Abstract
It is almost beyond cliché. ‘Children are our future’, ‘Children and young people are our most precious resource’ and so on are pronounced ad nauseam. Would that it were true in 2019 (UNICEF, 2019). Imagine our children and young people being valued, nurtured, cared for, heard, protected, educated, housed, employed, safe and loved. What we have instead today is some dystopian childhood nightmare, a man-made (and I choose that term deliberately) landscape of real world and virtual abuse, violence, sexploitation, trafficking, starvation, armed conflict, mental health crises, poverty and yet more abuse and violence, all directed at children and young people and so much of it unleashed and perpetrated by the very adults that children often rely on for protection.
Back in the heady days of the 1980s and 1990s, we were pressing to ‘raise the bar’ on children’s rights so that they could be involved, active participants in their lives and futures. Now, many of us would settle for the smaller victories of children NOT being routinely abused and killed.
How many more images must we recoil from of another dead waif being washed up on the shores of a ‘promised land’ somewhere (https://nypost.com/2019/06/25/migrant-toddler-father-wash-up-dead-in-border-crossing-tragedy/) (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/the-horrific-photo-of-aylan-news-organizations-that-chose-not-to-run-it-were-wrong.html) or pulled from the rubble of another bombed building (https://www.savethechildren.org/us/about-us/media-and-news/2019-press-releases/seven-killed-in-hospital-bombing-yemen) before we go back to our lives – until the next one appears. The names of other lost souls and their never-again scandal reports, like Victoria Climbé, Maria Colwell, ‘Baby Peter’, Chloe Valentine and others, are etched in our collective memories, but everyone in children’s health and children’s services knows that the next horror report is already being written somewhere as you read this. It too will hold out the promise that ‘lessons must be learned’ and that ‘no child should ever have to experience what ‘X’ did. But they won’t be and they will.
Adult survivors may wait indefinitely before the world’s richest and most powerful churches or governments, who oversaw criminally assaultive residential care settings and highly organised paedophile rings, understand the nature of an apology, appreciate what meaningful compensation is, and finally fathom what genuine action against their systemic, institutionalised assaults on children would look like.
What can we say and think when the world’s wealthiest and supposedly most ‘developed’ nations and their ‘adult’ leaders consign children to cages or detention camps and wilfully separate them from their parents as though they were no more than a perverse bargaining chip (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/17/trump-family-separations-report-latest-news-zero-tolerance-policy-immigrant-children)? When government guards can ban a two-year old in detention from having a birthday cake (https://www.sbs.com.au/news/concerns-for-two-year-old-tamil-refugee-s-health), we know that some moral abyss in how we see children has opened up.
What has also opened up is an even more unsettling proposition; that the adult world increasingly dislikes children (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/11/alison-michalska-children-poverty-austerity-social-work-funding). The ‘danger signals’ (Tomlinson, 2008) have been evident for some time now. It is not even difficult to find yet more capricious ‘no breastfeeding’ regulations and exclusions, popular calls to ‘ban children from various public spaces and facilities or the ‘hang ‘em & flog ‘em’ brigade’s desire to criminalise younger and younger children (Newell, 2015). Devotees of ‘austerity politics’ seem contentedly resigned to the growing numbers of children living in relative poverty with its seemingly inevitable ‘lifetime consequences’ (Schurer et al., 2019).
Unfortunately, children’s healthcare has not always been a beacon of enlightenment in this area. The revelations from Alder Hey (Hunter, 2001) and Bristol Children’s Hospital (Great Britain. Department of Health et al., 2001) will not easily be forgotten. Now it seems we may have to add more names to this particular roll of dishonour (see e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/nov/09/royal-college-surgeons-birmingham-childrens-hospital-scandal-report; https://www.healthexec.com/topics/leadership/johns-hopkins-hires-investigator-all-childrens; and Shaun Lintern’s extensive report on UK Children’s Cancer Services, https://www.hsj.co.uk/policy-and-regulation/exclusive-nhs-england-buried-concerns-over-child-cancer-services/7025307.article https://www.hsj.co.uk/policy-and-regulation/exclusive-nhs-england-buried-concerns-over-child-cancer-services/7025307.article).
What are we to do? How do we as individuals and as societies ‘value children’ (Stanley, 2007)? It is so easy to look the other way or to see the problems of so many of the world’s children as overwhelmingly beyond anything we can say or do to change matters, but we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of apathy. Remember that many years ago that it was deemed OK for young children to clean chimneys, work as factory fodder or have no compulsory schooling. It was once acceptable in many countries that babies and children in cars would have no specialist seats or seatbelts. It was legal and permissible for teachers to assault children in school under the guise of ‘corporal punishment’. In Ireland, the ‘marriageable age’ of girls as late as the 1950s was 12 years old (https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/church-state-and-marriage-1.2188131). We can and we do make improvements to children’s lives, when we want to.
We know that large-scale policy advocacy can make a positive difference to children and young people (Devakumar et al., 2016; Michaud-Létourneau et al., 2019; Wright and Jaffe, 2013) and this work has never been more important. Let us absolutely respect and encourage those fighting and chipping away ‘behind the scenes’ in politics, charities, NGOs and advocacy groups to improve the world for children. It is often a thankless task when it should be the stuff of Honors Lists. We may not all have seats at these tables but each of us can work at the more microaction level in ways that seem individually insignificant, but cumulatively, they may just help make a difference.
Make every adult and health professional interact with children in health and social care settings, one that shows children that they are loved, respected and valued.
Say a big thank you to any great school teachers you know, for they may be the only kind and caring adult presence in a particular child’s life.
Don’t roll your eyes and judge. If you see a parent struggling with young children on a bus (or worse, on a plane) tell them it’s no problem and ask if there’s anything you could do that would be helpful. Remember, we’ve probably all been there.
Tell a new mum you know that she’s doing a great job.
Never throw out children’s books. Donate them or better still, find a way to read them to other groups of children.
When you see children being disparaged or devalued publicly or in the media, say something.
Involve children actively and respectfully in everything about your school, health facility, research programme or social service.
Enjoy adding to this list.
Professor Fiona Stanley’s clarion call spelling out what is needed for Australia to become a genuinely civilised society that has children’s welfare at its heart is truly global in its challenge and worth quoting at length: In such a society, all of us would continually and automatically think about our actions and decisions in terms of what they meant for children and young people. All federal, state and territory legislation introduced would have been checked as to how it might impact, negatively or positively, on our children’s developmental chances. This would include not just legislation which is directed at children and families, but also that involving environmental, workplace and economic policies. All decisions made by local government councils, by developers and planners, regarding community, workplace, family, educational and environmental issues would be assessed in terms of whether they enhance our children and their futures. In our society, Australia would become a country internationally recognised as one which not only produces gold medal winning swimmers but is a great place for all children to grow up. A society where people generally like and support children, including the children of others. A society where children and youth have a say in what happens and what their futures might therefore be. (Stanley, 2007: 47).