Declaring War on Children - Archbishop of Canterbury catches up with the real world

The reported remarks ***of Dr Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury today reminds us that we ran a sister blogsite in May 2005 in response to some local problems of disruptive , disaffected youth, called Big.Bro whose masthead declared ..."A forum to discuss why the response to unruly teenagers in Norden / Edenfield Road exemplifies a thoughtless attitude which amounts to declaring war on our children. A place for the public's voice to be heard and to consider alternatives to a punitive culture of the young, and the resultant reliance on technology to provide a fix to what is a social and community problem."

Alas this site lasted only some few months, in despair, after some 100 posts , but still receives a considerable of visitors and has many, many sources for people who supported the views that Government policies were damaging and now we are facing the results of them ignoring wearning voices ..eg.Sunday, June 12, 2005 Conference on adolescent binge drinking - The American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) will host a web-based conference to discuss the significant and growing public health problem of adolescent binge drinking. Adolescents and Binge Drinking: A Clinical Approach, developed under a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau, will be held June 14, 2005, from 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. ET at Medscape from WebMD.(In most place in the US you have to be 21 to drink alcohol in licensed premises - get killed in Iraq, defending Afghan warlords growing poppies - but don't touch the demon drink boyah!)

The very first post brought attention to a speech on March 14th, 2004 by Brid Hehir, at the quaintly named Institute of Ideas a former health visitor and co-author of Alternative Medicine: should we swallow it? In which she said.

“The notion of medicalising or pathologising childbirth and motherhood is now quite common.”

“The private life of families is therefore no longer considered to be their business but ours too. Because of the insistence that the welfare of children must come first, its fertile ground for the involvement of and intervention by health professionals. We have lower expectations of parents. They might drink too much, take drugs, given their children inappropriate food, not parent well enough, abuse them ……The notion that they can sort out their problems for themselves now seems anathema. We use our mental checklists to assess whether or not they’re doing all right.

I think additionally that many of us (health professionals) have lost our ability and confidence to make common sense judgements. We seldom have the confidence to say ‘all’s well’ or its ‘good enough’ and to leave well alone. Instead we cover our backs by constantly referring on to eg. GPs, who then refer on to consultants….”

“There have been numerous social, political, policy and service changes since the 1980s however and the role of health professionals has changed. This was starkly reflected in the consultation document ‘Every Child Matters’ and is also portrayed in the new Children’s Bill. Ostensibly the bill is about achieving reforms to bring about better outcomes for children. In reality however it assumes that a large number of families cannot bring up children without the involvement of myriad agencies who need constantly to exchange information about the children. It seems that the government and society now fundamentally mistrusts parents to bring up their children and thinks it can do better. Health professionals are influenced by this viewpoint also.”

“Motherhood once seen as an ideal, is now promoted as an ordeal, mothers, we are told, are hyper - vulnerable. “

BBC Online report on Dr. Williams : "I think compared with the rest of Europe we are in a very punitive frame of mind."

In a BBC Newsnight "exclusive" he said: "I think it's a very bad position to be in.


"Sometimes the public rhetoric that you find about children and young people does suggest we don't really like them very much.

"... in a more quantifiable kind of way, if you look at the number of children who have custodial sentences in this country it's an alarming statistic. "

"You've got, I think, 25,000 children given custodial sentences in a three-year period quite recently. You've got 30 deaths of children in custody in an 18-year period.

The UK's four children's commissioners in a report have alerted us to the fact that crime committed by children had fallen between 2002 and 2006, but the numbers being subjected to the criminal justice system had gone up by just over a quarter.

"The system is dominated by a punitive approach and does not sufficiently distinguish between adult offenders and children who break the law," says the report.

"Compared to other European countries, England has a very low age of criminal responsibility and high numbers of children are locked up. Too many children are being criminalised and brought into the youth justice system at an increasingly young age."

Nacro - a history of being ignored

The BBC also report that today Paul Cavadino, chief executive of crime reduction charity Nacro, agreed that custody was overused.

"Every year we lock up thousands of young people with histories of physical and sexual abuse, parental neglect, family conflict, school exclusion, substance abuse and mental health problems," he said.

Which is fascinating because a post @ Big.Bro Sunday June 12th 2005 The Rise of the Yobbocracy - well hard Gubment at work reported :

International Centre for Prison Studies - Prison is never appropriate for children
said Professor Andrew Coyle, the director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, 10th August 2004 and added that prison "is never an appropriate location" for children.

He said: "There are more juveniles in prison custody in England and Wales than in any other country in Western Europe. The treatment of juveniles in detention in England and Wales has been criticised by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which has expressed concern about the number of children who have sustained injuries as a result of restraints and measures of control applied in prison and about the placement of children in solitary confinement in prisons. Prison is never an appropriate location for children."


Nacro - We have an over-punitive approach to children in trouble

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of the crime reduction charity Nacro, also said (on the same day - that is 4 years ago) that the death in custody of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood (at Hassocksfield secure training centre) Guradian reportsignalled that "some of the most vulnerable children in society are currently being held in state custody."

He added: "We call on the Government to set up an urgent review of the system for dealing with children who offend. We have an over-punitive approach to children in trouble and pay too little attention to the welfare needs of serious and persistent young offenders and the root causes of their problems. 27 children have died in state custody since 1990. The Government must act now if lessons are to be learnt and further deaths prevented."

Interfering old busybodies .....what do they know ? Of course we can just ignore them......