Respect ‘tsar’ Casey tells professionals to be more willing to hand out parenting orders

Social workers must confront families with problems and be prepared to impose sanctions such as parenting orders, the head of the government’s Respect taskforce told delegates.

Louise Casey said approaches to dealing with families were “not coherent enough” and protecting vulnerable children must “run in parallel” with more provision for parents with difficulties.

She pointed to the need for intensive work with families “as a whole” rather than focusing on individual cases.

Casey also called for a debate with social care professionals on how to tackle problem families. “If some of our approaches don’t change we will continue to pass on generational disadvantage and generational antisocial behaviour,” she said.

She said the Respect agenda was driven by the need for a “decent standard of human behaviour”.