care can never be more than a sticking-plaster solution

Recent research in England does indeed indicate that too many children spend too long in homes where they are subject to abuse and neglect (Take children into care more quickly, says Gove, 17 November). It also shows that, contrary to popular perceptions, the majority of children benefit from care, and that abused and neglected children tend to do better if they remain looked after by the local authority than if they return home.

However, while there is a strong case to be made for making swifter decisions for those children who cannot safely remain with their birth parents, care can never be more than a sticking-plaster solution. If children are to be adequately protected from abuse and neglect we need to address the reasons why maltreatment occurs, rather than simply increase the pressure on an already overburdened care system. Intensive parenting programmes for vulnerable parents can be effective and should be introduced more widely. However, it would be more valuable to address those primary factors such as poverty, homelessness and unemployment that are known to increase the family stressors such as substance abuse and domestic violence that render maltreatment more likely. But such an initiative would be at odds with forthcoming and proposed welfare reforms such as capping housing benefit and restricting income support to the first two children in a family, which are likely to increase rather than reduce these stressors.
Professor Harriet Ward
Loughborough University

• The call by Michael Gove to remove more children earlier is deeply regrettable and portends a chilling future for families in England. His call comes at a time of unprecedented retrenchment of vital preventive services and when poverty rates are rising. The changes advocated will bear down disproportionately on the already disadvantaged. Mr Gove is right on the need for change. Our research (and that of many others) reveals a pattern of "too little for too long and too much too late". However, the changes needed should build upon the desires of most children to be cared for safely within their family and the already existing evidence of capacity within family networks to support such desires. This capacity needs to be augmented, not ignored. Otherwise we risk children being removed unnecessarily from their family networks with the attendant consequences for their sense of identity, belonging and wellbeing – and indeed the straining public purse.
Professor Brid Featherstone Open University, Professor Kate Morris University of Nottingham, Professor June Thoburn UEA, Professor Jane Tunstill Royal Holloway, University of London, Professor Sue White University of Birmingham

• Gove says children should be taken into care more quickly to rescue them from "a life of soiled nappies and scummy baths, chaos and hunger, hopelessness and despair". Given that the Conservatives have destroyed the industrial base, destroyed jobs for the working class and cut benefits, and are tipping people out of their homes, is he surprised that this can happen? And now he wants to take the children of working-class parents from them? Is all this part of the demonisation of the working class? What evidence does he have of the numbers of such children having to live such a life, and from what areas? Perhaps an FoI request should be made to obtain this information.
George Simnett
Burton on Trent, Staffordshire