. Children Webmag .

Silver Spoons and Flying Fur

Barnardo’s, Britain’s largest children’s charity, launched its latest hard hitting advertising campaign, on Wednesday, 12th November, on the theme of “silver spoons” to highlight the fact that one in three children in the United Kingdom are living in poverty. The ads are supported by an NOP poll commissioned by the charity which shows that 86% of those questioned were unaware of the situation.

However, instead of spoons, they placed cockroaches, meths bottles and syringes electronically in newborn babies’ mouths. This caused a lot of reaction and complaints. It looked disgusting, and it was understandable that the public didn’t like the pictures. Barnardo’s fought back, arguing that the situation was serious and its unpleasantness should not be avoided.

It’s an interesting point. Does a charity get more support if it only emphasises the sentimental? Is there a risk in upsetting possible donors? (The Pestalozzi Foundation in Switzerland lost a lot of support when it decided to switch from running its flagship residential care. People saw the home as something tangible.)

Or is it more important to be realistic, even if support is lost? Should the public have to face the fact that life can be nasty? Is public awareness more important than funding? (It took Thomas Coram a long while to get funding for his home, and he did it through the sympathy vote in the end, rather than by persuading people in power through facts and logic.) Will this in the end make support for Barnardo’s better founded?

Whatever the case, it is important that campaigns are factually accurate and not misleading. Otherwise credibility can be damaged, or perhaps even destroyed irretrievably.

The Queen’s Speech

A Children’s Bill was announced that would include a Children’s Commissioner, even before the end of consultations through the Green Paper. One might be tempted to suggest that this indicated contempt for the feedback the Government was going to get.

However, managing these things is very difficult. There would have been disquiet if the Bill had been left out of the Queen’s Speech, which might have suggested that it was being left for another year. There would have been even more irritation if the consultation period had closed earlier, because it would have been obvious anyway that the Speech would have been drafted a good deal earlier and could not have been influenced by the feedback.

The bigger problem may be that if the Bill is enacted in the next twelve months, there will be little time to take action on it before the next General Election, and it may get overshadowed by attempts to win votes. And who knows what might happen to implementation in the next Parliament?

The Green Paper ends with an over-optimistic timetable. Obviously it’s a good thing to keep the pressure on to get measures implemented, but not at the expense of their effectiveness. At the NCB AGM it was suggested that it might help to make haste slowly on some of the proposals. Let’s see how it unfolds. Anyone like to place a wager?

The Influence of the Media

The Sun editorial headline said “Quit, Hodge” and backed it with an article headed “Kids’ minister smears a child ‘abuse victim’ - Hodge in storm at cover-up”(12th November 2003, pages 8 - 9). One can certainly not accuse the Sun of pussy-footing round an issue. They take a line, and put it forcefully in words anyone can understand.

We have mentioned the accusations against Margaret Hodge before, and she says she has learnt from her mistakes, and wants to be judged on her track record as a Minister. Meanwhile, fresh allegations were made, this time in a BBC programme featuring Demetrious Panton, who was in care in Islington (where Margaret Hodge was once the Leader of the Council) but who now works as an adviser to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

She claimed this was a witch-hunt, and tried to block the BBC investigation, in the process accusing Demetrious Panton of being seriously disturbed. Obviously, the question was not whether he is disturbed, but whether his allegations were well-founded and reflected on the Minister’s conduct when she was Leader.

Margaret Hodge issued a public apology and paid Demetrious Panton’s legal costs and £10,000 to a charity of his choice.

The Sun’s conclusion was the Margaret Hodge is a blatant liar or an incompetent fool, and should not be entrusted with the future of the nation’s children. With the Green Paper due to be reframed as a Bill before long, the nation’s children need a powerful champion, and not a lame duck being constantly vulnerable to the Sun’s broadsides. On the other hand, can we really expect politicians to be perfect? If the Minister is right in saying that she has learnt from the past and that she has a passion to get things right now, should we deny her the opportunity to do so, whatever the past?

The important point is getting it right now, whoever does it. She is probably as knowledgeable on the subject and as wily in politics as any other potential candidate for the job. The press have a nasty habit of sensing when politicians are vulnerable and hounding them till they’ve had enough. This does not necessarily make for constructive government. Margaret Hodge certainly suffered a nasty savaging, but it remains to be seen whether that will simply make her more determined to succeed and prove herself by getting some useful legislation through.

Dominic Fox to head up Children’s Centre

A consortium of seven children’s charities has appointed Dominic Fox as Director of the Children’s Centre Project, to look at new models for collaborative working. Dominic has a background of working for homeless and children’s charities as both a practitioner and in senior management. He joins the Children’s Centre from Kidsactive, where he was Chief Executive.

The Children’s Centre Project is now fully underway, with Dominic’s first priority being to set up feasibility studies into possible ways of collaboration, including the possibility of some of the partners sharing a building.

Commenting on his new role, Dominic said, ‘The Children’s Centre is about finding practical proposals which will ultimately benefit services for children and young people. It is an exciting and challenging initiative and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.’

Sally Whitaker, Director of Resources & Marketing, at the National Children’s Bureau, added, ‘The project will tackle some of the problems which many charities today face, such as competition for resources and duplication of services, while ensuring that each partner is able to make its own unique contribution to the well-being of children and young people.’

“Every Child Matters”

It may have been the title of the Government’s Green Paper, but was it true? Children in hospital were missed out. So was children’s play. So were the young people caught up in the youth justice system. And just as the consultation period was drawing to a close, the announcement was made that asylum-seekers might be put under pressure to leave the country by the threat of having their children taken into care (which gave Michael Howard as the new Tory leader a chance to bite a lump out of Tony Blair at Question Time in Parliament).

Perhaps the Green Paper should have been called “Every Child Matters - except all those whom the Government wants to ignore or deal with in another way”. But that wouldn’t make a good sound bite.

Sexual Offence Bill needs resourcing, says Barnardo’s

‘Barnardo’s support stiffer sentences for child sex abusers who use the internet to groom children and young people on line and therefore support the Government’s move to increase the maximum sentence for grooming to ten years in the Sexual Offences Bill. However, just locking abusers up for longer periods of time is not enough. Prison sentences will only be of any real use if the time is used to make the offenders address their abusive behaviours in a therapeutic way. To do this effectively more resources are required, both for intervention programmes and research. Nothing has changed about the abusive behaviour of sex offenders – the internet and new 3G mobile phones simply act as a conduit or tool for their abusive activities. This allows them to act in an even more devious way – as they are able to ‘groom’ children, by pretending they are a young person themselves.’

Did You See? …..

….. that Michael Jackson has been arrested on child abuse charges? Indeed, how could you miss it, plastered over just about every paper? He is presumably an innocent, naïve, caring, (if somewhat weird) person who has been grossly wronged more than once, or he is an abuser who has used his wealth to get away with it. Whatever he has done, he is hard to understand, despite the documentaries which have tried to throw light on his behaviour.

….. the report in the Guardian (26th November 2003, page 5) of a survey carried out by the think-tank Future Foundation into parents’ opinions, which identified “paradoxical parenting”? Parents wanted to be modern and liberal in letting their children do what they want to do, but still held to traditional values and wanted their children to go into steady professional jobs.

….. that Sir Anthony Hollis had died (obituary in Daily Telegraph, 27th November 2003, page 31)? Sir Anthony was the High Court Judge who permitted most of the Cleveland children said to have been abused to go back home. He understood the predicament of social workers - pilloried if they took cautious action to protect children, and pilloried if they did not and abuse occurred, but he insisted on better interviewing techniques, and was critical of leading questions which put pressure on children to allege that they had been abused.

….that Hilton Dawson, Labour MP for Lancaster and Wyre North West, has decided to return to social work at the next General Election? He has done an excellent job in Parliament, arguing the case for children in particular, and his influence will be a loss. Where will he end up? It’s been rumoured that he’s interested in the Children’s Commissioner job. For a piece by him about his view of social work with children today, see Community Care, 27th November 2003, page 38.

….. that Beverley Hughes, Home Office Minister, said that asylum-seekers’ children might be taken into care if their parents were refused permission to stay in Britain and refused to leave?

….. the full-page article by Gerard Seenan in the Guardian (18th November 2003, page 9) about the family ejected from their home, essentially because of the conduct of their 15-year-old boy? It is a tragic story, for the neighbours who have had to put up with him, for his mother who is at her wits’ end, and for the boy, who still presumably has six or seven decades of antisocial life ahead of him if he does not change. It is hard to see eviction as a positive step, as it will simply divert the problems elsewhere.

….. the half-page summary of Margaret Hodge’s career in the Guardian (21st November 2003, page 13)?

….. the report in the Daily Telegraph (27th November 2003, page 3) of the swoop in Maidstone on children truanting? Of the 104 children caught, 80 were shopping with their parents. The police involved in the swoop said they were staggered not only by the numbers but also by the indifference of the parents.

Truancy : The same Sauce for Goose and Gander?

Maybe we should apply the same standards to adults as to children. Adults are, after all, the models which the children are meant to emulate. Perhaps we should have work absenteeism swoops for adults. Would the police be staggered if they found that a large percentage of the first 104 shoppers they questioned was made up of people who were enjoying sickies, or were “between jobs”? The shops would probably have to shut for lack of trade if every adult had to attend some place of work compulsorily every weekday.

So why do we have these strange expectations of children? Unlike any other job (other than teaching), most children are expected to work only on weekdays, and their working weeks are lumped together into terms with long holidays in between. What is the rationale? The historical reason is presumably to do with the legal terms of Michaelmas, Lent and so on and with monkish practices back in mediaeval times, which are of little relevance today. So why carry on with this odd pattern?

The police point out that children are at risk of offending if they are not in school. So they need occupying, to stop them causing trouble. If that is the reason, why not let them play computer games all day? or start work? Or again, why not occupy them at weekends or in school holidays as well? What is so special about the content of schooling that it has to be organised the way it is?

If the object is that children need to pick up the sort of facts and ideas taught in schools, is the current pattern really effective? To learn French, wouldn’t it be better to live in France for a few months, rather than do three or four lessons a week over several years?

If the aim of schooling is to develop work habits, we are back to the adult models. Why can’t children take holidays when they want to, booking them like workers, with the schools open all the year round, like factories and offices?

Replies, please, to Puzzled.

From the Case Files

“She constantly attempted to procoke me…”

A case of a client getting up a social worker’s nose by forcing drugs on her?

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