By Dairmuid de Rathboann. All sources appear at the foot of the article.
“You can tell a great deal about a Society about how it treats children “.
The speaker was Nelson Mandela.
Let’s look at some facts about looked-after children, as reported by the NSPCC.
- In England, 0.076% of children are “Looked after”. This consists of young people under 18 in actual care homes and those in short-term foster homes.
- 25% of the prison population have been in care
- 25% of the homeless population have been in care
I first came across the care system as an 11-year-old boy. My parents were altruistic types. My Dad had been a member of the Communist Party until the Soviet Army crushed the Prague Spring in 1968. He then became a volunteer organiser for the Peace People and re settled refugees from the N. Ireland Civil War. Mum was a nurse.
So a pair of pinko lefties were cat nip for hard pressed Social Workers trying to place a tsunami of kids taken into care in the poorest city in the UK.
Neither knew how to say no. After a time of taking kids short term into our shoe box house in north Hull, they asked us to adopt a child.
So began four years of a steady up tick of terrible events. It wasn’t the kids fault. He came to us aged eight having undergone a series of disastrous failed short term placements. Finally this child was left to live under the care of violent nuns. A priest was convicted in the early 90’s of sexual abuse. There is no evidence of a direct link.
Arson, shoplifting, nicking from the Church collection plate, (£80. Kudos) and increasing violence saw the police regularly visiting us. My parents were not in anyway shape or form suitable people to undertake such a task.
Things came to a brutal denouement in July 1983. An argument escalated and my mum received a blow to the head which caused her to lose an eye. When the ambulance arrived I told them what had happened. The police were called. None of us saw this poor wreck of a child ever again. Mum’s life was destroyed. She took her own life in 1987. This event was pivotal, but not the reason.
I became a teacher in 1990. As a Head of Year I quickly saw the very same problems were not only in evidence at Social Services (this time In London) but immeasurably worse.
Harassed social workers working between bouts of stress-induced sick leave, chronic under-funding, inadequate care facilities. A safe environment for children this was not.
One Children’s Home we came into contact with was under the day-to-day management of the Roman Catholic Church. This was a precursor to the use of private providers to run such institutions. And when I say institution, that’s exactly what I mean.
I once asked someone, ‘What’s the worst thing about being in care?’ His reply was stark, but not ‘ being tucked in by someone who loves you.”
The speaker was a petty, but persistent offender who I met in a northern gaol. I was part of the Samaritans organisation who trained offenders to act as Samaritan Listeners. This was part of One Nation Tory Ken Clarke’s ambition to reduce self harm and suicide.
Each prison received generous funding which gave a vital cash injection to Samaritan Branches.
The Labour Government continued to support the scheme. Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws recommended funding be pulled in 2010. George Osborne needed no convincing.
We limped on until 2013 but the three prisons that I was involved in supporting no longer have the scheme.
The issues of drug use, impulse control, and other psychological problems care leavers face is like climbing an ice wall with an anvil tied to your leg.
To her credit, Theresa May commissioned the Josh McAllister Report. The former PM is certainly not a person I could agree with on anything. But May is, if nothing else, a serious politician. (Unlike Johnson,Truss, Rich-Rishi etc.)
The best way to read the McAllister report is to concentrate on the bit where he writes for young people. (Please don’t all rush at once, I don’t want to break the internet.)
The report was serious; it listened to a diverse range of stakeholders, and its importance meant that it was authored through COVID-19 before being delivered in January 2022. It begged for £ 2 billion in immediate funding. Unsurprisingly, the government shelved it.
For those of you who can’t be bothered to read it, it can be summarised as in the following points:
- Looked after children are very pissed-off.
- A sector beset with high staff turnover and low training, with a heavy use of under qualified agency staff.
- that care homes are better suited for drug deals than studying
- that they don’t feel cared about or safe
This isn’t an issue you will hear about at the General Election. But there is a report on the shelf, full of findings, for the next government to examine.
Priority one: Give the government brief to someone who knows what it feels like from a child’s perspective. A looked-after child knows what these guys need.
Priority two: A commission into the whole tragedy must be initiated. If and when cash is needed the Banks, who were happy to take billions from the taxpayer should hand over a chunk of the £40 billion in profits they made last year.
Finally. We have met and become friends with MP’, nurses, teachers and the bloke who fixed my roof, all who have been in care. Most use the word despite a lot.
Notes.
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/statistics-briefings/looked-after-children
Click to access Independent_review_of_children_s_social_care_-_Final_report.pdf
Further information. All4. Kids in Care.
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