I
have just been handed the report of the Second International Conference
on Children and Residential Care that produced the Stockholm Declaration.
There were 600 present from 80 countries. It was sponsored by the
Swedish Government and included representatives from governments
and the research community, so it was by any reckoning a heavyweight
event. But what a sad declaration and list of intended outcomes!
Ignoring,
or ignorant of, the Wagner Report on Residential Care it declared
that institutional care should be considered “only as a last
resort”. The notion of a “positive choice” seems
dead and buried. If used as a last resort, the Declaration argued,
residential care should be a temporary measure, and the institutions
should be regulated and monitored in line with agreed international
and national standards and the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child. This is because there is “indisputable
evidence that institutional care has negative consequences for both
individual children and for society at large.” What is more
“these negative consequences could be prevented through the
adoption of national strategies to support families and children…”
We’ve
heard it all before, and it’s depressing that there seems
to be an inability to understand how value-laden and circular is
the whole process - (I cannot in all honesty call it a debate or
argument) - that leads to such conclusions. For a start, where is
the voice of the communities and nations where war, famine and disease
have disrupted, if not destroyed, whole communities and family networks
of support and care? You cannot support families where they have
been wiped out. So what use is such a declaration in these alarmingly
common circumstances in so much of the world? It is, like all pronouncements
on rights, at risk of becoming “nonsense on stilts”
because out of touch with the realities and messiness of everyday
life.
Then
there is the pejorative use of the word “institutional”.
As always in such events, it is applied specifically to residential
child care (and the recommended monitoring and regulation would,
of course, increase its institutional nature). This form of care
(that is “indisputably” bad for children and societies)
is contrasted with family care, and other undefined “types
of community-based care”.
Forget
that sociologists see “family” as one of the universal
institutions in the world. Forget the sum total of abuse, neglect
and suffering that children have experienced in various types of
family throughout history. Forget the suffering through poverty
of hundreds of millions of children. Forget the exploitation of
children by the marketing forces of the emerging “post-modern”
or “global” world order. Cut yourself off from this
real world and dream of a properly monitored and regulated civil
society where there is “non-discrimination”, and “common
indicators for child placements” (I take this to mean placements
outside the cosy nuclear and extended family). This is what the
document before me does.
But
I hear you say, especially if you were at Stockholm for the event,
that I seem to be defending the indefensible, and flying in the
face of cumulative research evidence. Surely I am not an advocate
of damaging institutional care? Indeed I, who have seen and read
about damaging residential care in many parts of the world, do not
seek to defend it in any way. But I cannot understand why, in the
light of the political, economic and cultural realities of the world
we live in, this form of child care should be singled out once again
for rebuke, if not termination, when families, communities and foster
care have been the settings in which so many more children have
known such extreme emotional, physical neglect and abuse. It seems
that the conference, like so many before it, was unable to stand
back enough to consider all children and all the evidence. If so,
its declaration would have read quite differently and much more
inclusively.
In
these columns I have long sought to encourage informed debate, and
this article is no exception. But what is it that upset me most
about the Conference and its Declaration? Simply this: all through,
it commends the participation of children and families in decision-making.
This occurs rather like a mantra throughout the document, culminating
with the urging that practitioners “secure participation of
children in families in programme design and in decisions that directly
affect them”. Unexceptionable? Not at all!
Consistently
children and young people have advocated and expressed the wish
to live, sometimes long- term, in settings that are distinct from
the families and foster settings that professionals tell them are
good for them. The dismissal of the views of children has led, distressingly,
to serial foster breakdowns and placements, and cannot but contribute
to the increased risk of abuse and neglect in unsuitable families
and communities. Whenever research reports these views it describes
the finding as “surprising”, confirming the fact that
this voice and message simply isn’t heard.
This
reminds me vividly of the time when a mother rushed to Mill Grove
to ask if her two children could live with us while she served a
prison sentence for drug-related offences. The children were already
packed and eager to stay. We knew the family well as neighbours.
The children continued at their local schools, and enjoyed uninterrupted
friendships with peers. They had regular weekly contact with their
mother and extended family. When the sentence had been served their
life resumed roughly as before.
What
has that happy ending to an unsavoury beginning got to do with the
Stockholm Declaration? Just this: the local authority Social Services
Department declared that the placement was wholly unsuitable, and
distanced itself from it. It stated that the children should as
a matter of policy have been placed with foster carers rather than
in “institutional care”. The views of the family and
children counted for nothing.
And
if the Stockholm Declaration has any effect it could, despite its
best intentions, confirm the dogma of the professionals, against
the expressed wishes and everyday experience of many such children
and families.
Keith
J. White lives and cares for children and young people in Mill
Grove where his family has lived for four generations.
Since 1899 it has been a family home where children unable to
live with their own parents have been welcomed. |
