Surely the legislation must instead focus upon the child, and all other groups and individuals must reconfigure themselves to best serve whatever needs the child has, as mediated through the mentor. Imagine it visually with the child as the hub of a wheel, the mentor protecting the child, and the care services linked as and when they are required to this hub like spokes. At present, the child is a little dot in a complex legal matrix of guidelines, laws and responsibilities. Too many children are lost in the endless bureaucratic paperchase of the current system. The child must be placed at the centre of the system.
Mentors are cheap and cost effective.
Rather than train every teacher to be a pseudo-social worker, surely it is better to fire this 'magic bullet' into the system, to relieve the pressure upon an overloaded, fragmented, and failing system. The low costs of nationwide mentoring might also be compared to the high costs society pays for the failure of the system we currently have. Children who become disaffected at school, or who cannot cope are unlikely to receive support under the present system. They are spun to the periphery of society, and they will stay there. They are most likely to sink into crime, hurting themselves, hurting others, and costing society billions of pounds a year.