The Budget
We
were brought up on budgets where the main question was whether
the Chancellor would put a penny on the beer. Now they are occasions
for announcing that statues will be put up to royals and for
the amalgamation of inspection systems. It is no wonder that
Dame Denise Platt grumbled about the latter announcement. The
inspection of children’s homes has been really messed
up by the Government.
Not
long back it was the responsibility of local government. The
National Care Standards Commission (NCSC) took over, but they
had no sooner got going than they were told that there was to
be an amalgamation of the inspection services within the Department
of Health’s sphere of responsibility, and the Commission
for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) was set up, with Denise Platt
as Chair. Now, Gordon Brown has announced that Ofsted will be
taking over inspection of children’s services, and the
rest of the CSCI will be gobbled up too.
The
official rationale is that the volume of inspection is to be
reduced and that the inspectorial bodies therefore need to be
rationalised. Certainly, there is an argument for reducing inspection,
as service providers have to spend an awful lot of time dancing
to the tune of a myriad of statutory quality monitors, though
there is also an argument for ensuring that the services for
the most vulnerable people (such as children in residential
care) should always be subject to careful scrutiny.
What
is inexcusable in our view is that the Government should have
thought all this out in advance instead of changing things three
times over. Every time a new system is brought in there is reorganisation
from the top down, with anxiety for those involved, pay-offs
for those not appointed to the new organisation, time wasted
on the establishment of new systems and structures, and increasingly
greater difficulty in establishing a sense of stability and
good morale in the workforce.
The
cost is enormous, partly in cash but also in the impact on the
professionals involved, whether retired, re-engaged or promoted,
and, most important of all, on the services they provide. While
change is proceeding, those affected are distracted and standards
risk being unclear. The losers in this ultimately are the children
who need to be protected.
Politicians
seem to be unaware that their brilliant schemes to restructure
services can actually cause harm. A study of children in long
term care showed that one of the key factors which had led to
their remaining in care was that at crucial points in their
lives their social workers were undergoing reorganisation.
Of
course, change is necessary at times, but let those responsible
for it make sure that it really is necessary, as there is a
price to pay as well. Fundamental restructuring often fails
to deliver the anticipated benefits, and if repeated, it can
undermine loyalty and the personal investment of staff in the
services. The National Health Service has suffered this on a
number of occasions.
Dame
Denise Platt has invested a lot in getting the CSCI set up,
and her annoyance is understandable, especially as it is reported
that Lord Warner had told her that they would not be subject
to further reorganisation.
Grandparents
In
many economically less developed countries extended family bonds
are stronger than in this country and it is accepted that grandparents
have a major role to play in bringing up children. It is rather
a sad comment on our society therefore that Grandparents Plus
feels it has to call on the Government to offer grandparents
who care for children the right to ask employers for flexible
working. Apparently nearly five million grandparents spend the
equivalent of five days a week caring for their grandchildren.
The
fact that we have to spell out a right for them to look after
grandchildren speaks volumes about the nature of family relationships.
Perhaps one day we will have to have contracts in which the
rights and responsibilities of a child’s relatives are
all spelt out, and we can then have lots of tribunals and court
cases and conciliation services to fight over the contracts...
Havens
The
Children’s Society has been raising the question of young
runaways again and arguing for places to be set up which can
provide for them safely. Campaigners have pointed out that there
is only one establishment in the country which offers this service.
We
think that this issue is important, but that it is being looked
at from the wrong viewpoint. What is the difference between
a haven for runaways and a local authority children’s
home, or a foster home? If, as they stand, foster and residential
care are not meeting the needs of this group of children, then
some need to be adapted to do so. It should be possible for
places to be found in children’s own communities to meet
their needs, rather than set up special places in the big cities
to act as magnets.
The
question, then, is why existing services are not meeting the
needs of runaways. That may be a complicated question to answer,
but it has to be solved, especially if it is from foster placements
or children’s homes that the young people are running
away. Research in the past has shown that running away is more
a function of the placement than of the child. The issue needs
to be revisited.
Social
Work and Society
We
have wanted to set up a professional journal as part of this
Webmag for some years, but have not had the backing to do so.
Now, an on-line journal has been started up, called Social
Work and Society – to be found on www.socwork.de.
It has a respectable list of Editors and Consultants and the
contents look good.
A
key selling point has to be that it is free. These days, it
should not be necessary to have to pay out large subscriptions
(are they still calculated in guineas?) to have access to the
latest professional thinking – theory, research findings,
book reviews etc.. It should be possible to access these things
electronically, and for the archives to build up and remain
available to anyone thereafter, unlike the hard copy journals
which lie on subscribers’ shelves gathering dust. Because
publishers have to make their money, they guard their copyrights,
which restricts material to the few hundred subscribers to each
journal, even when they have electronic versions. So, hats off
to Social Work and Society; it’s the way things
have to go.
Of
course, Social Work and Society is not a child care
journal as such, and there are lots of aspects of work with
children which lie outside social work, so if any sponsor would
like to help us set up a web journal on child care, it could
complement Social Work and Society.
A
Good Muse
So,
you’ve got a couple of hours to kill in London between
meetings: what do you do? Fight the crowds in Oxford Street
and buy something you didn’t really want? Have a long
coffee in a Starbucks and read the whole of the Evening Standard
horoscope? If you want a really interesting time, go along to
the Foundling Museum on the north side of Brunswick Square,
not far from Russell Square tube station.
It
was opened last year, it is nicely laid out and it has a few
interactive gadgets which can help to keep the children interested.
It is a small museum, focused on three interconnected themes.
Its main theme, on the ground floor, is the history of the Foundling
Hospital established after years of campaigning by Thomas Coram,
a ship-builder and entrepreneur who worked to found colonies
in America, but whose passion was to help abandoned and unwanted
children.
On
the middle floor are the paintings given to the Hospital, set
in the preserved rooms and galleries used by the Board. On the
top floor is a small museum dedicated to Handel, one of the
Hospital’s early Trustees, who laid on special concerts
to raise funds. The tickets went at half a guinea each, which
must have been pretty pricey, and they were so crowded that
gentlemen were asked not to wear swords and ladies were asked
not to wear hoops in their dresses.
When
you’ve had enough, there is a little cafe where you can
get cream teas, and if the weather is nice, sit outside and
enjoy a view of the Square. If you haven’t time for the
museum, you can just pop in to the cafe. But then you’d
miss the chance to learn about being a foundling in the eighteenth
century, see the children’s uniforms, the sad tokens left
by the mothers, and hear the accounts of former Coram boys and
girls of the ways in which the Hospital changed their lives.
See
www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk
for more details.
Death
Thomas
Coram was motivated to set up the Foundling Hospital because
of the horrendous death rate among abandoned children in eighteenth
century England. In Zimbabwe, the picture is horrendous now.
According to UNICEF, one in eight children will die before the
age of five, by contrast with a figure of one in twelve in 1990.
Seventy per cent of the deaths are due to AIDS, which has also
left a million children without parents in Zimbabwe.
This
situation will not be remedied until the politics of Zimbabwe
permit the economy to improve, food to become plentiful again
and medical help to be given to the children. Until those in
power change their policies, the children will suffer. It took
Thomas Coram twenty years of badgering those in authority to
get his Hospital set up. Let us hope things change faster than
that in Zimbabwe.
A
Children’s Champion
Elsewhere
in this issue we are reporting on the first public speech made
by Professor Al Aynsley-Green since his appointment as the first
Children’s Commissioner in England. He is a good choice
for a lot of reasons – his approachability (“Call
me Al”), his enthusiasm for the task, his knowledge about
matters concerning children and young people, his independence
and willingness to stand up to Government, and his success in
going through a daunting selection process in which, among other
things, he was interviewed and tested by a panel of young people.
In
his speech he asked why there are no great champions for children
today in England, like Dr Barnardo or Mary Carpenter. Certainly
children need champions, but we think that they are there. Their
causes may not be as graphic as that facing Dr Barnardo, and
they may not hit the headlines in quite the same way. It would
be invidious to list them, as we would probably miss some out.
Maybe Al was simply facing up to the call to adopt the mantle
himself.
Children
Now referred to him as “A strong candidate for a weak
role”, as the English Commissioner has fewer powers than
his counterpart in other European countries, and it is said
that he may not be allowed to join their association as a full
member. Perhaps that will be his first test as an advocate.
Do
Babies Have Votes?
Our
local newspaper has just carried a special photo supplement
with the two hundred and ninety-eight smiling faces of babies
and toddlers entered into the annual Bonny Bouncing Baby Competition.
It would fill us with dread to have to judge such an event.
However
ugly or weird these children look, they all have at least one
parent who considers them beautiful enough to be put into the
competition, and it’s a good thing that each one has its
loving champion. But it means that when the winner is announced,
the judge will have one friend for life and two hundred and
ninety-seven sets of disappointed and angry parents out for
his/her blood.
It’s
obviously a job for parliamentary candidates to avoid in the
run-up to the election. It may be traditional for them to go
round kissing strange babies (or would that now be considered
abusive?) but to alienate such a group might be to lose one’s
winning margin.
Incidentally,
can anyone explain why so many of the babies look like Charles
Kennedy?
Babies’
Favourite Colours
Still
on the subject of babies: ever wondered how babies see colour
and which ones do they prefer? The Surrey Baby Lab, part of
UniS' Department of Psychology, was set up to investigate exactly
this.
With
over 250 babies having visited so far, some very fascinating
findings have been produced. Interestingly, it has been shown
that infants, at just four months old, can already categorise
a range of colours.
Based
at the University of Surrey and led by Dr Anna Franklin and
her team, the aim of the current study is to find out which
colours babies prefer and why. Babies are sat in front of a
monitor and are shown pairs of colours. A small camera beneath
the monitor records their viewing behaviour.
Researchers
can time how long babies look at each of the colours in the
pair. By monitoring their reactions, researchers can determine
which colours grab babies' attention more. Preference for the
eight basic colours - red, green, yellow, blue, orange, pink,
purple, brown - is measured.
When
infants have completed the task, researchers are able to tell
parents which colour their baby prefers. But pity the poor baby
who ends up in a room painted yellow because that was his preference
at four months – when a few months down the line red might
be his favourite!
The
study does have serious aims though and important implications
for our understanding of how colour vision develops.
Dr
Franklin, who set up the Surrey Baby Lab five years ago, said,
"It is important to investigate how babies see colour and
how colour vision develops because this help us understand how
babies react to their environment and will inform us about what
kind of visual stimulation babies need.”
Spell
Check
We
find spell checks a constant source of wry amusement. Writing
Britishness in an email the other day, the spell check suggested
Brutishness. An insult prepared by an American perhaps? On the
other hand, there are no doubt those around the world who would
say that the spell check got it right, what with the shadier
aspects of our imperial past and today’s football hooliganism.
Did
You See? ...
...
Jamie Oliver doing his stuff on the telly? “Getting all
the cheap junk out of schools and getting the dinner ladies
cooking real food is going to help kids across Britain”,
he said, and his graphic programmes have made school food a
major political issue. How school caterers can be expected to
put a decent meal together for 37p is mind-boggling when there
are dozens of restaurants in London which charge over £100
for a meal. It is a question of what the food tastes like, whether
it is nutritious, whether it helps kids end up a reasonable
shape, and how it affects their behaviour, not just the cost.
These things are worth more. Take a look at our Early Years
column this month to read more about the importance of healthy
eating in pre-schoolers.
...
the programme about parents being helped to cope with their
disobedient children (Blame the Parents, BBC2)? It made us want
to scream. The children were behaving appallingly and the parents
were either letting them or setting examples which the children
were copying, shouting, swearing and throwing things. It reminded
us of a conference speech by a psychologist who said that research
had shown that if you were consistent in calmly asking a child
to do something, s/he would do by the sixth time of asking if
one persisted. It will be interesting to see if the parents
have learnt calm and consistency by the end of the series.
From
the Correspondence
"I
am trying to set up a meeting with yourself and a few other
reprehensives here in London to discuss training and support
for staff who work in Children's Residential Care sector."
From
a Minister’s PA : so that’s what he thinks of professionals.
