THE failings of Britain's care system have been many over the years. Meant as a safety net for children, social care has unarguably failed in its duty to look after children and in many cases put them in worse situations than those they were taken out of.

On Monday night these failings were illustrated excellently through the eyes of the actor Neil Morrissey who looked back at his time in a care home in the BBC documentary Neil Morrissey: Care Home Kid.

It was a compelling, human piece of television as Neil uncovered not just his own life but the lives of other children at care homes in the 70s and 80s.

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DOES it matter what class our children are? With new statistics showing 71% of the country regard themselves as middle class it would appear a classless society is moving closer.

The study, conducted by the think tank Britain Thinks, shows a steep rise in the country's aspirations, with almost three quarters of those surveyed considering themselves as middle- class compared with 27% in the 1980s.

The research shows only 24% of people describe themselves as working class.

I'm surprised so many people consider themselves middle class because I know many middle class people who still like to think of themselves as "working class heroes".

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SCHOOL is an incredibly important time in anybody's life. Education gives a person the ability to succeed. To be equipped with the skills for everyday life.

Qualifications are the bits of paper which equip you with the proof you have a level of learning and the playground is the place in which children learn about society. Forming relationships, dealing with authority, developing emotional intelligence.

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HOW much stress should you expose your children to? Taking my son away on yet another outing, this time to relatives in Sweden, my mother-in-law made comments to the effect of "children like routine".
She's far too polite to say it to me directly, but I know she thinks I do too much with Otis.

IT CAME to me when the Joker, as played by Jack Nicholson, was making Kim Basinger cry on TV.

My husband was watching Batman when Otis looked up and said: "nasty, turn it off".

He wasn't joking either, and my husband and I had to acknowledge that the time has come when we can only watch age-appropriate TV in front of our son.

IT CAME to me when the Joker, as played by Jack Nicholson, was making Kim Basinger cry on TV.

My husband was watching Batman when Otis looked up and said: "nasty, turn it off".

He wasn't joking either, and my husband and I had to acknowledge that the time has come when we can only watch age-appropriate TV in front of our son.

GOOD, basic care is a human right which should begin with a child's first cry and end with a person's last breath.

Which is why a report by the Health Service Ombudsman this week, showing some horrific neglect of elderly patients in the NHS, is so shocking

I FEEL like a bad mum. I went away this weekend and Otis ate a significant amount of rubbish including pizza, sausages, crisps, a cookie, breakfast cereal and two fudges.

As much as I intended to lovingly feed Otis home-cooked meals, two things have stood in my way. One, time to cook from scratch and, two, Otis' reluctance to eat healthy food.

Otis loves potato waffles and cried out last night at my parents' house for "pizza and potato waffles" much to my shame.

Other foods Otis loves are fish fingers, biscuits, chocolate and more breakfast cereal, which sometimes sends me to despair.

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I'VE been following with fascination the furore going on around a new book claiming Chinese mothers are better than their Western counterparts .

Amy Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother extols the virtues of strict parenting with an emphasis on academic achievement.

Her argument is strict discipline and heavy parental involvement make Chinese children higher achievers than their Western counterparts.

It's an alien concept to those of us brought up in a more "hands-off" manner

HAPPY New Year and how about a New Year divorce? Maybe not. After our Christmas experience which, we decided, was "pockets of niceness in a cloud of stress", my husband and I are celebrating getting through the past two months and managing to hold on to our marriage.

After two months of building work, which was meant to take two weeks (and is still unfinished), a massive leak through the kitchen ceiling over Christmas, three weeks of living with in-laws and all the pressures of festive merry-making we're frankly glad we're both still talking to each other.

Divorces always increase after Christmas, and for the first year I can see why.