if there is a bed available (there often isn’t), and in the case of very high-risk or violent patients the capacity is even more restricted in terms of beds in specialist units.

We need to start having some much more honest conversations about how this issue is to be dealt with, what options the taxpayer can and will fund, how much capacity we want to have in the system, and what we’re going to pay the staff who care for these patients.

There’s a lot the taxpayer is willing to fund, and this is one! It is, after all, the taxpayer who is most at risk. Not the people making the decisions, and probably not the people writing letters in the comfort of their no-doubt enrichment-free middle class houses.

To blame the parents is to take the easy and lazy solution, and that will do nothing to keep children like Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe safe.

Brave word, who from?  

Name and address supplied

Oh. 

Yes, ideally the parents should have done more, but there but for the grace of God go many parents.

What sort of idiot says that?  

Jane Ghosh Bristol

Figures. Bristol. Another hive of wooly-thinking.

What’s missing in the discussion of parental culpability is the concept of support. Rudakubana’s parents, like many others, seem to have believed that the only role of social workers is to remove children. If we had a system, fully funded and with appropriate training, that aimed to support parents through all the complex decisions they have to make, parents might find it easier to raise concerns and consider the consequences.

Ah, another bit og magical thinking, if only we had unlimited funding to play softly, softly with foreign thugs everything would be roses! Is it another middle class 'Guardian' reading woman? 

Ruth Valentine London

Of cours it is!