UK Failing Children

The media has been giving high profile to the UNICEF report on children’s welfare in OECD countries. See the BBC account here and the Guardian report here, for example. The BBC also summarises the key points here and gives some reaction here.

I have been reading these pieces in the light of a lecture I heard last Wednesday at Chelmsford Cathedral Theological Society by His Honour Judge David Turner QC, a circuit judge at Chelmsford and until recently a churchwarden at All Souls, Langham Place. Responding to some of the recent media furore over allegedly light sentences being passed for serious offences, he talked about the five criteria that the Criminal Justice Act 2003 requires him to take into account when someone has been convicted. Often, he said, reading the pre-sentence reports, he knows that someone never had a chance in life due to their upbringing.

And in that light it seems to me we need to make child care a national priority. But to do so will require not only Government work, it is a matter for the whole of society and it is an area where Christian faith has something important to contribute to the public arena. Dare I say it, but I think there is some wisdom in the comments of George Osborne MP, the Shadow Chancellor:

“I don’t actually think government has the answer to all these problems.

“This is not all about politicians in Westminster passing laws, it’s about social responsibility, it’s about parents taking greater responsibility for their children, it’s about trusting teachers in classrooms, it’s about us as neighbours in a society playing our part as well.

“Children often in their own way are very articulate about what they think is wrong with their life or how they think it could be improved.

“However, that’s not to say, you know, we should be entirely run by children as a society. I think that children also need boundaries and those in charge of children, whether its teachers in the classroom, need greater responsibilities in terms of disciplining those children, but also parents need to play their part.” (Reported in the BBC reaction linked above.)

So yes, the Government needs to (continue to??) work on taking children out of poverty and increasing educational opportunities. However I for one am not convinced by what they are doing so far. Child tax credits are part of the anti-poverty measures, but our family has so often been messed about on ours that I have little confidence in the system. It ought to be a key plank. A friend who works for HM Revenue and Customs, which administers the credits, tells us the difficulties are down to woeful understaffing. What a surprise.

But there are other financial pressures upon families. Being no economist I do not know how Government and other bodies would address the problem of house inflation that has led to mothers and fathers both having to work all the hours God sends in order to cover the mortgage and other costs. It’s not just about making ends meet, it’s parents who would dearly love to spend more time with their children (itself a factor in reducing juvenile crime, according to Judge Turner) not being able to do so. Whatever the disadvantages and pressures of my work as a minister I am glad I can be around in the day to give them some time. I am also relieved in retrospect that my wife quickly talked me out of considering Superintendent Minister’s posts when we moved the year before last.

Then there is the education question. Partly I am delighted by some changes in education. Visiting our daughter’s prospective primary school last month the facilities at a state school now impressed me. I also noted the large number of teaching assistants, which in one respect heartened me because they created more learning opportunities for the children – computers and foreign languages from the off – but also worried me, in case this was a barometer of the time qualified teachers have to take away from the children for administration.

At the other end of the education scale I am less convinced that the answer is to send more and more people to university. I know it’s a bit rich me saying that when I have two degrees to my name but I just don’t believe a university education is right for everyone. A Government target that a third of young people go on to do a degree seems detrimental to me. For one thing you will then have to go on from a Bachelor’s to a Master’s to prove you do have academic gifts – first degrees won’t be worth the parchment. Secondly that will increase the already serious problem of student debt. Thirdly other learning opportunities have been disappearing for years. Would there not be something important in giving renewed dignity to skilled apprenticeships? And why shouldn’t qualified plumbers and electricians be well paid?

But what about the church? One of the most alarming quotes for me in today’s reporting was in the BBC account linked above from Professor Jonathan Bradshaw of York University’s Social Policy Research Unit. While he had a lot to say about under-investment, he also said this was an indication of a ‘dog eat dog society’.

In a society which is very unequal, with high levels of poverty, it leads on to what children think about themselves and their lives. That’s really what’s at the heart of this.

There are issues to address here from a Christian perspective about conversion and converted lives. It’s not just about us making pronouncements, it’s about us living out in the public spotlight too what it means not to live ‘dog eat dog’, not to be content with greed and financial injustice.

The Guardian report cited above says,

Some of the most shocking findings concern the relationships children and adolescents have with their family and peers.

Little over 40% of 11-15-year-olds find their friends ‘kind and helpful’. We are near the bottom for spending family meal-times together, to take two examples.

It makes me think again of something I started to consider about a year ago here, about churches running parenting courses, but not on church premises, in the community. My difficulty with the idea (about from getting sufficient personnel) is that the Government has turned parenting courses into a sentencing option for the courts. I think I understand why they did that, but it creates a hurdle to jump when we might want to offer support for harassed and anxious parents.

And of course Christian parents struggle, too. Faith doesn’t come with exemptions from struggle. Websites like Parentalk are helpful and we’ve recently ordered their Guide To Primary School. The Family Caring Trust has a great reputation in many circles – and, like Parentalk, they offer parenting courses that you can run locally. This tragic report from UNICEF, then, is not only a challenge to the Government, I see it as a call to the Church to ‘step up to the plate’ as Americans would say (I’d prefer a cricketing analogy rather than baseball!) and offer something that is prophetic not only in the sense of criticising public policy but also edifying and positive. Can we do it?

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