Keynote Speech - Child Participation 2006: Improving Services to Change Lives

Speech by Annette Brooke MP delivered to Child Participation 2006: Improving Services to Change Lives on Thu 19th Jan 2006

Thank you very much. I do appreciate being invited here today, although I always feel rather daunted in talking to a group of people who probably know far more about the topic than I do. Inevitably, I am going to draw upon my personal experience.

I do that in two areas, really, because, before becoming a Member of Parliament, I had actually been a local councillor for 17 years and had been a Lead Member in the ruling group on a unitary council. Certainly, over that period, I saw significant changes in how we approached involving young people. I would like to give a few bad examples, as well as some good examples, as I go through.

As this is the keynote speech, I think it is only right to start by looking at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Very briefly, those rights are often grouped into the three 'P's: protection, provision and participation. I think, certainly as we go back in time, there was far less commitment to recognising the right of young people to actively participate in the very decisions that affect them, directly or indirectly. However, there is no doubt that we are making considerable progress, and I was beginning to hear a bit of that progress as I walked in the room.

Obviously, protection and provision are vitally important and, sadly, we hear of so many cases where children's rights are severely abused in these respects. However, the third dimension, I would argue, is of vital importance for policy-making and making sure we get it right on the other two 'P's.

I have some daunting experiences when I am out and about talking to constituents, as you might imagine - very interesting doorstep conversations. I sometimes wonder if we will ever, ever leave behind Victorian values that children should be seen and not heard when I pick up some of the statements about these 'dreadful young people these days'. Equally, of course, 'adults know best'. It is very, very hard to change our culture, I think, amongst the wider population.

In the recess, I often watch some of these TV programmes. I am afraid I muddle them all up, because I am not a great TV watcher. I do not know whether it was Supernanny or Angels or whatever, but there was a particularly good one over Christmas, I thought, with very good outcomes. The parents were absolute TV addicts and they were sitting there watching TV. Their whole life was around what they were going to watch, and particularly the soap operas. Their meals were all eaten sitting in front of the TV. There was a child buzzing around and they kept telling him off for interrupting them, pretending to be a fireman, I think, at one point. He was put in the naughty corner, constantly, for interrupting them watching the television.

I found that absolutely fascinating, how a psychologist actually got in and worked with the parents. They had not realised their approach was actually creating bad behaviour. They just were not listening and were not picking up on how to respond to the signals of their children.

So I think that full participation and communication actually has to develop first and foremost within the family. One of my big missions in life, I think, is to promote parenting skills in this day and age. I think it is so important that parents can access support, albeit through a parent helpline, and not see it as a type of failure if they need to seek support, because we need to learn again. I think one of the biggest messages I always deliver is that parenting is perhaps the most important job that we take on in life, but it does not come with any training package.

I think we should have universality. I think so much can be gained by a full participating life within a family unit, whatever shape that family unit might take. I do not make any presumptions on that. I am generally very keen on strengthening human relationships, because I think this underlies true participation.

I happen to be a trustee of a community family trust, which is setting up courses, pre-relationship, pre-marriage. Indeed, we are getting into schools to talk about the importance of relationships and the importance of talking. Those are my particular bugbears. I am actually really keen that we should support the family, and I think that is the backbone of what we have to address. Again, no presumptions on how that family unit is composed.

I think what we have to reflect on is that children in all areas of society and of all ages need to be able to participate. We have to get the approaches right for the different groups. We need to have continuity, all-important with children and young people, in actually valuing children's contributions. Children receive mixed signals on how and when they have a right to participate if there is a difference within the home setting, the school setting, the community centre setting, so I really think we have to take that right through.

Participation needs to be real, not just a token gesture. I think, quite early on, we were quite good at the token gestures, but not the true engagements. It needs to be something that is built into our social structure and our systems. Obviously, children are great users of public services, so that is really important.

Over the years, I have been involved with quite a few projects. Way back, in the very early 90s - I make my excuses here - in our town, we were developing and changing the nature of the quay, Poole Quay, which is a very 'buzzy' place where young people congregate. I was fighting the fight to get young people involved in the decision-making of how we would develop the quay. The outcome of my campaign was that one young person sat on a council committee meeting. Now, that did not facilitate participation, because, obviously, they felt very excluded, really, and it was a totally unsuitable forum. I can just say that I tried.

Moving on, I think my experiences with local youth clubs, even in those early days, were so much better, when you actually encouraged young people to come onto the management committee and encouraged them to have their own members' meetings and to feed back information. That was a very good area of work, for me.

I was Mayor of Poole, rather a long time ago, in 1997. During that time, I set myself the objective that we would celebrate the achievement of young people. During that time, we set up a youth council and numerous school councils. Again, in those early days, I do not think they worked as well as they do now, but I think they are incredibly important.

We have, in Poole, a youth forum, now, which works exceedingly well. The only downside is that I do not think we have enough young people participating. The way that consultation actually operates - and it was interesting just catching what Sean had to say - is that, when there is consultation on any council proposals, then we set up buddy and peer groups and a person might effectively have an advocate to have their opinion fed in. That really has been incredibly successful. I am really in favour of the Youth Parliament, which this Government has set up.

As you might imagine, as a Liberal Democrat, I am in favour of lowering the voting age to 16. It is quite controversial, but if we want true participation, then I think a whole set of suitable citizenship classes, right through school - all the way through school, and I do mean that - and then actually allowing young people to vote at 16 is really, really important. We are not doing very well with young people participating in the democratic system at the moment, with perhaps a quarter or a third of 18- to 25-year-olds voting, which is quite a sorry message for the future.

Finally, if I could just mention listening to very small children. I have only recently been introduced to the National Children's Bureau's pack Listening as a Way of Life. I must say I found this absolutely delightful. As a policy-maker, I did my best to raise the work done in this project throughout the committee stage of the Childcare Bill, which is currently going through the House of Commons. This was firmly in debate, but we failed to persuade the Minister to actually put listening to young children on the face of the Bill. Interesting - great recognition by Government that there will be reference to it in regulations and actually in practice, but I do not know that we are giving enough leadership if we do not actually, as policy-makers, get things clearly on the face of the Bill.

Obviously, it is more than just listening to children. You do need to have positive outcomes. I think I am going to be returning to that throughout my speech. I think, today, that you are going to hear from the Children's Rights Alliance for England, and clearly they will be saying a lot more about some of these issues than I will be. It does seem to me that the project Ready Steady Change, which is in conjunction with the DfES and which is all about to increase effective decision-making by children and young people, is all-important. Now, we have a Children's Minister in Parliament, who actually has a panel of young people that she refers to. All of these are considerable steps forward, I would suggest.

Article 12 of the United Nations Convention says that children have a right to be heard in all matters affecting them. I think that is important - all matters and all ages. As children develop, then of course their views need to be given increasingly more weight. That really does require positive action from policy-making and those involved with children in order to fulfil those rights. I would suggest we are making progress, but we could do a lot better.

I have been involved in a number of areas in Parliament with policy-making. Perhaps I will start by referring to the Children Bill, now the Children Act 2004. Prior to that, of course, we had Every Child Matters. The starting point of that was really good, in that there was a lot of consultation with children. The five outcomes, which I guess most of you will be working towards, were actually developed from the ideas put forward by children.

I think it is quite interesting that those five outcomes - Being Healthy, Staying Safe, Enjoying and Achieving, Making a Positive Contribution and Economic Wellbeing… By the time it actually reached the Bill, Enjoying and Achieving became Education and Training, which is such a huge gulf from what the children said and what our civil servants put in the Bill. Our great success in working together with all the children's organisations was actually to change that to Education, Training and Recreation, which is still not quite the ethos, I would suggest, suggested by Enjoying and Achieving.

When I reflect on the Children Act, then obviously we think about Victoria Climbie. When you read the whole sad story, one is aware that nobody ever really spoke to Victoria to ask what her views and feelings were. If there is one lesson, amongst very many, I think we should take that away with us.

In my life as a councillor, many years ago, we employed the former Deputy Director of Social Services from Gloucester to be our Director of Social Services. He was somebody who was closely, sadly, involved in the Fred West case. I remember that, at a conference, which I think was probably supported by the NSPCC locally, called Listening to Children, he made the point of how he absolutely agonised, because there were so many messages coming through from some of the children who subsequently died in that case. Nobody really listened and pulled it all together, so that is so important.

It is not only listening. It is also, I think, having empathy. In the Bill work that I have been involved in, we spent a great deal of time trying to get children's wishes and feelings on the face of the Bill. That has proved to be quite a challenge. It is a strand running through Government thinking, but we cannot always get those words where I think they ought to be.

Also, of course, with the Children Act, we had the establishment of the Children's Commissioner. I expect there are people in this room who long campaigned for England to have the Children's Commission. It really was very welcome. I think people like myself were sad that the Children's Commission did not have the independence from Government that we would like and was not fully based on children's rights. However, I think we have, obviously, in Professor Al Aynsley-Green, somebody who is really going to make a great deal of that job. I think it is going to be very interesting how it does work out for actually, truly, having an impact on children's lives.

We can reflect on when some of the Scandinavian countries first had Children's Commissioners or Children's Ombudsmen: Norway way back in 1981, and we have had to wait until 2004. In Norway, I think a recent survey showed that 75% of five- to seven-year-olds and 90% of 14-year-olds were aware of the Children's Ombudsman. I wonder how long it is going to take until we get that sort of percentage figure, in this country, knowing that we actually have a Children's Commissioner. I have actually had the pleasure and honour of visiting the Swedish Children's Ombudsman, again, obviously, going way back to the early 1990s.

I do have concerns, as I mentioned earlier. I think it is useful just to note that UNICEF said the proposed Children's Commissioner currently being considered by MPs is the weakest in Europe. This is because it involves no real reference to children's rights, a much-weakened general function and lack of independence. We really have to monitor how well the Children's Commission is working and whether we can actually go up the league table a bit as far as Europe is concerned.

Other legislation that I have been involved in was, for example, the Anti-Social Behaviour Act. Now, I do not recall - I may be wrong - too much consultation about extensions of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Dispersal Orders with young people, which I think would have been rather more worthy. Of course, there were some quite draconian measures in that Bill.

I served on the committee for the Sexual Offences Bill, which does remind us so much that adults can abuse their positions and how important it is to encourage young people to talk. Obviously, we have the importance of such things as ChildLine.

I will be involved in the Child Contact Bill, and I think there are enormous issues there. I suppose, with this latest news that Fathers for Justice is disbanding, we see, really, the conflict between mother and father. Where are the children's rights in all this? Why do we not have this culture that the children's interests come first? Even though I know CAFCASS is in a rapid process of reform, I think it is pretty patchy, from what I hear across the country, as to what extent children's wishes and feelings are taken into account when it is decided the balance or whatever between both parents and the time.

Being positive, which I would like to be, is I think Youth Matters, the Green Paper. Now, there, the Government really does seem to have scored, though perhaps we will have some young people here today who will tell me otherwise. When we see headlines like, 'One of the biggest ever responses to a Government consultation,' 'Young people make their voices heard', this sounds good, certainly in theory. 20,000 young people sent responses to the Youth Green Paper consultation and many more took part in consultation events.

I think that is a really positive signal. Obviously, we want positive outcomes as well, but I think it is showing a real change in underlying attitudes. It really shows, with this unprecedented level of response, that young people want to be heard and they want to participate. The initial trends show that young people want more opportunities for activities and getting involved in their communities, and that many really like the idea of helping in decision-making on council spending on provision of activities and facilities for young people. Obviously, I am pleased that there is a sum of money, allocated through the Youth Opportunity Fund, which will actually enable young people to help make their decisions locally.

I think there is good working in some local authorities already and they actually do have young people involved in spending sums of money and participating in terms of deciding on facilities. My council background shows many occasions where, because of the time lags, you provide a facility that you think young people want and then, by the time it is actually completed, you have moved on to a new fashion. However, I think we do all of that much better. Certainly, I have had very good experiences with young people getting organised, presenting a petition at council, wanting a skate park, generally participating in fundraising, actually getting money out of the council and getting the skate park located where they actually want it.

In Parliament, again, the children's organisations, obviously including the NCH, have been very good at organising and arranging visits of children and young people to the House of Commons, to meet MPs, Peers and Ministers. I would certainly like to just reflect on some of those, very briefly, for example - and I guess many of you will be aware of this - the Barnardo's Give us a Chance launch at the House of Commons, which I thought was excellent.

I am going to just abuse my position slightly. This was one of my favourite quotes from the whole of this piece of work: 'There have to be rules. If there were no rules, then the whole place would go nuts. If there were no rules, there would be people getting murdered and everything. I know it is crap, but you have to have the law.' I just think that is fantastic summing up of what Parliament is all about. If only we could just reduce the crap and actually get it right, then maybe politicians would not be quite so unpopular. That really sums it up, getting right to the heart of the matter, actually, when it comes down to it, sitting and talking, appreciating that we do actually have to operate within the rules, but we have to get those rules right.

Room for Improvement, the manifesto for children that all the children's organisations combined to produce just before the General Election, was a salutary reminder to all political parties that, whilst they could tick some of the boxes, they certainly were not in a position to tick all of them.

That leads me on to Children are Unbeatable. If we are talking about children's rights, then I must say that I really think that we have to change our attitudes in this country. The fudge that we had in Parliament in the last session I do not think was appropriate. I think we should actually be brave enough to take the stance that hitting children is totally unacceptable and that children have equal rights with adults in this sphere. That is my personal opinion. There was an excellent document published with young people talking to it: It Hurts You Inside. That is where we need to listen and really facilitate participation.

I have done a lot of work with young carers, and there are several organisations - the Children's Society and the Princess Royal organisation - which bring a group of young carers up to Parliament every year. We sit in a circle. Absolutely great. We have these conversations, but they ask directly, 'Well, we said this last year. What have you actually done about it? There is no point us coming here and talking about it if you are not actually going to do anything about it.' Again, straight to the point.

I have to say this makes me feel incredibly guilty, because I think our annual visit is coming up again, and we do keep chipping away, but we have not really solved the problems that young carers find themselves in. Despite doing a great deal of listening, we have not moved the agenda along and actually sorted some of the issues out.

One burning issue at the moment, which I am still having a go at via Parliamentary Questions, is that it is very difficult for a young carer, if they have a physically disabled parent, to get to school on time, and yet there is no provision for transport, if you live within a certain distance from your school. There are instances where you need to be more receptive and where we actually need to change our policy-making appropriately.

I have been so impressed with the young people that have come to Parliament and made their presentations. However, it obviously needs to go a lot, lot further than that. We do need, as I have said before, to get it part of our culture and part of our acceptability.

Just briefly, if I could give some examples where I still think the Government is missing a trick - education, for example. It is slightly contentious at the moment, obviously, and I know that the Secretary of State has a bit more to worry about with her White Paper than children's participation and the case for listening to children. However, there is very little in the Education White Paper about listening to children.

Equally, in Mike Tomlinson's really, really important report on education for 14- to 19-year-olds - I think it is 118 pages of analysis and only three short paragraphs mentioning making better use of learner feedback. That shows, really, how very far we have to go and how much more children could be involved. There is a sort of shock horror when it is suggested that pupils can talk directly to Ofsted. Why not? Certainly it is really, really important to get learner feedback.

I would say progress, but... But. We need to do much better, because clearly involving young people and children's participation leads to much, much better decision-making. It strengthens a commitment to an understanding of democracy. I think our democracy is in grave danger of coming under attack if voter participation rates fall any further.

Listening to children enables us to protect them better, and that obviously has to be absolutely crucial. Of course, it is a fundamental human right that children should be listened to and that they should be participating. From the situation with a marriage break up, where, either with the aid of an advocate or directly, they should be able to participate, within school rules, within organisations that they are part of and, obviously, going on within a work situation.

I have almost said 'they' and 'us', and I do not think I should have been talking like that, quite honestly, but it is all part of our culture, which we have to change. 'We' should be totally inclusive when we are talking about policy-making and decision-making.