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For Scotland's children report

Chapter 5 the child in society

This chapter of the Action Team report seeks to establish part of the framework for the debate, discussion and change we hope to encourage. At the beginning of the report a 'snapshot' of some of the complex issues affecting many children and young people was provided. In later chapters a more comprehensive look at the policy and planning frameworks for children's services will be presented. This chapter considers the quality of children's lives, how adults and adult agencies view children and young people and begins to look at some of the important debates which underpin and influence our responses to children and young people today, including how current structures within the Scottish Executive have sought to inform the way in which the development and delivery of policy is achieved.

Children Born to Fail

The overarching issues which have struck the Action Team have been the levels of poverty and the long associated problems of alcohol and drug abuse which plague Scottish society. The outcomes for many children living in poverty or living with drug or alcohol abusing parents are more often than not negative.

But is this new? Is it only this generation of children who have been born to fail?

In 1973 the National Children's Bureau published Born to Fail by Peter Wedge and Hilary Prosser, which reported 'on striking differences in the lives of British children'. The following year Frank Field authored Unequal Britain: A Report on the Cycle of Inequality which brought together the findings of all major research reports concerned with the economic and social circumstances of British families published between 1945 and the early 1970's. Unequal Britain is particularly concerned with what had happened to the families of semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers and to explore the differences between social classes. In health, housing, education and income the report concluded, much like Born to Fail, that a "cycle of inequality" was well established in the UK by the early 70's.

Between the war and the 1970's life for many children in British society was characterised by poor housing, low family income, the negative effect of large families on the individual's life chances and growing numbers of families headed by lone parents. In this period 1 in 3 UK children had at least one of these family characteristics with 1 in every 16 children in the UK multiply disadvantaged.

When the experience of Scottish children during this period is drawn out by these reports we find that while 11% of the UK's children lived in Scotland 19% of the disadvantaged children were to be found here.

How might one describe the quality of these children's lives? In the 1970's many disadvantaged children lived in housing with poor levels of sanitation and overcrowding. Disadvantaged families had significantly lower levels of educational attainment, parents read less, and four times as many fathers in these families were chronically ill or disabled. Physically, children in disadvantaged families were smaller in height and many never accessed child health services. Illness and absence from school was more common for the poor child. The disadvantaged child was 10 times more likely to experience some time in care. They suffered more accidents, incidence of hearing impairment and speech difficulties. One in every 14 of the poorest children required 'special education treatment', 1 in every 4 of these children were viewed as 'maladjusted' and almost all children labelled as 'educationally subnormal' came from the poorest of families.

What of service provision in the context of the 70's as described by Born to Fail and Unequal Britain? Education is viewed somewhat pessimistically and the view is expressed that 'Education as a social distributor of life chances often compounds rather than eases the difficulties of disadvantaged children' and that 'changing this is likely to take a very long time.' For its part social work is only viewed as having a chance to impact positively on the lives of families if the material circumstances of the poorest are alleviated, so allowing 'social workers and others in the helping professions...to concentrate on the much smaller remaining group whose problems are not strongly associated with their material circumstances.'

Much of the focus of the studies is on the material resources that families require. While there is a recognition that some parents lack the skills they require for effective parenting the point is made that there '...is much to be said for tackling more earnestly the poor housing and low incomes our study has revealed... on humanitarian grounds alone large numbers of children need a better chance to grow, develop, learn and live than they currently receive.'

Born to Fail ends with a plea worth repeating in the context of this Action Team report:

"As a society do we really care sufficiently about our children to reduce drastically the hardships of their families? Do we care that so many are born to fail?"

Looking back to the descriptions of the lives of the poorest of the UK's children thirty years ago has been more than an interesting academic exercise. It has done more than provide the Action Team with a fascinating historical perspective, for it is crucial to remember as the challenges facing Scotland today are described that the 'socially disadvantaged' children described in Born to Fail will now be in their late 30's and early 40's. Some may well be the service users the Action Team has met as parents and grandparents. For many families the cycle of poverty and disadvantage has not been broken. It could be argued that even after a thirty-year period in which we have understood the impact of poverty on families, many of our children are still born to fail.

Changing Outcomes

But past failures need to be turned into creative and effective new approaches. The Executive commitment to a Scotland in which every child matters is much needed and to be commended. Delivering on such an objective will require more than the development of new models of integrated working as proposed in this report. This is only part of the picture. Service providers need adequate resources. They may need to re-orientate long established and restrictive professional practices. The people who deliver services need adequate training and support and children, young people and families need a view of their world which is no longer pessimistic and limited.

In the best of recent research and in the good professional practice identified in this report there is a developing view of the child as an active agent in their world and a commitment to empowerment as a key in any change or recovery process. A view is emerging across policy and practice that every child is an individual, that their best interests demand that we view their lives holistically and that in doing so we articulate and accord them a set of intrinsic human rights as well as rights as service users.

This rights based approach has also broadened the scope of policy and the service responses which have developed for children and young people. In practice this means that in addition to the identified needs of the most disadvantaged children whose lives are profoundly affected by poverty, the needs and rights of other children have become more clearly identified. In this light the work of the Action Team has sought to be inclusive of, for example, children and young people affected by disability, those with caring responsibilities, those who have experiences of being looked after. The Action Team has sought to engage with the network of service responses (both in the voluntary and statutory sector) to the needs of these children and others.

It is important to trace the development of this broadening and more inclusive view of the child. Within policy and practice it is however only relatively recently that discussion of the rights of the child has become more commonplace.

The concept that we all have intrinsic human rights became a key concern in Europe after World War II, and the notion that children might need special protection to ensure recognition of their vulnerability has led internationally to the acceptance of the need for an international treaty which has sought to encourage a global view on the rights of the child.

The framework which has emerged, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), is an international agreement in which all the rights which every child should have from birth to the age of 18 years are laid down. The 54 articles of the Convention are comprehensive and holistic in their view of children's lives covering as they do civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights. The articles can be grouped into four categories - the participation rights of the child, the protection of children against discrimination, neglect and exploitation, the prevention of harm to children and the provision of services and assistance for an adequate standard of living.

Importantly the Convention does not view children as dependent or weak but fosters the view of children as being of equal worth to adults with the capacity to play an active part in decisions made about them and in society generally. This view is shared by the Action Team and is fundamental to the view of children's and young people's services that has been adopted.

The United Kingdom ratified the UNCRC in 1991. Within the Convention there is a concern for how signatories effectively monitor and implement the articles contained within it and the UK Government is committed to submission of a report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child every five years. The last UK Government report (submitted in September 1999) made efforts to reflect on the newly devolved structures about to emerge in the UK, and accordingly a separate 'Scottish chapter' was included.

Other significant pieces of legislation have also shaped our understanding of, and relationship with, Scotland's children. Together, the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, the Scotland Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998 now mean that all citizens, including children, have rights enshrined in law.

The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 is of particular interest and importance when looking at children's services in Scotland. The Act brings together the main public and private child care law provisions into a single piece of integrated legislation. The principles of the UNCRC also influence the Act within which there are provisions which state that every child in Scotland has a right to be treated as an individual and has the right to express their views, if he or she wishes, on matters which affect them. The Act also states that parents should normally be responsible for the upbringing of their child and that both fathers and mothers should share that responsibility.

The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 also required all local authorities to prepare, consult upon and publish a plan for children's services in their area. The purpose of the Children's Services Plans is to identify and meet the needs of children, encouraging co-operation between local authorities and other providers of services. The first plans were required to be in place by April 1998, the second wave of plans is currently being considered across Scotland.

Working within this legislative framework the Scottish Executive has also sought to shape the way in which children and young people are considered and the way in which policy is shaped within government itself. Prior to devolution the Scottish Office established a Children's Issues Unit in 1997. Alongside this development a Minister for Children's Issues was appointed. Following the establishment of devolved structures in 1999 Sam Galbraith was appointed as Minister for Children and Education and within the new Scottish Executive Education Department a Children and Young People's Group has been formed, the emphasis of which is on joint working and better integration of policy across the Executive. The Action Team's work on Better Integrated Children's Services was commissioned by this Children and Young People's Group.

In 1999, just prior to devolution, a Child Strategy Statement was also introduced with the aim of ensuring that the interests of children are taken account of throughout the Scottish Executive whenever policy is being changed or developed. Since early 2001 Ministerial responsibility for children's issues lies within the remit of the Minister and Deputy Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs.

The importance of the welfare and rights of children and young people is therefore well reflected in the policies and structures which have emerged in recent years. Together the developments outlined here have tried to shift our view of the child from vulnerable and needy, a passive recipient of services, to an individual with rights including the right to services which work in the best interest of the child and operate at the highest of standards.

The Environment

Life for many children and their families in Scotland today is clearly difficult and complex. The Action Team has heard from young people, parents, practitioners, managers, policy makers and others about the best of practice and about the areas of service provision which struggle to cope with the multiple needs of some families.

While it is possible to trace a shift in how children are perceived by government there are still areas for debate which this report must acknowledge if proposals for the better integration of services are to be meaningful. So within an environment which is professionally demanding, within a context that challenges us to see children as partners in any process of change or recovery, what are these sometimes tense and difficult areas, which inform the way we perceive children in Scotland and help define the services they receive?

Perhaps a good starting point for dialogue might be to ask why does the public presence of children and young people induce fear? The introduction of the Child Safety Initiative in Hamilton in 1999 brought to a head the debate about young people's use of public space and the breakdown in relationships between the adult and child in the neighbourhoods in which they both live. Agencies providing services to both young people and adults will readily give further, but perhaps less publicised examples, of the apparently deteriorating state of adult/child relationships. For the Action Team this is a key concern and leads us to ask what needs to be done to address such negative perceptions?

The concern of the Action Team has been primarily for the child and their experience of service provision, but it would be a failing if we did not also ask where is the family in all of this? Voluntary sector agencies concerned with parenting have been stressing the need for some time for an effective parenting strategy. There is an increasing number of community based initiatives which promote good parenting through a range of approaches but it is also clear to the Action Team that much remains to be done to shift service providers from 'fire fighting' to positive and effective early interventions in the lives of whole families where help is clearly needed.

It has also struck the Action Team throughout the many meetings held that practitioners and managers within the statutory and voluntary sector talk about the predictability of many of the difficulties in the lives of families known to them. For many young people it is times of transition - from primary to secondary, from school to work or training, from family life or life in the care of the local authority to independent living - which become points of crisis and disengagement. For other children and young people crisis or transitions are less predictable, perhaps it is the behaviour of parents or the lack of appropriate care which clearly point to the need for intervention. So why, for so many children, does early intervention not happen, why are service providers picking up the pieces of broken lives and not acting to support and prevent the predictable?

Finally, in terms of legislative and policy frameworks this chapter has already flagged up the importance of both the Children (Scotland) Act and the UNCRC. However some key criticisms of how both are effectively and regularly monitored have been raised in our work, primarily by the voluntary sector. Unlike the Children Act (1989) for England and Wales no provision has been made in Scotland for an appropriate monitoring mechanism for the Scottish Act, including there being no requirement to report to the Scottish Parliament on its operation.

Concern over implementation and monitoring of the UNCRC is also expressed by the voluntary sector and there is now recognition within the Executive and across the political spectrum that we need to be better at highlighting and framing our commitment to children with a strong commitment to them at Ministerial level, the effective 'child proofing' of policy across the Executive and local government and through a full examination of the need for an independent statutory office of Children's Commissioner. The Action Team has sought to discuss and foster further debate about these key questions - just how broadly is the concept of 'children's rights' shared and understood? How good are we at monitoring and implementing the key policy frameworks for children and young people which we have adopted?

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