Make the UK and the world a child-friendly place

For all the statements about children being our future, they are suffering throughout the world. This has been brought into sharp focus in recent weeks with the distressing reports and images from Gaza and Israel. Raw footage of parents waiting for news of their children taken hostage, the grief of fathers cradling the dead body of their child and abandoned young children calling out for their mum strip away the sanitisation of the realities of war. It’s not just war though – the climate crisis is having a disproportionate negative impact on children as are economic and housing policies.

If all adults took seriously their responsibilities to nurture and care for all children and thought for a moment about the implications of adult actions on them, day-to-day behaviour and longer-term policies and government intents would change. No matter the age you designate as adulthood, strategic timeframes become longer and yet more tangible. Planning for that baby and the experiences you want them to have over the next 18 years - if you live in the UK - changes the focus from short-term policy initiatives into a longer-term way of being and acting.