The chief executive of Barnardo's, Martin Narey, says more newborn babies should be taken into care to stop them being damaged by their parents.
Mr Narey told the Observer: "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.
"I have seen children sent back to homes that I certainly wouldn't have sent them back to. I have been extremely surprised at decisions taken.
"If we really cared about the interests of the child, we would take children away as babies and put them into permanent adoptive families, where we know they will have the best possible outcome."
I couldn't agree more. Too often the interests of bad parents are put before the interests of the children.
However the Government appears to have rejected the call.Children's Secretary Ed Balls says removing babies born to problem parents should not be a first resort.
So is it better to give the parents a second chance and leave the kids to get more and more screwed up?
Mr Narey was speaking out after last week's case of the two young brothers from Doncaster who launched a horrific attack on two other boys.
The brothers had been taken into care just a few weeks before the attack.
Mr Narey, the former director general of the Prison Service, said: "If you can take a baby very young and get them quickly into a permanent adoptive home, then we know that is where we have success.
"That's a view that is seen as a heresy among social services, where the thinking is that if someone, a parent, has failed, they deserve another chance.
"My own view is that we just need to take more children into care if we really want to put the interests of the child first."
Mr Narey admitted his views would be seen as "illiberal heresy" but said there would be far fewer problems if social workers intervened quickly.
What do you think? Should bad parents be given a second chance?
Source: AOL News
Source: BBC