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Is it possible to imagine a place where the rehabilitation of lost and
damaged children would be a matter for celebration, not outrage? I
suspect it doesn't exist, outside Utopia. But when two boys once so
disturbed as to kill another child are deemed fit to take their place
in adult society, a quiet satisfaction might be felt in any halfway
civilised country.
Have those involved with rehabilitating Robert Thompson and Jon
Venables over the past eight years - the social workers, teachers,
probation officers, psychiatrists - been praised for the work, then?
Has David Blunkett, between telling the lynch-mobs to cool it, written
letters of congratulation? Can some kind of recognition be expected in
the next honours list? Of course not. Anything of that kind would be
tabloided as an insult to the Bulger family.
No one would dare.
Among the many dismaying aspects of the past week has been the denial
that rehabilitation is possible, even with kids. The very word has
been discredited. Rehab's a thing the famous do when they've a drink
or drug problem, it's associated with a luxury lifestyle, and it's
dismissed as wasteful and ineffective. American optimism in the matter
of self-improvement hasn't taken root here. The British think they
know better: whether your habit is cocaine or killing, you can't be
cured.
It wasn't always this way. It used to be thought that if you caught
young people early enough there was every chance. Dr Barnardo
talked messianically of rescuing children in the East End. Some of the
methods of his charity - overseas shipment, for instance - look very
dubious now, but when photos of his street-urchins were published
it was to draw attention to their plight, not to fuel anger against
them. The methods of WT Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette,
who campaigned against child prostitution in 19th-century London, were
controversial too - he once "bought" a young girl in order
to give his news story more edge. But here were two among many
Victorian reformers who believed that fallen children could be raised
up again.
When, after 1945, the welfare state assumed some of the work
previously done by charities, there was an idea of putting children
first and of taking action if they weren't thriving. It was a nanny
state, a free bottle of milk in one hand, a place of safety order in
the other. But at least it took an interest - other people's children
were felt to matter too. Until, that is, Margaret Thatcher slowly
dismantled the welfare system, and John Major told us to stop fussing
about kids in trouble: "We must condemn a little more and
understand a little less."
Four years of New Labour have done little to undo the damage of those
years. In fact, the support system for disadvantaged children is as
bad as it has been in living memory. Social work teams with half their
staff on sick leave. A probation service shorn of expertise. A police
force struggling with cutbacks which mean that its preventive
work with kids has to be sacrificed.
And now guardian ad litems are under siege from Lord Irvine, who seems
far more miserly with children's rights than with furnishing his
official apartment.
The guardian service has a mere 800 employees, most of them women. It
was established after the case of Maria Colwell, beaten to death in
1973 by a stepfather to whom she didn't want to return. Never again,
it was agreed, would a child's feelings and wishes be ignored.
Which is why when the future of a child becomes a matter for court -
would adoption be best? fostering? the parental home? - a guardian is
appointed to investigate and assess the child's best interests. To
give children a voice in determining their own fate: that's how it has
worked, mostly for the good, for 17 years. But now guardians are being
offered fee-capped rates which will restrict the number of hours they
can put in on each case. The contracts have been drawn up by the
children and family court advisory service (CAFCASS), a
newly created bureaucratic body which sounds like an invention of
Kafka's. Most guardians - the experienced self-employed ones at least
- are refusing to sign. A judicial review is on the cards. The whole
thing is a terrible mess.
I speak with some feeling about guardians, since I'm married to one.
But it's not my wife I'm concerned about, nor her colleagues - it's
the little clients they represent. Talking to vulnerable children,
listening to them, winning their trust and confidence: all this takes
time, and when the case involves sexual abuse, say, or neglect,
deciding what's best is a delicate issue. Yet CAFCASS's jargon of
"harmonisation", "practice objectives" and
"operational difficulties" suggests little understanding or
valuation of what's involved.
Behind this lies a bigger problem: the government just doesn't get the
hang of welfare. Boysy entrepreneurs from the private sector excite
New Labour; a feminised ethos of public service "caring"
leaves it baffled.
Hence the obsession with privatisation and contracting out, which put
more emphasis on cost-effectiveness than on human needs.
Blairism has made great play of family values. But what about the
children from violent and dysfunctional families, the Thompsons and
Venables of tomorrow - aren't they to be included in the plan? I
remember how Jon Venables in court in Preston used to lean on the
shoulder of the social worker sitting alongside him. If the trial were
happening today, the social worker would be off on permanent sick
leave and a man from Group 4 would be in his place.
Different leagues
An old schoolfriend has just sent me his first book, a teenage novel
due out later this year set in the north-west. Its subject is
small-town prejudice, and given its climax (a mob setting a house
ablaze) and where he lives (in Colne, just down the
road from Burnley), he clearly has his finger on the pulse. I was born
in Burnley, and used to go to Turf Moor to watch the football team.
Tribal aggression was part of it, but our hatred wasn't for brown
skins (still a novelty then) but for the blue scarves of Blackburn
Rovers fans. Young whites in Burnley may flirt with the
BNP and say they hate the Asians "taking over the town". But
with luck, once the summer heat passes, they will remember who they
are really against: folks from Blackburn.
TV nation
We always seem to get a heatwave during Wimbledon. In theory, it's a
nice time to play tennis, but this is the one fortnight of the year
when free courts are impossible to find. Everywhere you look, would-be
Samprases and Kournikovas are clogging the baselines. There are those
who deny that television has an impact on human behaviour. How they
explain the phenomenon I can't imagine.
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