Back to the workhouse?

Tweet Alwyn has reacted strongly to the proposal announced on Tuesday by Gordon Brown to offer young parents and their families supported living facilities rather than simply allocating them council housing. Personally, I'm not sure what to make of the proposal without seeing a great deal more detail.

Where Brown is right in my view is that far too often teenage parents receive wholly inadequate support, and that it is a mistake to simply see them as a 'housing' issue, to be resolved by allocating a council house. If what Brown is proposing instead of that is an assessment of the needs of such families on an individual basis, and ensuring that there is a range of solutions available offering different levels of support according to those needs, then the proposal is worthy of more discussion rather than being dismissed outright.

If on the other hand, he is simply playing to the gallery, trying to appear to be tough on the young parents involved by making sure that their experience is sufficiently unpleasant to act as a deterrent to others, then he deserves all of Alwyn's condemnation – and more besides.

Teenage pregnancy is a serious issue; but the solutions we need to find are those that prevent it before it happens, not those which stigmatise it after the event. At the moment, I'm still unsure whether Brown is offering more and better support for those who find themselves in that position, or making their lives difficult in order to deter others. Like much of what he said on Tuesday, it's a case of headlines and sound bites rather then substance.