Beware of heavy lightweights

Many years ago, I worked with an esteemed professor who was an unbelievable academic snob. He referred to the 1960s post-Robbins universities as ‘second division’ but fortunately departed this life well before polytechnics and colleges joined the higher education network as this would most certainly have produced explosive apoplexy. One of his eccentricities was to classify the ability of his academic colleagues using boxing weight categories: feather, light, middle and heavy. At a major conference, he rated each speaker in these sporting terms and after a ‘celebrity’ expert had given a surprisingly shallow lecture, muttered, ‘Mmm… a heavy lightweight.’

I was reminded of the old boy’s taxonomy when I read Derek Kirton's article on media coverage of adoption, ‘Still the “trusty anvil”’, which provides numerous examples of ‘heavy lightweight’ activity, i.e. clever people talking superficially but with such confidence that they come over as totally convincing. This is not to suggest that what they say is untrue but that it lacks depth, is selective and may be designed to bolster wider opinions. I have always suspected that this group presents the most danger to welfare aspirations as the other types of contributors can be neutralised by the processes of debate and peer review.

There are four ways in which ‘heavy lightweights’ work their trade. The first is to talk generally and eschew any attempt at disaggregation or viewing facts in context. Take, for example, the perennial question of foster placement disruption and how disastrous it is. The first problem is defining the term ‒ obviously incidents of collapsed relationships and demands for immediate removal of children qualify, but what about placements that gently run out of steam or, as in the case of many adolescents, merely bring forward planned changes? This latter situation covers a third of ‘premature’ endings. So anyone wanting to rubbish foster care will use a wide definition, whereas those seeking to emphasise its stability will include only abrupt closures. Those that endure throughout are excluded from the calculation. And before passing judgement, we also need to be aware that the rate of disruption to foster placements is usually lower than for residential ones which may be proposed as a better option. So by adopting nebulous measures and treating diverse situations as monoliths, heavy lightweights get the figures they want.

A second method is to generalise from a selective sample or single fact. The stereotype of looked after children is of a single young child staying long in care and isolated from birth relatives. Yet the reality is quite different: half of foster placements are short, a quarter of children are aged over 15, a third are placed with a sibling and almost all have some contact with their birth family. So what applies to those children who fit the stereotype may not characterise them all. Similarly, those who want to condemn the care system often gloat over the widely reported fact that around a third of boys and girls admitted to youth custody have been in care. On the surface this seems shocking but looked at in a different way, this finding paints a far less negative picture of the care system. About 1500 boys and 80 girls enter youth custody each year in England and Wales so although it is true that a high proportion are ex-care, this only applies to around 450 boys and 30 girls. When these figures are viewed in the context where over 6000 boys and 5000 girls aged 16‒18 leave care each year, imprisonment is an uncommon outcome, particularly for girls. Both observations are factually correct but open to different interpretations depending on how the heavy lightweights wish to judge the care system.

The third strategy is to concentrate on the emotional aspects of what are often sad and complex histories. Reunions between adopted children and birth mothers always provide good theatre and the hugs and tears associated with this can be seen daily on reality television programmes. Yet, the reasons for the original separation tend to be overlooked and previously abusive parents can be transformed into caring and victimised saints. As Kirton points out, in an emotive area like adoption, every bit of the process offers a good story, so the heavy lightweights simply choose the part that matches their wishes, with social workers easily portrayed as the baddies if it suits their cause.

A fourth technique is to express care ambitions as United Nations-type declarations intended to formalise worthy aims and principles. Recent editions of this journal have discussed the latest reports on foster care by Sir Martin Narey and colleagues (e.g. Narey and Owers, 2018) and in July, the Department for Education published its response to their review (DfE, 2018). This comprises five goodwill ambitions:

Children are listened to and involved in decisions about their lives.

These ambitions are accompanied by 16 sub-statements expanding each one.

While these prescriptions appear outwardly profound and have an important role in preventing drift and maintaining standards, they are too general to qualify as a policy. Richard Titmuss explained that the test is whether the opposite offers an alternative and in this case, no one is likely to recommend ignoring children or neglecting carers. They also tend to be eternal rather than temporal in that they could have been expounded at any time since the Dissolution. Thus, they are often perceived as somewhat distant from immediate concerns and daily practice.

The famous Manchester Guardian editor CP Scott once said that ‘comment is free but facts are sacred’. Unfortunately, even when the latter are beyond dispute, their interpretation is fluid, especially in social areas. Looked after children are, and continue to be, seriously disadvantaged and a major barrier to reform is complacency whereby we resign ourselves to accepting bad news. Well-informed criticism should, therefore, be welcomed while always ensuring that the heavy lightweights are not given a free rein.