. Children Webmag .

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Bill NB the following highlighted areas. A click through to the AIEJI and FICE texts in the international piece below.

In This Issue

We have a Special Issue on Africa this month, and the messages coming through the contributions are powerful. In one country after another, people are coping with massive problems, and struggling heroically to meet the needs of the children who are affected. HIV/AIDS, drought, poverty, changes in life-style and work patterns urbanisation, political problems - they all add to the difficulties faced by children, young people and their carers.

We try to avoid politics in this magazine, but there are times when politicians create problems which affect children and young people, and we cannot be true to trying to encourage high standards of service by ignoring them.

Many of the agencies described could do with more support. If you can’t contact them directly, let us know and we will put you in touch.

The Laming Report was published just before our last issue. In this one we have an Editorial, a considered piece from Chris Hanvey, and the response of the Association of Directors of Social Services. If this report is to have the impact it deserves, it will need a lot of debate and must not be shelved. Write in, if you too would like to have your say.

Rosie Baillon reports on an important new venture - the Practice Learning Taskforce.

The theme underlying the rest of the pieces is observation of human behaviour. Charles Sharpe looks at the relationship of adults and young people as groups in society. We have reprinted Kathy Winters’s poem about the misunderstood child. And Chris Bristow looks at the fascinating figure of Michael Jackson.

You may have seen national newspaper headlines saying that Hoon had gone on holiday when he was most needed. That was Geoff Hoon, the Defence Minister. Our Hoon, Terry, has not gone away, but has done a piece reflecting on the tenth anniversary of Jamie Bolger’s murder, and about the intensity of feelings his death caused.

Finally, In Residence focuses on the unthinking prejudices against residential care in the public and the social work profession.

The Cost of Day Care Going Up

A report in the Guardian (8th February 2003, pp. 20 - 21 of the Supplement) of a survey undertaken by the Daycare Trust said that childcare in Britain is now the most expensive in Europe. In inner London, the typical charge for a nursery place is £168 per week, and the cheapest care available was childminding in the West Midlands at £92 per week. The costs have increased by 7% last year and 10% the year before.

It was argued by Stephen Burke, Director of the Daycare Trust, that Childcare Tax Credits should be extended to make daycare more affordable, and Gill Haynes, the Chief Executive of the National Childminding Association, advocated tax breaks for companies using employer childminding networks. The advantage of these networks was the flexibility of individual childminders meeting the personalised needs of parents.

The present Government has shown real commitment to the care and education of young children and to the chance for parents to return to work. The proposals outlined are examples of fine-tuning that will make the system work smoothly, and we hope the Government will consider them carefully.

International Activity

International professional organisations often struggle to keep going. Meeting is expensive in terms of travel, time and interpretation. Working internationally can be slow. There can be linguistic misunderstandings and clashes of culture. Yet people carry on, because there is a lot to be learnt by seeing the ways in which other people address problems and picking up new ideas.

AIEJI (which stood for Association Internationale pour l’Education de la Jeunesse Inadapte but whose aim is to further social education) asked Toni Julia, the President of CEESC, the Spanish professional organisation for social educators, to draw up a programme of activities for AIEJI in Europe. The programme has now been published, and it includes :

- a re-examination of the roles of social educators
- contributing to the international project on a code of ethics for social educators headed by Emmanuel Grupper of Israel
- mapping professional associations in this field
- validating qualifications internationally.

We wish Toni well in drawing up this programme, and hope that people will respond and participate.

There are only two AIEJI members in the United Kingdom, which is deplorable. It is time that the social educator / social pedagogue model was widely adopted in this country, and an active branch of AIEJI could act as a focus to encourage more thinking and experimentation on the subject.

If you want to see the full text of the letter, click here>> in English in Spanish in French

FICE (Federation Internationale des Communautes Educatives) is also running a number of projects.

It is planning the fourth of its annual Friendship Camps in former Yugoslavia, in view of the success of the first three in bringing together young people and their carers from countries which were fighting not long ago.

A number of countries, especially in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, are joining FICE, or have recently set up National Sections. A report on the work being undertaken by Anton Tobé in Eastern Europe describes an impressive variety of support for children’s services being offered by the Dutch to Eastern European projects. [Click here for Anton's report on the FICE Inter web site]

Led by Daniel Vidaud of ANCE-France, there is also a move to recruit members in francophone North Africa. Interest has also been shown in Tanzania.

The FICE-Inter website, which is managed by CfC in its capacity as FICE-England and Wales, is now translated into French and German as well as English, and it is hoped shortly to add in the four-language Glossary which was drawn up a few years ago.

Plans are proceeding under the leadership of Andrew Hosie of the Scottish Institute of Residential Child Care for FICE-Scotland to host the next international Congress at Glasgow in 2004. They are also planning an international seminar on secure accommodation this autumn.

FICE and AIEJI are among the organisations meeting in Copenhagen in May with a view to closer co-operation and better use of resources. The EFCW (European Federation of Child Welfare) has fallen on hard times and for the present has been wound up; it remains to be seen whether it will be revived. There is an argument for rationalising and reducing the number of international professional bodies. It could save money and time spent on the business of running the organisations, but one outcome of rationalisation would probably a reduction in the number of people involved in creating international links, which would be a pity.

A Basic Code

One of AIEJI’s projects is to consider a code of ethics for social educators. Here is the basic code drawn up a few years ago by a FICE Working Group :

Seven International Ethical Principles for People Working with
Children and Young People

IT IS THE PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY OF EACH CHILDCARE WORKER TO:

1. Value and respect each child or young person as an individual in his/her own right, in his/her role as a member of his/her family, and in his/her role as a member of the community s/he lives in;

2. Respect the relationship of the child or young person to his/her parents, his/her siblings, other members of his/her family and other significant persons, taking account of his/her natural ties and interdependent rights and responsibilities;

3. Facilitate the optimal growth and development of each individual child or young person to achieve his or her potential in all aspects of functioning;

4. Help each child or young person for whom he or she bears responsibility by preventing problems where possible, by offering protection where necessary, and by providing care and rehabilitation to counteract or resolve the problems faced;

5. Use information appropriately, respecting the privacy of children and young people, maintaining confidentiality where necessary, respecting the right of children and young people to be informed of matters concerning themselves, and avoiding the misuse of personal information;

6. Oppose at all times any form of discrimination, oppression or exploitation of children and young people, and preserve their rights;

7. Maintain personal and professional integrity, develop skills and knowledge in order to work with competence, work co-operatively with colleagues, monitor the quality of services, and contribute to the development of the service and of policy and thinking in the field of childcare.

All other standards expected of child care workers stem from these seven clauses.

What do readers think? What changes would you make? We suspect that people today would put more emphasis on the rights, choices and wishes of children, but in drawing up an international code, one has to be aware of the variety of cultures worldwide.

Incidentally, if English readers come across the word deontology in discussing codes of ethics internationally, don’t get alarmed. It is a proper English word; it’s just that we don’t use it these days. It means the study of ethics, for example in drawing up codes of professional practice, and you’ll find it particularly in documents translated from French, for whom deontologie is a common topic of professional conversation.

Nursery World

Under the banner “Nursery World is all you need”, the publishers are offering subscriptions discounted at up to 38% from the cover price. We are happy to recommend this magazine to our readers. We think it has a lot of excellent material and does a good job in its field. We hope that they won’t consider us uncivil, however, if we don’t agree with their slogan.

If you want to subscribe, contact their credit card hotline : 01 454 642480, or write to :
Nursery World, Freepost (SWB172), Patchway, Bristol BS32 0ZZ

Wielding the Stick

Ivan Lewis, the Schools Minister, has decided that parents should be fined for letting their children miss school, for example by taking them on holiday. Studies of children challenged for being out of school have shown that often they are shopping with their parents. Clearly, truancy is not simply a matter of naughty children playing hooky. It is part of the culture of a significant percentage of the community that school attendance does not need to be 100%.

Does this matter? Our view is Yes and No. Missing an odd day at school is not likely to matter too much. A child is likely to be at school anything from ten to fourteen years, and an odd day off here or there is not likely to make a lot of difference to their functioning as adults. If so, why are there such a lot of school holidays? Surely children should be working six day weeks all year round if constant cramming is vital to success.

What does matter is that if parents and children alike think that school is boring, unstimulating and useless to them, the children will not learn much even if they are at school, and insisting on their attendance will not make them any more receptive to what is on offer. An enthusiastic pupil will learn quickly, and will generally catch up quickly after an absence. A child who is unengaged can sit there for ages without any idea lodging and having a significant impact.

Whether lack of involvement results from poor teaching or the attitudes of the child’s family, it will not be overcome by compulsion, and the time and resources spent on policing absences would be better applied to careful assessments of children’s attitudes to their education with a view to fostering enthusiasm and engagement.

Unsung

Almost exactly twenty-five years ago, a social worker visited a family with multiple problems. The mother was not easy to get on with and the father was a violent aggressive man. They told the social worker that she could not go up stairs to see their daughter who was resting in her bedroom. She told them that she needed to see the girl to ascertain that she was all right. She went upstairs and found the little girl covered in bruises. The necessary action was then taken.

The rest of the girl’s case file made nothing much of this incident, and it could easily have passed unnoticed into history. We mention it here because it must have taken courage to confront the couple, but there are no VCs in social work. If the social worker had not taken that action, there might easily have been yet another Maria Colwell, another Jasmine Beckford, another Victoria Climbie or another of the thirty-plus little children whose deaths have led to inquiries over the last thirty years.

Rather than simply focus on what has gone wrong and ask who was to blame, the question which social work managers and trainers should ask is what it was that motivated this social worker and gave her the courage to insist on seeing the child. Let us base good future practice on good past practice, not just on the avoidance of bad practice.

And let’s celebrate the good practice too.

Did You See?….

….the Home Office report that over the last six years reconviction rates for young offenders have dropped by 22.5%, put down to early intervention, firmer warnings and confrontation by victims - good news in view of Britain’s dismal record on imprisoning the highest percentage of the population in Europe.

…. the Guardian’s graphic spread on retrospective views of “Life after James” about the impact of Jamie Bolger’s death ten years on (Supplement, pp. 1 - 5, 6th February 2003).

…. the news story that children are not taking enough exercise, presumably because they are sitting in front of their computer screens far too long. (Please don’t feel guilty, and go and do your press-ups now. Can’t you leave it till you’ve read the rest of the webmag?)

…. the news from Africa about the incomprehensible devastation being caused by HIV/AIDS, with the life expectancy in Malawi having dropped from 61 to 37 in the last decade, for example. Worse than the plague or the Black Death in Europe, HIV/AIDS looks likely to wipe out almost the whole working age generation in some areas, leaving the old to care for the very young, many of whom are themselves infected by their mothers. There is a risk that whole communities will be destroyed and that cultures will not be passed on.

…. the account given by Jim Bell about being an aficionado of child porn on the internet, offering some interesting insights to those who find it a mystery (in the Guardian Supplement, pp. 1 - 3 and 8, 23rd January 2003).

SCA in Blackpool

We were unable to get to Blackpool last month to report on the Social Care Association’s annual get-together. It seems to have gone so well that they are planning to go back there again next year.

The SCA makes two awards every year, the first being to someone who has had an impact on social care at national level, and the second being the Kathleen Lewis award to an SCA member who has contributed outstandingly to the work of the Association. This year, the national award went to Jill Pitt-Keathly, and the members’ award to Ian Mallinson.

Ian was unable to be present, but the choice was popular, and he was given a standing ovation in absentia. Ian has contributed to a huge volume of publications and policy documents over the years, majoring on the concept of keyworking. He was an active member of the Birmingham Branch before his move to Scotland, which is now one of SCA’s busiest areas. Despite ill-health, Ian has kept up his contact with SCA, and it was good to see his input recognised.

The Annual General Meeting passed a resolution supporting the campaign against parental assault on children being acceptable as punishment, despite a few abstentions and votes against. There was also an emergency motion criticising the Government for withdrawing Criminal Records Bureau checks on domiciliary care workers.

Among the speakers, Paul Burstow, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on social care, said all the right things to please the audience on current policy issues. Douglas Quinn of Milbury Care spoke; Carol Horner represented the National Care Standards Commission, and Andrew Webb stood in and spoke on childcare matters.

The Seminar also marked the start of Andy Merker’s year as President.

Disapplying Time Limits

On 17th February the Court of Appeal published its decision on an appeal in the case of Various Claimants v. Bryn Alyn (and Royal Sun Alliance). The issue at question was whether delay in pressing claims should limit liability when the claimants are people who, as children, had been sexually abused in residential care. This is an extremely complex legal issue, but the outcome in simple terms was greater flexibility and more money for the claimants.

There is a folk myth around that claimants are making all sorts of lurid false accusations in order to get their snouts in the trough and gobble up some juicy damages payments. Of course, some claims are fictitious or exaggerated, but the majority of claims reflect appalling standards of care and abuse at the hands of those who should have protected them.

The damages paid out are substantial only where the treatment needed - counselling for example - is considerable and will prove expensive. What is more, the trauma of the enquiries and court procedures often themselves prove harrowing, re-opening old wounds and sometimes leading to suicide attempts or breakdowns in relationships. That sort of price completely outweighs the scale of monetary damages awarded, and it is churlish of grumblers to begrudge the claimants some small recompense for the hurt caused by the agencies which were meant to be helping them on behalf of society.

From the Case Files

“She hurled a terrain of verbal abuse at me”. (Social Worker about adolescent client.)

Hurling a terrine, yes. Hurling a tureen, possible for a strong woman. But hurling a terrain? It must have been a volcanic performance.

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