The Childrens Society Edward Rudolf Memorial Lecture Professor Christina M Lyon The Lived Lives of C

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The Childrens Society Edward Rudolf Memorial
Lecture Professor Christina M LyonThe Lived
Lives of Children in LiverpoolA Response to
Professor Jonathan Bradshaw

• -Exploring the position of children and young
  people in Liverpool -
• Professor Christina M Lyon, University of
  Liverpool

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-The UNICEF Innocenti Report-(January 2007)-An
Overview of Child well-being in Rich Countries

• The purpose of the latest Innocenti Report card
  on Child Well being is to encourage monitoring,
  to permit comparison and to stimulate discussion
  and development of policies to improve childrens
  lives.
• What did the Report tell us, was this accurate in
  terms of the lives of children and young people
  in Liverpool and what has been its effects if any
  ?

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The UNICEF Innocenti Report-(January 2007)-An
Overview of Child well-being in Rich Countries
THE RESULTS

• The Report revealed that of the children surveyed
  in 21 European and North American countries,
  (with 1st position being the best position,)
  children in the UK emerged in 13th position with
  regard to their health and safety,18th in terms
  of both their perceptions of their education and
  their material situations, 20th in terms of their
  subjective well-being and 21st ( ie bottom) in
  terms of both their behaviour and lifestyles and
  critically, also in terms of their relationships
  with parents, family and friends.

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The UNICEF Innocenti Report-(January 2007)-An
Overview of Child well-being in Rich Countries
THE REACTION

• Media reaction to this survey revealed genuine
  shock that our children felt this way about so
  many aspects of their lived lives.
• The broadsheet newspapers and even the tabloids
  questioned how we as a country could be getting
  it so wrong that children and young people had
  reported feeling this way.

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The UNICEF Innocenti Report-(January 2007)-An
Overview of Child well-being in Rich Countries
THE REACTION

• Phone ins on local and national radio revealed
  real concern by adults (and also on occasion by
  young people) across the board that this was the
  case, but the response of the Government, as
  always, was to deny the relevance of the Report
  and to say that the survey was out of date, based
  on old material, things had now changed, and the
  Report did not reflect the true position in the
  UK today.

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The UNICEF Innocenti Report-(January 2007)-An
Overview of Child well-being in Rich Countries
--- The Liverpool situation

• But when you ask children and young people in
  Liverpool for their responses on the sort of
  issues raised in the report one is forced to
  conclude that it is not out of date and that
  it does accurately reflect the experiences of a
  significant number of our children.

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The UNICEF Innocenti Report-(January 2007)-An
Overview of Child well-being in Rich Countries
--- The Liverpool situation and The CSCFL

• In the Centre for the Study of the Child the
  Family and the Law at the University of Liverpool
  Law school we have been working closely with
  children and young people in Liverpool and
  Merseyside since we were established in 1994.
• We have worked over the years with a large number
  of voluntary organisations working with children
  and young people.

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The UNICEF Innocenti Report-(January 2007)-An
Overview of Child well-being in Rich Countries
--- The Liverpool situation

• The organisations with whom the Centre has
  worked on subjects relating to the children and
  young people of Liverpool have included
  Barnardos, Save the Children (UK), Carnegie (UK),
  the Gulbenkian Foundation, the NSPCC, the
  National Youth Advocacy Service (formerly ASK and
  IRCHIN) and The Childrens Society.
• In particular, over the years I have worked very
  closely with Mike Jones, formerly of TCS and now
  Co-Director in the Centre and also more recently
  with Tony Dobson of TCS.

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Working with TCS and the children and young
people of Liverpool in the Centre for the Study
of the Child the Family and the Law

• With Mike Jones when he was still with TCS, I
  also worked on the Liverpool Childrens Bureau
  which produced the Citizenship Now Report in
  2000 and also helped to produce the Liverpool
  Childrens Participation Standards, first
  launched on December 10th 2003 and which are to
  be re launched later this, or early next, year.

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Working with the children and young people of
Liverpool in the Centre for the Study of the
Child the Family and the Law

• In the Centre we have also worked on the
  evaluation of the Childrens Fund in Liverpool,
  Sefton and Knowsley and in relation to Liverpool
  the Centres Breaking Down Walls report was very
  positively received by the Childrens Minister,
  the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the
  Deputy Prime Minister as providing really useful
  evidence on the positive difference the CF could
  make to childrens lives.

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Working with the children and young people of
Liverpool in the Centre for the Study of the
Child the Family and the Law

• At the end of our Evaluation, however, the key
  issue for the children and young people (as well
  as the staff ) was whether the Projects they had
  worked so hard on and with which they had become
  so involved could continue or whether as with
  all short term funding initiatives these projects
  and the beneficial effects would simply wither
  away and the positive effects be lost.

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Working with the children and young people of
Liverpool in the Centre for the Study of the
Child the Family and the Law

• This after all has been the experience of so many
  of the children and young people with whom Mike
  Jones and I have worked over the years- good
  things may happen for a short time and then the
  money disappears and so too do the projects and
  crucially the workers upon whom the children have
  come to depend and to trust.

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The views of the children and young people should
come as no surprise

• It is not surprising to us then that the children
  surveyed for the Innocenti report indicated their
  problems with relationships with adults, their
  perceptions of their own behaviour and lifestyles
  and their sense of subjective well being so that
  the UK was placed in bottom and second to bottom
  of the 21 countries surveyed in these 3 areas.

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Childrens material well being-The Liverpool
experience

• What the children said about their material well
  being in response to the Innocenti Report
  indicated that in terms of material well being
  the UK emerged as 18th out of 21.
• For Liverpool children their city is ranked
  number 1 on the Governments own Indicators of
  Deprivation and almost 60 of its neighbourhoods
  are within the most deprived 10 of groupings
  nationally.

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Childrens material well being-The Liverpool
experience

• Yet for those of us who have lived through so
  many initiatives on Liverpool including being a
  European Objective One status area for so many
  years we are forced to ask where has al this got
  us ?
• Many of the children we work with know that the
  city has a negative image outside its boundaries
  and they are deeply concerned about it and about
  what they can do about it.

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Liverpool Childrens health and safety

• In the Report UK children came 13th in terms of
  their health and safety and yet the children and
  young people we talk to in Liverpool do not feel
  safe and their fears are not only of criminals,
  young and old, pointed up by the recent Rhys
  Jones case and the case on Wednesday involving
  members of the Croxteth Crew and yet another
  earlier shooting but also of the police who seek
  to move them on from places where they might
  gather together and be seen by adults and those
  in authority to pose a threat to other members of
  the public.

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Liverpool Childrens health and safety and their
behaviour and lifestyles

• And yet have we done enough to provide young
  people all over this city with equal access to
  leisure provisions eg parks and play spaces
  including football pitches and other spaces where
  they can get together.
• Why is it that on the media recently young people
  from this city have talked about not being able
  to go just over the border of their neighbourhood
  and into another for example to visit a swimming
  pool in that area without feeling at risk and to
  us that they do not like drug taking going on in
  the small green spaces in their housing areas so
  that they face a risk from syringes where they
  play or the problems they may encounter behind
  the back of supermarkets where they live
  including encounters with homeless people?

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Childrens Subjective well being and behaviour
and Lifestyles

• In Liverpool we have heard constantly from
  children and young people about the lack of
  youth facilities across the city about the
  inaccessibility of the city centre because of the
  expense of travelling by bus, although
  interestingly free transport to the Trafford
  Centre in Manchester is provided by the Trafford
  Centre to get our young people over there and
  about not feeling part of what is going on.
• No-where is this better exemplified than in their
  reaction to the Capital of Culture .

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The Innocenti report and the UNCRC

• The Innocenti Report is described as being based
  upon the principles of the United Nations
  Convention on the Rights of the Child which the
  UK ratified in 1991 but which it has never
  incorporated into UK law. For the UK then the
  UNCRC is the aspirant gold standard to which
  all those working with and for children should
  aspire and adhere.

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The Innocenti report and the UNCRC continued

• These principles confer upon all children under
  18 certain provision protection prevention
  and crucially, participation rights upon
  children. Such participation rights are intended
  for example under Article 12 to ensure that
  childrens views are listened to in all decisions
  affecting them whether taken by administrative or
  judicial decision making bodies.

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Failure to address article 12 of the UNCRC

• But when decisions are taken to close down
  projects or not to open recreational facilities,
  when decisions are being made on Capital of
  Culture with only a very small group of
  supposedly representative Children and young
  people instead of trying to engage with all the
  children and young people of Liverpool, or where
  some choose not to hear and listen to the
  evidence being produced by research with these
  children and young people, or where there is a
  clear and desperate need being articulated by the
  children either through their voices or by their
  actions and these are not being addressed, then
  we do not observe Article 12 UNCRC.

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What does this do to their sense of well being,
to being valued by adults ?

• And more importantly we add to their resentment
  and their feelings of exclusion from decisions
  directly concerning them thus again contributing
  to their negative perceptions of their subjective
  well-being in that they do not feel valued and
  their negative sense of their relationships and
  their behaviour and lifestyles.

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Progress in Liverpool
How are we as a city encouraging monitoring and
stimulating discussion and development of
policies to improve childrens lives?

• My question is finally how well does Liverpool do
  in terms of stimulating discussion and the
  development of policies to improve our childrens
  lives?
• It is not by any means negative but what we need
  from ALL the adults in this city is a clear
  commitment to, and valuing of the children and
  young people of this city and in drawing up plans
  and reports to put the children and young people
  first as a wonderful resource and not to headline
  first anti-social behaviour and problems caused
  by children and young people and then only put
  the best things at the end of an Assessment or
  Report .

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Progress in Liverpool How are we as a city
encouraging monitoring and stimulating discussion
and development of policies to improve childrens
lives?

• The Childrens Champion for Liverpool Councillor
  Paul Clein- but can one Councilllor fulfil this
  role without a full-time paid employee to assist
  him solely in relation to championing the issues
  affecting the children and young people in
  Liverpool ?

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Progress in Liverpool How are we as a city
encouraging monitoring and stimulating discussion
and development of policies to improve childrens
lives?

• The changes in the Chief Executive, Colin Hilton
  and the Childrens Services Director Stuart Smith
  and his team
• The Strategic bodies such as Liverpool City
  Council and Liverpool First and the various
  groupings which sit under it such as the Children
  and Young Peoples Strategic Executive
  Partnership Board, the role of the Childrens and
  Youth Parliaments and the range of the very many
  voluntary organisations, big and small, who work
  tirelessly in Liverpool, all do and are engaging
  in the sort of discussions which the Innocenti
  Report hoped to spark

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Progress in Liverpool How are we as a city
encouraging monitoring and stimulating discussion
and development of policies to improve childrens
lives?

• But there is still so much more that we could
  all do particularly in terms of mobilising the
  energy and enthusiasm of our children and young
  people, who are really keen to play their part
  not only in terms of improving their own lives
  but also those of others. Let us hope that
  Capital of Culture can provide a real
  spring-board for the involvement of all the
  children and young people of this city in its
  programme for 2008 but more importantly for its
  future.