Amid every trouble, trial and challenge in a person’s life, it is what one young person once described to me as “bouncebackability”.
We seem assailed by issues that would challenge anybody’s ability to bounce back, be they young or old. As a nation we are – at last, some might say – looking more intently at how safe all our children are; how effective our work for them might be; how specialist services including social care are, or aren’t, up to the job; whether policy and practice alike take enough notice of the vulnerable and act to lessen their vulnerability.
On 16 November, Michael Gove made a considered, detailed commitment to improving children’s social care and safeguarding services, just days after the education select committee had said too little attention was being paid to these matters by his department.
In the same few days, two reports were published on what can go wrong when those services fall short, on the Edlington torture case and on Doncaster’s children’s services department which has been rated as “inadequate”.
Scandals about children who are let down, hurt, ignored or harmed continue to confront us. In the past few weeks, we have been made to consider some big questions about how much we care whether other people’s children are as safe as our own.
Child sexual exploitation
Last week, my office published the one-year interim report into our inquiry on child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups, I Thought I Was the Only One. The Only One in the World. The report focuses on the prevalence and patterns of sexual exploitation in too many children’s lives.
It is important to remember that behind every statistic and every case study is a child, who could be your child; a child who may have tried to tell services a story of resilience pushed to breaking point and beyond, which too often has not been heard.
Other recent events have marked a positive contrast to the report. Last Friday, the UK Youth Parliament took over the House of Commons to speak out on what matters, what works and what needs to change if as a generation they are to bounce back from what confronts them in these continuing hard times. Some members are born leaders, others born anything but, and simply honed to be leaders by the work they do there.
Friday was also Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Day. At my office, in parliament, in ministerial offices, mayors’ parlours, local councils, countless schools, 90 museums, local newspaper offices, regional radio stations, charities, police and other uniformed services, businesses and the BBC Blue Peter studio, children and young people took over the boss’s big chair for the day.
They got a taste of how hard it is to be an adult making important choices, how resilience works in the grown-up world and what life holds in store for them as they grow up.
The young person who shadowed my deputy met with an assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard. And two accompanied me to challenge the V&A Museum to be more young people-friendly – to open its heart, mind and exhibition curation to young visitors. We look forward to the results.
Maggie Atkinson is the children’s commissioner for England
