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To: Department for Education

Stop the Privatisation of Child Protection Services

Dear Mr. Gove,

Please reject your departments’ proposals to privatise Child Protection Services.

Allowing private companies to bid over the power to put children into the care system, or leave them at the hands of suspected abusers, will affect families up and down the country.

Please listen to the advice of those commissioned to research the plans, and reject a policy which could lead to wrongful decisions being made, for the sake of targets, on behalf of Britain's children.

Why is this important?

Britain's children should not be protected for profit.

Yet, under new legislation proposed by Michael Gove's Department for Education, private companies could have the chance to decide whether children stay in their family homes or are put into the care system.

Six weeks is too short a time for "consultation", and experts in the field have voiced concern over the proposals, as well as the lack of in-depth research.

It's time to stand beside the 37 social services experts who have publicly condemned the plans for subjecting much-needed services to the "fickleness and failings" of private companies like Serco, G4S, and ATOS.

In the past two years, we have seen the catastrophic impact of privatising public services. The private firm, ATOS, should have taught us a lesson through their failed Work Capability Assessments, which found millions of sick people "fit for work". Many died without benefits, and the government lost millions of pounds from appeals made by wrongly assessed claimants.

Protecting young people is too important a service to hand over to the highest bidder.

Tell the Department of Education that we don't want to see the lives of vulnerable children in the hands of target-chasing private companies.

Updates

2014-05-18 15:18:52 +0100

100 signatures reached

2014-05-17 19:12:19 +0100

50 signatures reached

2014-05-17 16:36:54 +0100

25 signatures reached

2014-05-17 15:47:52 +0100

10 signatures reached