Britain’s broken, Britain’s sick

Following the recent riots in parts of the UK, the picture of childhood, or at least early adulthood, seems to have been imprinted firmly on our minds of feral children: hooded gangs either legging it into a looted shop or legging it out, adorned in new shoes or carrying a flat screen telly. Sky TV...you are naughty.

          
With the dust having settled and glass swept away, attention has turned to identifying and criminalising those involved. We now learn that “Broken Britain” and the association with said young people, may not be as it seemed. Statistics have shown [despite the rolling TV coverage] that the vast amounts of children and young people were little more than spectators on the whole - obviously the large numbers shown on TV were not caught but many appeared to be adults and data remains scant regarding the numbers of perpetrators being from the care system.

As a viewer, the rolling coverage did serve as a talking point with my own children. However, there was no apparent solidarity to join the masses masked and in need of new shoes. 

Thankfully.

Given the blame being pointed at parental control [or lack of], my family appear to have done well to influence our children on the straight and narrow- so far.

Thankfully.

Not so fast though at self-praise.  Just where is the line between observation and discussion during the news and, our own children tooling up and having a go at the glass frontage of the local Argos?

According to initial comments from on high, it was obviously an easy one:  it's all due to broken families, broken homes, broken lives and, wholly, the fault of a failing social care system and dysfunctional families. No high horse then, it is the Big Society after all.

The vulnerability of families in, or very near, the care system may just have made a faint blip on the radar of professionals involved in the health and social welfare of children and young people but it has not escaped others.  One blogger whose profession is as a family lawyer recently identified: “ … I won’t have been the only family lawyer watching the cctv footage of the looting and violence with fingers crossed, hoping that I won’t see one of my care clients or their children peeking out from under a hoodie. I’d like to see the stats on the proportion of care leavers, looked after children, and children with a CP [Child Protection] or CIN [Child in Need] Plan.”  

There may not have been an obvious avenue for those directly involved in the healthcare of children and young people to consider while watching the coverage of the riots, but look around...the gauntlet has been well and truly thrown.  The statistics on looked after children are easily found and are the numbers are worryingly increasing with typical examples in the press now being reported.

Reflecting on previous job roles I can speak with experience of supporting children in the care system over a twenty year period from clinical roles to education: as a neonatal nurse [while working in one post in middle England] and having to explain more regularly than I wished for to teenage girls of 12 and 13 yrs old in the presence of their social workers that the imminent births of their babies would likely require a stint in the neonatal unit. Also, as a looked after children’s nurse (or LAC nurse) in inner London, when children and young people would typically [as was a reflection of other areas] spend most of their lives being cared for in and out of the borough [with families from Land’s End to Aberdeen] up to a dozen times in their scholastic school life - they may have reached late puberty without ever having seeing a dentist or a GP, never mind their immunisations having been completed. All wrong, very wrong.  

The personal experiences of children within the care system have been previously aired on BBC Radio 4's Womans Hour, on BBC Panorama (*) and more recently with Lord Adonis lending weight to raise awareness. Little may have changed when reading recent reports over the past few months regarding rising numbers of children entering the care system, with effective strategies not in place to cover increasing job cuts with social workers and, children and young people taking solutions into their own hands.

It is worth exploring therefore that health professionals who come into contact with vulnerable children and young people should fire on all cylinders and learn from each other to play detective when admitting or caring for a child who is in the care system. We should anticipate the likelihood of such an encounter happening given current statistics showing them as being in higher risk groups: teenage pregnancy, lower educational attainment, depression, alcohol and substance abuse and other health concerns related to potential poverty of children who are looked after by the state.

So, to fellow professionals, get yourself on local child protection and vulnerable children awareness study days and acccept the likelihood of meeting a child or young person in the care system – a hoodie is not likely to worn on that day or ever. Embracing a hoodie is unlikely either!

               

Despite the forthcoming new series of Jacqueline Wilson’s award winning fictional children's home resident now carer, Tracy Beaker [whose depiction of life in care is that of as a Nancy Drew heroine [of a fashion], can I remind the medical students whom I met at a recent study day........ please [please] don’t base your knowledge of children in care on that alone.

Anyway, children's care homes may soon be gone, long gone.......... 

[* sorry, will not link via ipad: try  www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00v77vn/Panorama_Kids_in_Care/  ]