Hard heads v soft hearts
There is something about the photograph of a child who has died which has a poignancy every time you look at it. There's the mixture of innocence, the trust in their eyes, the vulnerability and neediness, and above all the realisation that we couldn't offer the protection to see a child safely through to adulthood.
A few faces have affected the British public like that - Baby P, Victoria Climbie, James Bulger in the last decade or so. So powerless in life, so influential in death - their young features have moved mountains.
Such tragedies gnaw away at our trust in humanity which, in recent years, has resulted in wide-ranging political and legislative responses.
But are we really serious about reducing child suffering? Because if we are, surely the politicians should be reacting with the same vigour to the findings contained in today's Lancet reports as they did to the scandal of Baby P.
The scale of maltreatment of children in the UK suggested by the studies sounds incredible. "Every year, in the region of one in 10 children (about one million children in the UK) are maltreated but official statistics indicate that less than one tenth of this burden are investigated and substantiated by child protection services", one report indicates.
Included in the definition of maltreatment is physical abuse - "hitting with an implement, punching, beating or burning" - assaults which injure the child. The occasional light smack would not count but being belted or caned would.
If a child is bruised or injured in the previous 12 months as the result of deliberate abuse on at least one occasion, he or she is deemed to have suffered maltreatment.
The 'abuser' in these cases is most likely to be a parent.
The definition also includes sexual abuse. Analysing large-scale anonymous surveys conducted in a number of countries including the UK, the researchers conclude that between 5 and 10% of all girls and up to 5% of boys will experience the most serious sexual abuse at least once during their childhood.
Including non-contact abuse such as exposure sees the figures rise to at least 15% for girls and 5% of boys.
The most common perpetrators for this kind of abuse are close relatives and family friends.
The Lancet reports also assess emotional abuse which "affects around 10% of children each year". This form of maltreatment includes persistently being made to feel worthless, unwanted or scared to the extent that it damages a child's emotional development.
And the last and largest category is neglect, defined as a persistent lack of care for a child's safety: not enough food, warmth, education or love. "Neglect is at least as damaging in childhood and adult life as are physical or sexual abuse" the evidence suggests. Although neglect accounts for 44% of child maltreatment reported to agencies in Britain, it "fails to capture the attention of the press, the public, or researchers". Neglect is neglected.
These figures paint a thoroughly depressing picture of the way we routinely treat children in our society. I was struck by the evidence of the long-term damage such abuse does.
"In addition to feeling considerable pain and suffering themselves, abused and neglected children are at increased risk of becoming aggressive and inflicting pain and suffering on others, often perpetrating crime and violence. One paper on the cycle of violence reported that being physically abused or neglected as a child increased the likelihood of arrest as a juvenile (31% arrested v 19% of community-matched controls) and as an adult (48% v 36%)."
The research finds that maltreated children are more likely to suffer mental health problems, to commit suicide, to have drug or alcohol problems, to be obese and to be involved in prostitution.
The studies suggest a causal link with some negative outcomes: "maltreatment has damaging effects on educational achievement, school attendance, and behaviour in childhood and adolescence. Maltreatment in early childhood is particularly damaging for behaviour, but repeated maltreatment has cumulative effects" they say.
As if this wasn't serious enough, the research concludes that little research has been done as to what interventions actually work to stop abuse. "Although a broad range of programmes for prevention of child maltreatment exist, there is still uncertainty about which programmes are effective."
One controversial finding, however, suggests we are too slow to take some at-risk children away from abusive families. "Placing children in foster care and not reunifying them with their biological parents can lead to benefits for maltreated children", the report argues.
This wealth of international academic research, peer-reviewed and published in a reputably medical journal, poses some stark questions for our country and for our government.
If we are really serious about protecting children from suffering, don't we need to look at the big picture? Recognise the common-place nature of child neglect and cruelty? Fund research into what works? Invest heavily in schemes we know are effective? Not allow the beseeching face of an individual child to blind us to the scale of the real challenge?
I'm 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~50~RS~)
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Suddenly all the people shouting that todays youth are feral animals go very very quiet.
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We have seen the results of not acting, the results of custodial sentances for child abuse.
The results are over crowded jails and rampant abuse of children.
Resulting in problem teenagers who have no morals or values.
Its time for the death penalty.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I am affronted that baby P has not been named. It really is the final insult that a society that failed him so badly now refuses even to publicise his name. Victoria Climbe and James Bulger won't be forgotten but why can't we be told baby P's real name?
Hasn't baby P got a right to be named so that we can properly remember him?
The refusal to name him properly is denying him his dignity even in the manner of his tragic death.
I understand that his father wasn't involved with his death, so why not name his son?
Finally why haven't the courts named the mother and her boyfriend and yet named the lodger, all of whom were convicted?
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Baby P was an angel
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I think it is very sad when any child dies. I have often thought about this when either a child is murdered by a drunk driver (any drunk drivers out there?) or children are needlessly killed by bombing missions in Iraq.
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Hi Mark,
Excellent article - one of your best on the Baby P tragedy and its associated issues. I really hope that the death of Baby P might focus people on the issues that you mention here, but I am pessimistic about this. In a year or two such topics will be forgotten about ... until the next tragedy.
But I have to disagree with the post #1 - there are plenty of feral youth in some areas of the UK - usually they are the result of a lack of parenting rather than abusive parenting. I certainly don't demonise children or think that that they are all potential criminals - but it is true that some of them are. As for the causes of feral youth - it is a gross over-simplification to suggest that dysfunctional behaviour in young people is due to abusive parenting. Some young thugs are just that because their behaviour - however bad - is supported by their parents, or because they are consuming lots of alcohol and/or drugs and not because they are viciously beaten by their parents. That is why I think that the Barnados head was way off the mark to suggest that Baby P would have ended up feral - who is to say how the boy would have turned out if he had lived to adulthood? He might even have eventually been taken into care (not necessarily a great outcome in itself) if Haringey's various services had gotten wise to what was happening to him.
I also agree with the post that condemns our use of the name Baby P. I actually know his name from before the legal ruling was put in force but I cannot use it here.
Someone, in an earlier blog mentioned that it might be a good idea to erect a memorial outside Haringey Council's office to act as a reminder of what happened to Baby P - the more I think about this idea the more I like it.
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I remember when James Bulger was murdered. This changed our lives. From that day onwards all downstairs windws and doors were locked when I was alone in the house and my babies couldn't play out in the garden unles supervised by an adult. My teenagers now blame me for terrifying them when they were young about "The Bad People" who might take them away if they didn't stick by my side.
It's not too late to go back to the future. We need to have some old fashioned punishments by the people: - naming and shaming, public flogging, stocks and hanging. Why not? At least then decent humans can enjoy their gardens and parks, go for evening strolls without worrying about who will take their kids away or who would mug/rape them.
Social workers are overburdened and take an awful lot of blame for society's ills. Why can't we take matters into our own hands a bit more without the fear of punishment for doing so?
Where I live (not in U.K. any more) if there were any suspicion of a child being neglected or abused, the whole of the extended family plus the neighbourhood would deal with it. Your child here isn't just 'yours' - he/she belongs to society.
It used to be this way in Britain.
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`The Lancet reports also assess emotional abuse which `affects around 10% of children each year`. This form of maltreatment includes persistently being made to feel worthless, unwanted or scared to the extent that it damages a child`s emotional development.`
Yes it certainly can. But part of becoming an adult (which at at the age of 50 I feel is still a work in progress) is not just coming to coming to terms with your upbringing but with what caused it. Will | ever reach a `perfect state`, I doubt I`d recognise it if I found it.
My realisation (which I realise may be different from others) is that my parents themselves had terrible, unloved childhoods and that though they tried to be `good parents` they repeated what they were taught by their parents as to how to bring up children.
Part of my growth towards adulthood (which at at the age of 50 I feel is still a work in progress) was realising this; it changed my attitude towards my parents. I can`t turn the clock back, but I could realise my priority was to stop blaming (and anger is an emotional response) but look to understand and change myself. To cite an old adage; it’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s what you do about it afterwards.
Neglect isn`t just about poverty, though it comes into it; it’s about how neglect (emotional, physical) by your parents can lead you to feeling emotionally empty towards other people. My response as an adult has been not to want to want children; not just intellectually; I never have emotionally also, and some relationships have broken up over this.
Lets not pretend this is a new phenomena. `That`s Life` in the 70s first raised child abuse on TV and led Esther Ransom to found ChildLine. Her program was inundated by callers, many elderly, saying it was the first time they had seen their childhood recognised publicly. It had been something they`d carried privately and secretly all their lives.
This is a big, big topic and unlikely to be solved by a blog or hundred. The most obvious point to make is that the happiest, most successful families are those parents that have happy successful parents themselves. Work backwards from that.
For all those that want to just point fingers and blame; really, really ask yourselves how things can be changed? And if your answer is taking children away from parents (something I was threatened with and terrified of as a child), are you fostering?
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Of course, if the report's authors are going to count abuse as such a wide variance no wonder the figures are very high.
Serious abuse like Baby P is a real problem. But setting definitions so broad so as to criminalise ordinary chastisement of a child by a parent is an equally severe and compelling problem. It trivialises genuine severe cases of child abuse and serves only the further the political aims of the authors - in this case at least partly a ban on smacking.
It's a bit like the government definition of binge drinking is so broad that virtually everyone who drinks semi-regularly can be so classified.
That you have not seen this problem with this report does not speak to your credit sir. But then, being a BBC journalist you probably agree with it. Certainly you seem to think that schoolchildren who hang about on a street and then proceed to accost and attack passer-bys should be left alone. And now you endose a thinly veiled attack on discipline in the home that tries to turn all parents who seek to bring up their children properly into child abusers.
You may be able to tell I am unimpressed by your comments on this recently. Unimpressed, but not surprised. As I said, you are after all a BBC journalist, and one does not expect too much intelligence from journalists, especially ones working for the BBC.
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There's little I can say about Baby P that I haven't already posted elesewhere, or that has been better put by others. But from this blog post one comment did stand out. Once again I just love the way that 'child obesity' (for many kids defined as the terrible crime of growing outwards before having an upwards spurt) is listed alongside 'prostitution' and 'drug and alcohol problems'.
To me it's all indicative of the sort of warped sense of priorities where social workers can remove a child for 'failing to comply' with their interfering diet plans and food diaries, yet knowingly leave another to be beaten to death in the interests of keeping the 'family' (read educationally challenged gymslip mom and psychopathic boyfriend) together, and is the inevitable result of allowing single-issue pressure groups to direct health and social policy.
The icing on this cake of prejudice and incompetence is that many hundreds of the type of loving, stable people who local authorities are supposedly 'crying out' for to provide foster and adoptive homes are being denied by this same reliance on an epidemiological scale that was only of limited use even when it was dreamed up 150 years ago.
It's time Britain's social care industry reassessed its notions of what makes a good parent and a happy childhood. Tearing up 'Every Child Matters' (which seems to equate a child being slightly 'bonny' or briefly upset at not getting their own way with the very worst types of physical and emotional abuse) might well be a good place to start. Greater powers for social workers (as has been widely suggested) will only be abused unless the underlying absurdities of the system are first rectified.
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Dear WhiteEnglishProud,
Do you want to kill the offending parents!?
This probably causes the same problems...
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I read those abuse statistics yesterday and was quite shocked. But then I remembered a bus journey through South London not long ago in which I saw a 'young family' fighting and squabbling amongst themselves and with other passengers: "Don't you touch my kid!" aggressively spoken by the father, who looked about 16, to a man who was trying to get past the pushchair...
It was impossible to say who were the adults in this family. From the way they spoke to (and swore at) their children in public, I didn't want to know what it must be like in their home.
Children bringing up children is a recipe for disaster. If you can't wait until your 20s to have sex (and I realise not everyone can) then using 2 forms of contraception should be the norm. Condoms can be the boys' responsibility and the pill (or the longer-lasting contraceptive injection, for those who struggle to remember) can be the girls'. This works very well for me and my husband.
But with the government's child poverty targets - which I think are worthy enough in themselves, but create perverse incentives to have a child in households which really have no other way of escaping relative poverty, as defined by the government (and if you were in this situation, wouldn't you?) - this situation is unlikely to improve.
If we are going to engage in social engineering, as we apparently are, all aspects, including the kind of perverse incentives mentioned above, need to be considered. We need to have a very close look at who is having children in our society and also why. For the sake of the children.
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God, this is depressing. Not Mark Eaton's blog; the comments which other readers have posted. The standard riposte of some mention of the death-penalty (boringly unimaginative and from the same conditioned mind-set that brings out the violent, almost medieval mobs, that accompany the latest awful crime. As Blake Morrison noted of the reaction towards the killers of James Bulger; A brutish illogic is still at work: let's kill the kids who killed the kid.) The comment that, devoid of one iota of irony, makes the point whilst apparently disputing the point: "But I have to disagree with the post #1 - there are plenty of feral youth in some areas of the UK - usually they are the result of a lack of parenting rather than abusive parenting." Yes! That bad-parenting that you refer to is the type of "neglect" that would be and is considered abusive! It's also interesting to see how ("media") terms like "feral" are uncritically accepted and regurgitated. This, as Barnardo's recently highlighted, is an aspect of the widespread view that adults in this country adopt towards children. And of course no reaction would be complete without the pervasive denial. This is usually couched in religious moralistic terms that ends up blaming the victims and talks in terms of inherent evil (presumably genetic) rather than accept the simple fact that children need love, care and protection. The results, as anyone who cares to read Alice Miller will learn, are invariably and depressively predictable.
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Im going to get shouted at for this next bit.
but in these cases were children are hurt and killed then im afraid its time for some back bone.
People like this should be removed from sociaty in the same way that they removed the child. yes very old school bible law but its right in such cases. this is why names will never be given to the public.
the mother in this case will live out a very secure life not have to worry about anything ever again or untill such time she is released.
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These are all tragedies indeed. And I put their neglect down to the politicians' usual overreaction resulting in "putting new measures in place."
New measures usually mean new procedures. New procedures, new paperwork (or the equivalent computer input) are designed to cover backsides, to limit public liability, not necesssarily to meet the front-line case objective. New departments are set up meaning more boundaries, more hierarchies to wade through and less lateral communication, more partisanship...just so the functionaries can cover themselves - because all are frightened of repercussions when things go wrong - they've done what the procedure told them to do.
And in fear of getting it wrong (well, it is a sensitive and horrible issue, deciding whether to break up a family or not) means that the matter will have to go up the hierarchy - junior caseworker to their supervisor then to their team leader. There might be phone calls to other agencies, delays, co-ordination problems, waiting around because staffing is now a serious problem. Meanwhile, the child is killed while Rome burns.
What's been removed from the equation are common sense and judgement.
There is no one on the front line with the authority to judge and act. Once upon a time, Children's Officers had this authority. Not now. So while teams of back office people and their agencies are faffing around, the abuse happens and Baby P and countless others will suffer abuse.
Blame the politicans' reactions, the emotive rather than rational response about what to do, the inevitable splat of more bureaucracy that never works as it should, the lack of staff.
The whole biz needs reorganizing to place authority on the front line. Until then you can have all the inspectors, police, what you like, but children will continue to slip through the net.
I mean, for goodness sake, babies and children are 100% dependent on their parents. If the parents aren't fit to nurture, make sure they can't have any more children, at least.
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Re: ban on naming of Baby P.
The major reason that I can see for this ban is that Baby P has a number of brothers and sisters (all now in care). The ban is to try and give them annoyminity. I have no idea if these siblings have the surname of either the father or mother (both now in prison) but that could be a reason why they cannot be named either (but why the lodger has been).
It`s not about protecting the perpetrators; it`s about protecting the surviving children and trying to give them a future on the same footing as other children.
As we all (I hope) realise people do stigmatise and blame by association.
There are also some very good arguments against mob rule and vigilantism, which is what the campaign to name the mother and her partner appears to be about. Go down that road and you end up with a country like Somalia: no laws, no justice, just thuggery by whoever has the most guns; and (in this case) the possibility of innocent people with the same surname being caught in the crossfire. Remember the paediatrician whose house was graffitied simply because the dimwits responsible didn`t know it meant `doctor that specialises in childrens` illnesses`?
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Hello Mark,
Re: Comment no 14 from JawJawWell (which was in response to my initial comment no 7).
Yes - of course there is a complete lack of irony in my remarks where I refer to lack of parenting as being different to abusive parenting. Most parents in the UK would regard themselves as not being abusive to their children when a great deal of them are inattentive to their childrens' needs! If people would like to lump extreme physical abuse in the same category as inattentive parenting then it makes the job of social services impossible and the law unenforceable. Would any normal people categorise eight broken ribs and a broken back in a child as the same as being inattentive to that child? My remarks in post 7 were mainly to highlight that feral children do not only and do not always result from physically abusive "parenting" techniques. I think that research supports me on this.
Personally, there have been times when I have been inattentive to my little son - usually when I have heavy job commitments - but I try to make it up to him when I can and as best I can. I hope that this does not put me in the same group as the guy from Sheffield or the mother and stepfather (and lodger) in the Baby P case (no response needed here please from JawJawWell).
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How I agree with post Nº 16.
New procedures .... designed to cover backsides....
Whatever has happened to professional training and responsibility? And authority? As a teacher, trained in the 70s, I was put through the wringer, learning to teach. And those not up to scratch were looking for other employment.
Are social workers adequately trained? Are they given the resources and support they need? Are the frontline workers listened to? And if so - why do we need whistleblowers?
Could we get back to basics and actually do the job in question, rather than just shifting words round on paper and adding more layers of bureaucratic incompetence whilst more and more children suffer?
Could politicians actually set an example of leadership, rather than knee-jerk reactions, hypocrisy, mud throwing and walking around with their heads in the clouds?
Moral outrage with hindsight is to be expected from the public. The government is supposedly composed of professionally competent authority figures, charged with improving conditions in the UK. Could they please start investing in our children and our future, by actually recognising a balance between caring and protection and discpline?
I don't envy any social worker his/her job - it's neither easy nor one where they ever get thanked when they get it right. What we don't need are for the good ones to leave out of utter frustration while the "less able" float about in more paper and children drown.
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Re Comment 18.
Sorry I must respond.
As far as I'm aware Mark Easton's blog is a brief description and commentary on a series of studies in the medical journal The Lancet.
The studies, apparently, draw attention to the nature of all types of abusive behaviour, or failure to act when caring for children.
Now we can get upset and wail and howl and reduce a series of serious academic studies by using terms like "lump" because we feel tainted by association. The it can't be us it has to be them response.
Or we listen and learn some serious lessons about cause and effect.
Whilst we justify our behaviour on the basis that it is not at the extreme end is to miss the exact the point the studies are making.
As the blog comments
"The Lancet reports also assess emotional abuse which "affects around 10% of children each year". This form of maltreatment includes persistently being made to feel worthless, unwanted or scared to the extent that it damages a child's emotional development.
And the last and largest category is neglect, defined as a persistent lack of care for a child's safety: not enough food, warmth, education or love. "Neglect is at least as damaging in childhood and adult life as are physical or sexual abuse" the evidence suggests. Although neglect accounts for 44% of child maltreatment reported to agencies in Britain, it "fails to capture the attention of the press, the public, or researchers".
Neglect is neglected.
This is seriously damaging parenting.
And the so called "feral" - Hideous term bordering on the word vermin - are just the visible face of the results of this sort of "abuse".
The non-"feral" neglected do exist and the rates of mental-illness bear this out.
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"The scale of maltreatment of children in the UK suggested by the studies sounds incredible."
Yes indeed. Utterly incredible. And yet you then write the rest of your blog based on the assumption that the figures are correct. Very sloppy journalism. Wouldn't it have been better to do some digging into why the reported figures are so implausibly high?
But perhaps you think it makes more exciting headlines to say "15% of all children are sexually abused" than to try to get to the truth?
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"Are we serious about reducing child suffering?"
Some people are, but there are far too many sexist feminist organisatiosn out there seeking to somehow suggest that women don't commit abuse.
They go on and on about abuse of "women and children", thus pretending women rarely abuse children and it's only those evil men we need to sort out.
Such sexist organsations have huge support in this government, and the resulting climate makes it far easier for women to get away with abuse of children (or of men for that matter).
We desperately need a gender neutral approach.
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The scale of maltreatment of children in the UK suggested by the studies sounds incredible. Mark Easton and #21.
This is where the waters become murky as arriving at percentages per population depends on how abuse is defined? To put it another way, what to one person may be seen as `just part of growing up` can be seen by another as being abusive. Only in clear cut extreme cases is everyone likely to agree.
Not many media outlets are covering this story; The Guardian makes some effort to look at how abuse is defined in the Lancet report. The figure aren`t just for the UK by the way, they come from several industialised nations.
`Some 5-10% of girls and 1-5% of boys have been subjected to penetrative sex, usually by a family friend or relative. If sexual abuse is defined more widely - as anything from being shown pornographic magazines to rape - it is estimated that it will include at least 15% of girls and 5% of boys.
Around 10% of children suffer emotional abuse every year, the paper says, which includes persistently being made to feel worthless, unwanted or scared. More still - up to 15% a year - suffer neglect, defined as the failure of their parents or carers to meet the child`s basic emotional or physical needs or ensure their safety.
Around 10% of children suffer emotional abuse every year, the paper says, which includes persistently being made to feel worthless, unwanted or scared. More still - up to 15% a year - suffer neglect, defined as the failure of their parents or carers to meet the child`s basic emotional or physical needs or ensure their safety.`
This for me is where things get very difficult. I had a very unhappy childhood, my mum repeatedly told me she wished she`d never had me and I was hit (punched) a lot. My parents constantly fought. Abused? Looking back, well many would say so; at the time I didn`t realise other families were different.
Was my life at risk? Probably never. Should I have been taken into care? I`m glad I wasn`t, it wasn`t what I wanted at any point.
I`m really glad I`m not a social worker having to make those kind of judgements and decisons about families today.
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Since the Baby P horror we have all been alerted to how the system failed that one child. It's not a nice thing to say, but his death has prompted us to look at what went wrong, but should it take a childs death for people to stand up and listen to the number of problems encountered when trying to protect innocent children, not just in Haringey, but everywhere?
It's all about giving the right people the resource, an effective process and ultimate responsibility.
From the Panorama report it seemed that social workers have too many hoops to jump through. There was a distinct lack of communication and the wrong people made the decision.
The social worker has the responsibility to visit children in care on a regular basis, ensuring the child is well cared for. They should have the power to order foster parents/carers to take children to their GP for a regular check up, talk alone with the child and make neighbours aware at the time of placement that a child is in care on the premises. If for any reason she suspects anything she should talk to the police and get advice. Once the Police are involved they should have the powers to make the ultimate decision if anything untoward is happening, as abuse, if I'm not mistaken, is a crime.
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Another thoughtful article, Mark.
A good portion of the problem is that bullying is endemic to British society. There are even some nutters out there who will tell you it is character forming, whatever that means.
Bullying certainly creates more bullies and abuse begets abuse.
This dreadful self-seeding process continues because the bully or the abuser is hardly ever challenged on an equal basis by their victim, and so both the bully and the bullied can come to accept their relationship as normal.
I learned to deal with bullies years ago by confronting them. This is now my stock response and I frighten them because I deal with them in their own coin. I take no pleasure in that as it wholly escapes me why they should have such a bad attitude to the fellow beings.
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Hello Mark,
It seems JawJawWell (Comment 20) has really got it in for me! (Post 20). Appropriate name, by the way.
Unfortunately, I am a real parent and I have a real job and I live on planet earth. I am not a Utopian ideal of a parent and I gave up trying to be one a long time ago. Like it or not I have to do my job and I can only be with my son at certain times. Therefore I am not perfect but I do the best I can for my son. If JawJawWell and others equate this with neglect then I am a neglectful parent and proud of it - guilty as charged - you better lock me up and throw away the key! Of course, if JawJawWell is prepared to sponsor me to become a better parent (i.e. spending more time with my son) then I would be happy to spend all day at home with him!
Abusiveness towards children can certainly be neglect. Inattentiveness is not a form of neglect - if it is then ALL parents are guilty of it at some time or another. Does that mean that all 10 million or so of us behind bars now!
I don't see too many people posting blogs in agreement with JawJawWell's blogs - maybe it's the hectoring tone in the blogs or that parents resent all being tarred with the same brush by over-critical zealots?
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Leepom is right! the neglect jawjawwell and others speak of is direct result of the you must work at all cost attatude even is it meens 1 in 10 children are abused in some way.
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Hello Mark,
have to say that further analysis of JawJawWell's comments on the use of the word "feral" in his/her blogs above intrigued me:
(S)he says:
"And the so called "feral" - Hideous term bordering on the word vermin - are just the visible face of the results of this sort of "abuse"."
As far as I know, I do not think that anyone had copyright over the usage of the word "feral" or controlled the use of such words. Like I said before - JawJawWell certainly is an appropriate name!
There is nothing hideous about the use of this word - there are some feral children in the UK who ARE FERAL! It is a hideous term because some of these kids DO BEHAVE HIDEOUSLY. They often go on to become feral adults too - except by that time we just refer to them as criminals. Some of us actually know this from first-hand experience and are not just using such words merely because they are quoted frequently in the media at the moment - although this might be difficult for some to believe (such as the rather patronising JJW).
Rather than studying the Lancet's (admittedly interesting) report, perhaps JJW should undertake a study of the youth on the streets of Lambeth or Toxteth, late at night with mobile phone, laptop, MP3 player in hand, dressed in smart ("non-street") clothes, etc for a few weeks...?
How does that joke go that was doing the rounds a few years ago?
Q: What's the definition of a liberal?
A: A Hard-liner who hasn't been mugged yet?
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Q: What`s the definition of a liberal?
A: A Hard-liner who hasn`t been mugged yet? leepom #28
I was mugged by a bunch of white yobs in the early 90s (and lost most of my front teeth, now wear dentures).
A liberal is someone who has the imagination to see that things can be changed for the better and hasn`t given up hope.
A liberal is someone who can apply a set of core principles across a whole range of issues, principles such as liberty, equality, law, justice, compassion, faith, and hope.
Someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas and doesn`t reach for simplistic solutions; someone who cares about the welfare of the people; their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties; someone who believes we can break through stalemate, suspicions and selfish hostility but who realises there is complexity in the world.
I`m not naive or living in a middle class ghetto. I`ve posted 3 times above (9, 17, 23), those may give you a chance to know more about where I come from and stand. I still define myself as a liberal (independent minded may be better); but refuse to join any party.
Democracy is all about disagreement, not agreement.
This is my last post here as we`re now way off topic.
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Re comment 26
In comment 14 I wrote that the “standard” reaction, ranging from let’s kill people (calls for the death penalty), to let’s stigmatise people (“feral youth”/choose your own shaming brand) to outright denial (this just can’t be true) is depressing.
I chose a few (self-selecting?) examples.
I’m merely saying that this obvious unwillingness to intelligently and critically engage with serious academic analysis (well we could if the Lancet allowed free online access to the articles!) depresses me.
I also mentioned that adult rates of depression (you can add alcohol and drug dependency, etc) are indicative of the scale and extent of childhood emotional abuse.
However it appears we’re prepared to accept a more simplistic “them” bad we good view of the world.
It is not the opening up of a debate on “The scale of maltreatment of children in the UK” that depresses me; it is the predictable reactions.
Re comment 28
I’m not sure what laptops, mp3’s, mobile phones, etc has to do with a study by the Lancet into The scale of maltreatment of children in the UK?
An instance of the issue of neglect being neglected?
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We've been here before, Mark. Remember the furore over the anal dilation tests in Cleveland in the 80s? There, scores of kids were removed from their parents based on a test which was deemed to prove they were being abused. Investigation revealed over-zealousness from the authorities, which resulted in a great deal of pain, anguish and stigma for innocent people, whose children were removed and probably scarred for life by the experience. Imagine having your child taken away from you when you have done nothing wrong! Since then, the default position has been to err on the side of caution with removals. This inevitably leads to the tragedies we have seen. One extreme is no better than the other. We have to define the middle ground much better and make it work.
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Hi Mark,
Sorry guys - I never meant to put forward an "us good, they bad" argument. It seems that people are trying to debase my posts on this article or put words into my mouth.
If you actually read my posts you will understand that I don't accept that ALLl feral children are the product of abusive parents and that I don't accept that inattentiveness equates to abusiveness (that's a leap too far for me).
I also have freely admitted that I think that I am not a perfect parent and that sometimes I let my son down. Those comments hardly suggest that I am in the "us good, they bad" mindset.
I actually believe that there are a lot MORE influences in the bringing up of a child other than those of the parent. It seems to me that those who feel that feral kids only come from abusive parenting are simplifying a very complex issue. Some bad kids can come from non-abusive families (these kids have come under negative external influences unbeknownst to the parents). This was what I was alluding to when I said that I am a less than perfect parent. This was was why I felt that Blog No1 needed a reply - I did not want to take the discussion so far off-track from Mark's good article. I agree with JFurneaux's postings on the whole and my earlier joke was not intended to offend anyone or to politicise the debate.
However, I do wonder how many ACTUAL parents out there agree with my earlier postings?
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I always think prevention is better than cure. The problem is not that the punishments are not severe enough, there will always be those who are not deterred. Think of other children in the family who would grow up being told (or finding out) that their mother/father was hung for murdering their brother/sister. The consequences are too unpredictable.
The problem is that even if social workers do identify children at risk and take them into care the outcomes are frequently unsatisfactory. Whilst many children who have been taken into care have done well in later life, this group is disproportionately represented amongst lower achievers, unemployed and the prison population. Children who are taken into care need to feel safe in a loving and safe environment.
The answer is more people offering to become foster parents and the authorities looking at their proceedures for recruiting foster parents. This would be a great moment to seek more foster parents, if the authorities could be more welcoming and less judgemental.
The hang 'em and flog 'em brigade need not apply. I wouldn't want children to be brought up by anyone who thinks that more brutality is the answer to societies violent problems.
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On the baby P case you raised the issue of psychopathy in relation to the male abuser.
What about Karen Mathews?
Social services report: "Her ability to protect her children is compromised by her inability to successfully place the children's needs above her own." Lack of concern for the harm she was doing to her own child. Manipulation of vulnerable accomplice. Lying and manipulative on camera etc. etc.
An interesting aside on the psychopath debate is the unwillingness to label female offenders as such. Tradition is to label them as 'borderline personality disorder' which implies vulnerable victims rather than serious offenders.
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Comment # 1 suggests that people are quiet about SOME children behaving in a feral manner.
People need to look at how they have been brought up and by who, then think about WHY they are feral.
Is it time to review the social services dogma that kids should be kept with failing families?
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Hi Mark,
Re: Blog 35...
I don't think that I see the use of the word "SOME" anywhere in Blog 1:
"Suddenly all the people shouting that todays youth are feral animals go very very quiet."
And that's precisely why I got a "bee in my bonnet first time around.
I certainly agree with John112 uk's points in Blog 34, though.
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36...
Apologies, #35 is ambiguous. I'm not suggesting you said 'some' - I was emphasising that those of us who have an objection to communities being ruled by gangs of children are saying SOME children.
I still don't agree with the contention that because Mark can show most youths are OK, that proves that feral youths dont exist or that they should be tolerated.
(I do agree with his comment that SOME children - and later on society - may be better served by early removal from failing families)
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Hi Mark,
Re: Blog 30 (JJW yet again)...
"Re comment 28
I?m not sure what laptops, mp3?s, mobile phones, etc has to do with a study by the Lancet into The scale of maltreatment of children in the UK?". "
Those remarks in my Blog 28 were to highlight to JJW that certain areas of the UK have become no go areas due to dangerous children ("feral") roaming around in gangs - I felt the point had to be made as there is someone who is in serious denial (but it isn't me).
As for the line:
"An instance of the issue of neglect being neglected?"
Well, I don't think that I actually disagreed with this remark when it was made first time around - therefore it is not a pithy reposte to my blogs - it, fact, acknowldges that certain regions have become no go areas due to the presence of dangerous ("feral") children. Thanks for agreeing with me on that point, JJW.
I will add that JawJawWell's blogs have done NOTHING to enlighten me any more than Mark's original article and the (too small) excerpts from the Lancet. It is easy to criticise so many other bloggers on this page as being predictable and boring (something JawJawWell is guilty of being). As for intelligent debate - JawJawWell - surely you mean other people just uttering something that fits in with your own line of dogma?
At least the other folks posting blogs here about bringing back the death penalty (albeit not something I agree with) are expressing a heartfelt reaction on an extremely emotive subject. Far better to read those blogs than the condescending ramblings of people with superiority complexes!
Why is JawJawWell's opinion more important or more valid than anyone else's here - one person -> one vote, eh?
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Hi Mark,
re: Blog 37.
EXACTLY. I wish I could have have put it as succinctly as that but I got sidetracked by some other blogger's irksome and snooty remarks (as you may have noticed)!
:-)
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Post 31: well said, Shtiffirgkram. Then there was the Satanic abuse hysteria, equally ill-founded, un which children were again taken away from their parents for nothing. And both these disasters were wrought by front-line professionals, backed up by their superiors; remember that even as you rightly condemn the bureaucrats of Haringey for their ineptitude. This is an area in which no error either way can be forgiven; how many people either wish to work on those terms or know someone else they'd trust to do so?
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Re 38
"Those remarks in my Blog 28 were to highlight.... that certain areas of the UK have become no go areas due to dangerous children ("feral") roaming around in gangs - I felt the point had to be made as there is someone who is in serious denial (but it isn't me)."
Exactly!
You make the point for me.
Let's look at Mark Easton's blog again and select, in my opinion, some salient points;
"But are we really serious about reducing child suffering? Because if we are, surely the politicians should be reacting with the same vigour to the findings contained in today's Lancet reports as they did to the scandal of Baby P."
"The definition also includes sexual abuse. Analysing large-scale anonymous surveys conducted in a number of countries including the UK, the researchers conclude that between 5 and 10% of all girls and up to 5% of boys will experience the most serious sexual abuse at least once during their childhood."
"Including non-contact abuse such as exposure sees the figures rise to at least 15% for girls and 5% of boys."
"The most common perpetrators for this kind of abuse are close relatives and family friends."
"These figures paint a thoroughly depressing picture of the way we routinely treat children in our society. I was struck by the evidence of the long-term damage such abuse does."
And, as far as I am concerned, most importantly Mark Easton draws the following conclusion;
"If we are really serious about protecting children from suffering, don't we need to look at the big picture? Recognise the common-place nature of child neglect and cruelty?"
So, and if I have understood the blog correctly, Mark Easton attempts to draw our attention to the conclusions of academics working in the field.
Startling, uncomfortable, but nevertheless true (Alice Miller has a great deal to offer on the subject).
However what is the response?
Tedious, misinformed, over-emotional and juvenile talk of killing people and, taking the subject completely off-track, deviations into the conduct of the latest "folk devil" scapegoats ("feral" children) and the fear we are encouraged to feel about them stealing our MP3 players!
Thereby enabling us all to conveniently miss the point.
"The most common perpetrators for this kind of abuse are close relatives and family friends."
There's a mention of "child suffering" (a number of times in fact), however not one mention of "feral" children in the blog.
Hang on I'll read it again.
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jayfurneaux post 17 wrote
"The major reason that I can see for this ban is that Baby P has a number of brothers and sisters (all now in care). The ban is to try and give them annoyminity. I have no idea if these siblings have the surname of either the father or mother (both now in prison) but that could be a reason why they cannot be named either (but why the lodger has been).
It`s not about protecting the perpetrators; it`s about protecting the surviving children and trying to give them a future on the same footing as other children".
But this makes no sense whatsoever! If protecting siblings was the reason, then why don't the courts prevent the naming of any adult convicted of any serious crime who just happen to have a young family? In fact, there could be even stronger reasons in other cases for not naming the convicted parent, as the children might well remain in the care of the other parent!
What is missing in this case is any explanation of why the courts have gagged the media from naming the mother and her lover who murdered baby P. This is treating the public and, much more importantly, the memory of baby P with contempt.
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#41
Thereby enabling us all to conveniently miss the point.
"The most common perpetrators for this kind of abuse are close relatives and family friends."
There's a mention of "child suffering" (a number of times in fact), however not one mention of "feral" children in the blog.
Expect to see a lot more of these so called feral children.They are the results of parents who generally suffered abuse themselves and now because of this are unable to place in their children's lives the moral way of thinking that the rest of society has, if it indeed it has moral thinking?. maybe moral is not the right word but its the only one that comes to mind. I wouldn't want to take a guess at how you would change this processes of abuse other than separation, which i know for the worst of these children makes no difference because the base of their lives are so completely unbalanced that no stable life can be built on it and a life of institutionalisation occurs through abuse of drugs and violent actions.
The one thing we can do to look after all children is become aware of those around us who are they ? they really are a chatty bunch once you take of the scary mask's of adulthood. They really do get a hard time of society most of the time. then there are the little darlings that just put through the double glazing over the road from us tonight and generally run with havok right behind them. But because we know the kids they are easy to deal with and hopefully brought under control before we ask for a behaviour order to be placed on them. This brings about peace and a good name for the kids that are just playing at being children and young adults.
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Re: #41
- Addressed directly to JJW...
"Tedious, misinformed, over-emotional and juvenile talk of killing people and, taking the subject completely off-track" - my thoughts about your blogs.
"There's a mention of "child suffering" (a number of times in fact), however not one mention of "feral" children in the blog."
Exactly - and that's why I felt compelled to respond with Blog 7 (my first blog) to Blog 1 which I felt was off track - you might also note that my first Blog congratulated Mark on his article (but I don't think that this would sit easily with your preconceptions about me).
"...fear we are encouraged to feel about them stealing our MP3 players." - I have been the victim of one bad attack and have narrowly managed to escape from a few very genuinely scary situations. This wasn't some kind of irrational fear as you seem to suggest. But I guess your preconceptions about me override any real-life experiences that I have had - after all you have read a few books.
NOW THIS IS MY LAST POST ON THE SUBJHECT AS I FIND YOUR WHOLE APPROACH TEDIOUS, CONDESCENDING AND REPETIVE - TIME TO MOVE ON.
"
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Re 44
So Mark Easton writes a blog about the Lancet study of the widespread maltreatment of "children" by adults and some adults who respond to the blog make comments which focus not on the issue that has been discussed, but on the scapegoating of children. Accompanied, of course, by standard media spoon-fed terminology.
Surely the important thing to focus on is the care, well-being and welfare of vulnerable children. Not, I would suggest, our MP3 players.
The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown
The misled brain and the banned emotions
The Facts:
1. The development of the human brain is use-dependent. The brain develops its structure in the first four years of life, depending on the experiences the environment offers the child. The brain of a child who has mostly loving experiences will develop differently from the brain of a child who has been treated cruelly.
2. Almost all children on our planet are beaten in the first years of their lives. They learn from the start violence, and this lesson is wired into their developing brains. No child is ever born violent. Violence is NOT genetic, it exists because beaten children use, in their adult lives, the lesson that their brains have learned.
3. As beaten children are not allowed to defend themselves, they must suppress their anger and rage against their parents who have humiliated them, killed their inborn empathy, and insulted their dignity. They will take out this rage later, as adults, on scapegoats, mostly on their own children. Deprived of empathy, some of them will direct their anger against themselves (in eating disorders, drug addiction, depression etc.), or against other adults (in wars, terrorism, delinquency etc.)
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Re: 45:
"Surely the important thing to focus on is the care, well-being and welfare of vulnerable children. Not, I would suggest, our MP3 players."
Do you really think that this glib remark needs to be said? Did I actually suggest that MP3 players are more important than vulnerable children?
I am NOT reading any more of your blogs because I genuinely feel that you are not the full ticket. I am beginnig to wonder what sort of parenting you had!
Bye Bye.
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Re 46
"Did I actually suggest that MP3 players are more important than vulnerable children?"
Yes.
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Re 46
"Did I actually suggest that MP3 players are more important than vulnerable children?"
Yes.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Further to my earlier post (#21), I've now read the Lancet article in full. Perhaps I could add a few pointers into why the figures are so implausibly high.
It's important to note that the Lancet article doesn't provide any new data. It's simply a review of existing literature. This doesn't seem to have been mentioned much in the media, and Mark's statement "This wealth of international academic research, peer-reviewed and published in a reputably [sic] medical journal..." is rather misleading, as the research wasn't necessarily published in particularly reputable journals.
But far more worrying, it's really not clear whether the review was systematic. It says that they did a "comprehensive" search of the literature. That's important, as estimates are likely to vary from one study to another, and simply cherry-picking the studies that show the highest rates of abuse will be misleading. However, there is really none of the detail you would expect in a good quality systematic review, such as the criteria for including papers in their review, the number of papers they rejected and the reasons for rejecting them, etc. I'm actually amazed that this got through the Lancet's peer review process.
Without that information, it's impossible to know whether they have given an unbiased view of the literature.
One further point. The authors of the paper declare that they have no conflict of interest. That's a bit suspicious. Given that they are academic researchers in the field of child protection, and no doubt dependent on research grants, are we really supposed to believe that they have no conflict of interest when the conclusions of the paper are that child abuse is an important problem that needs more money spent on research?
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Re 50
Have you got a link please?
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At last, someone is raising the question of where these social workers were trained and who appointed them. If we are to transform Social Worker education, the first thing is to rebalance the curriciulum and devote much less time to class, race and gender, anti-discriminatory practice and politically correct 'issues' and focus students attention on some basics - like anatomy, physiology, psychology and sociology, appropriate to the task at hand, not some external political agenda. How to interact with, communicate with and understand ordinary folk, in their own environment, doing what they do everyday. This means getting your hands dirty and being with them, on the ground, not riding in from some semi-exclusive, fashionable enclave and raising their awareness about things that they can do little about. Social workers are there to help and support people, children, their families, not to implement some gross, untried, fashion-of-the-moment, programme of social engineering. The champagne socialists and Blair Babes have had their day and ended up letting the children suffer. What next?
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Re 46
" "Did I actually suggest that MP3 players are more important than vulnerable children?"
Yes."
Re 48
" "Did I actually suggest that MP3 players are more important than vulnerable children?"
Yes."
JJW - I had a change of heart and thought that I should read what you said as I do like the quotes from Miller in your Blogs (it was your own prose and inferences and preconceptions about me that I had a problem with). I also wanted to see what you had to say in relation to other Bloggers as I usually usually have a good intuition about people and felt that you might discredit yourself eventually....
... Well I have actually gone back through my Blogs to see if I made any such suggestion or if I even implied something that justifies your posts 46 and 48. I also invite any other Bloggers to go through my posts on this page or anywhere else in order to see if your assertions in #46 and #48.
It's one thing to have a difference of opnion. It's another thing to be rude and condescending (as you have been right from the start). It is another thing to have wish to always have the final word in a "debate"
But now it has come to you being a liar.
You really have lost all credibility - and it will be there for all the other Bloggers to see for posterity.
Om a separate note from Mark's original Blog...
JJW, go back to !984 and read it again - this time try to understand it rather than merely cribbing a fancy name from the author. While you are at it - read Kafka, too (I suggest you do this several times).
Oh dear, oh dear. Other Bloggers beware!
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Hi Mark,
Re: Blog 50.
Although I enjoyed reading Mark's Blog. I, too, find the figures in the Lancet snippets to be startlingly high (although there was no way for me to challenge them).
I'm glad to see that someone else has raised the same concern ... and also raised some very pertinent points on the derivation of the Lancet information in question.
Well done.
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#51:
You can find a summary of the Lancet article at http://tinyurl.com/5fxa9g. If you're a subscriber or if you don't mind shelling out $31.50 to buy the article you can click through from there to the full article.
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The report in the lancet is to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Having worked in academia for many years, the process of reviewing literature from many, often suspect, sources and rolling it all up in a neat, "new" package is becoming all too familiar. At best it is lazy research, at worst it is downright misleading and statistically dubious. A mere approximation of a set of approximations which can either amplify or reduce a point depending on how you decide to skew the data you are pulling together from disparate sources.
The peer review process is also to be regarded with suspicion. Rarely are papers dispassionately reviewed. Reviewers are carefully selected to ensure they give the correct verdict on a paper. Sometimes, if there are too many snouts in the funding trough, a peer reviewer will slate someone else's research to ensure more room at the trough when the next funding round takes place. Other times, researchers collude to make non-issues become bigger than they really are, particularly if they can publish them at the same time as some newsworthy article to increase the status of their research. Hopefully, this will increase future funding levels for their chosen area of research.
This activity occurs in all areas of academia, and the Lancet is no exception.
The figures do look incredible and the likelihood is that they are just that - incredible, in spite of the name of the journal and the peer reviewing process. Common sense would cause most people viewing this dispassionately to be very cautious about the claims made and the reason for making those claims. Just because it is "academic research" does not make it credible. Journalists, lay persons, social workers and other interested parties would do well to consider this and to cast a critical eye over the murky world of academic research and funding streams as well as the easy way of conducting "research", from in front of an Internet-connected pc, in the comfort of your office without actually doing anything original.
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I think I ought to state my position first of all.
Hitting people is wrong
If you feel like hitting someone (or getting someone to hit somebody, as a few posters do here) take some time out to get yourself under control.
For most children the front line service is not social workers but schools, and of course every school has a risk register and should have a members of staff and a governor responsible with the Head for what happens with this.
Many schools like the one where I am a governor have introduced what are best described as counseling and outreach services but they are not labeled like that. In the one I am familiar with children with their parents' permission have access. This revealed as in the 10- 15% of children did encounter the one or more of the types of upsetting treatment noted in the Lancet article.
The issue then becomes what if any intervention is helpful and since I deal with money how can it be resourced.
Secondary Schools often have health orientated support services which are accessible by children without school or parental consent.
School are also in the front line for helping children with social and behavioral problems. Their problems are of course not solved by exclusion though that may be in the end necessary.
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#56:
Excellent post. It is indeed disappointing that these rather dubious figures have been given so much credence in the mainstream media. It will be interesting to read the Lancet's letters section when they get round to publishing the responses to this one.
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Hi Mark,
#56:
You've got a bit of fan club here - I agree - excellent post.
#57:
I quote...
"School[SIC] are also in the front line for helping children with social and behavioral problems. Their problems are of course not solved by exclusion though that may be in the end necessary"
- I could not agree with you more on this with this quote. Schools also (should) play a vital part in uncovering abuse to children. Baby P was, of course, too young to be in a school.
But I am a little uncomfortable with one quote in Mark's article:
"The research finds that maltreated children are more likely to suffer mental health problems, to commit suicide, to have drug or alcohol problems, to be obese and to be involved in prostitution."
I feel that this comment by itself is probably correct - but until some serious case study work is conducted into the causes of juvenile crime and juvenile gang culture ("feral youth") - people will just make the connection that such behaviour is only the result of abusive parenting/guardians (which might not be the case - there might be other contributing factors - such as bullying at school, lack of adequate role models, etc). I would like to see if there has been any research into this. Can anyone give any pointers?
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LeePom - personally I don't think the article is trying to suggest that the fact you have to work long hours is 'neglecting' your son.
To me the neglect it refers to would mean that you left your son on his own in a cold room without any food.
Sounds like you are transferring your own guilt onto the article. Stop beating yourself up, I think people who accept that they aren't perfect parents are probably the best ones!
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