Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People
I reconvene this meeting of the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee. The third item on our agenda is evidence from Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People on his annual report for 2009-10 and the draft strategic plan for 2011 to 2015. I am pleased to welcome Tam Baillie to the committee. Mr Baillie, we look forward to asking you questions, but you might first want to set the scene for us by telling us what you have been up to in the past year.
Tam Baillie (Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People)
Thank you. I will explain the documents that I have sent to the committee. The annual report takes us up to the end of March. We are now in November, so I want to fill the gap between March and November in the evidence that I give. This is also the first time that I have made public the strategic plan, which is about to go out to consultation. I am grateful for your time in your very busy schedule. I am enormously busy myself, but it is important to me, in publishing the annual report, to offer the committee the opportunity to ask questions.
Right at the beginning, I set the objective of having common ownership of the work that we do to make sure that my overarching duties of protecting and safeguarding children’s rights are not just about me, but about everybody throughout society. I hope that that will become apparent in the approach that we have taken, especially towards the roll-out of “A Right Blether”, which is probably the most dominant aspect of the work of the office right now.
In the annual report, I set out four strategic aims that we have been working under. Those aims have been refined and we have included objectives and areas on which I propose to work. There is always a balance to be struck between being specific enough so that people know what you are doing and having sufficient flexibility to be able to be responsive to changing circumstances.
We are flying just now, in terms of trying to cope with the demand that has arisen out of people’s response to “A Right Blether”. I am happy to respond to questions. I am sure that I will be able to make the points that I want to make.
I am sure that there will be a number of questions about your work, but I will start with a controversial question that deals with something that was highlighted in your annual report.
The review of bodies that are supported by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body was referred to. At the time of the review, there were suggestions that we did not need a children’s commissioner, and that the role should be merged with another post. I have my own personal views on that, and those arguments were not successful in any case. However, what difference has there been as a result of the retention of your role? What difference do you believe that you have made?
I am quite comfortable with Parliament questioning the existence of a role. I do not think that we need to revisit the issue over and over again, but I am reassured by the conclusions that Parliament came to the last time it considered the issue. Through my dealings with the SPCB and parliamentarians, I know how much they value and treasure the independence of the office, and I do as well. I have found people to be immensely respectful in that regard.
On the point about making a difference, I would say that I am in the middle of the biggest thing that I have been involved in so far. The starting point for “A Right Blether” was to ensure that as many people as possible—as many children and young people as possible—know about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People. Together, those two things will help us to achieve a better and more informed approach to how we treat our children and young people.
We have produced and sent to schools 3,700 resource packs containing DVDs and materials that are suitable for curriculum for excellence, and information about how to contact the commissioner’s office. We put the packs together before the end of last year and have been distributing them throughout this year.
We have been clear about getting to children and young people through the professionals who work with them. We have hosted seven receptions across the country, which resulted in around 1,200 people signing up to be part of “A Right Blether”. I visited every director of education in Scotland. I was quite clear that I wanted to be out and about, which meant that I went to the far-flung councils in the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland, as well as every other council.
We are generating an interest in assisting children and young people to take part in a vote on my priorities. The vote is about the areas on which I should be working in order to improve the lives of children and young people in Scotland. I will come back to the subject of the vote in a minute.
I was clear that I wanted to ensure that the process was not just about areas that were in need of improvement, so we asked children and young people to identify the things that are already going well in their lives—things that bring a sparkle to their eye and get them out of bed in the morning, which we have called right brilliant things. We also asked people to sign up for parties to commemorate the 21st anniversary of UNCRC, which took place last weekend.
All of that is what we have called “A Right Blether”, and the response to it has been absolutely phenomenal. We have received more than 1,000 responses to the right brilliant thing element of the campaign, and just under 150 parties are taking place across the country.
My ambition was to have 50,000 votes to assist me with my priorities. To do that, we canvassed the views of as many children and young people as we could. We engaged with the Scottish Youth Parliament and the Children’s Parliament, which, between them, brought together almost 23,000 views. At the same time, I am touring the country to speak to schools. This second tour is quite separate from the tour of the directors of education. I am visiting 100 different venues and speaking to in excess of 10,000 children and young people. That is a conservative figure that does not include those whom we contacted through glow, of which I have made extensive use.
Those 23,000 views helped us to put together a voting slip. I have one with me and will take you through it. We asked the children and young people to identify things on which I should work in their home, where they learn—their schools and youth clubs—in their communities and in Scotland. From those 23,000 children and young people and the 10,000-plus with whom I engaged, we have identified three options in each area.
The ambition was to get more than 51,000 votes, because that is the figure for the biggest consultation that has ever been undertaken, which related to the ban on smoking in public places. In the build-up to the vote, which will take place this month, we printed 65,000 voting slips. Within the first week, we had to print another 65,000, and we have now printed a further 20,000, so 150,000 voting cards have been distributed. I do not expect for a minute to receive 150,000 back, but even if we get half of them back, we will easily have topped the biggest consultation that has been held in Scotland.
The response has been enormous and heartening. Sometimes the office has resembled an episode of “The Apprentice”, as we have been learning different skills that we did not expect to need when we came into the job. However, there is a rumbling sense of engagement with professionals, children and young people that makes me feel hopeful about and affirms our approach, which is to touch as many professionals, children and young people in Scotland as possible.
That is the main difference. Three youngsters at a school wrote to me because the children were worried about closure and disparaging remarks had been made about the school. When I turned up in the playground yesterday, they pointed at me and said, “That is Tam Baillie.” I was slightly disconcerted, but that is exactly what we are looking for. It is important not that children should know me, but that they should know about the role.
When is the final deadline for submissions to the vote?
A right big blether will take place. Ministers have helped by saying that they want to be part of promoting it, because they want to hear the results. We are planning a right big blether in February, which we think will be a two-day affair.
We are looking to spend one day on good practice, because amazing things are happening that we could not have controlled for. Early on, a group of peer educators got hold of the resource materials and, off their own bat, went into six primary schools to deliver some of the workshops—we have called them workshops, rather than lesson plans. They also had plans to go into six secondary schools. That activity had nothing to do with us, but there are many such examples.
One of the most heartening things is that, by saying that I would be responsive to invites to local authorities, I have found that a lot of really excellent consultation is taking place at local level. It is easy to graft on to that and be part of it. That will be part of the feedback.
A right big blether will take place early in February. One day will be about profiling good practice and the second day will try to generate discussion between children and young people and politicians. I also intend to go back to local authorities to deliver the results.
11:30
I see that Mr Allan wants to speak, and I will let him in when I finish my line of questioning and after Elizabeth Smith, who has already indicated a desire to ask a question.
“A Right Blether” will lead to the right big blether in February, but how do you envisage the process continuing and what do you see the outcomes leading to?
I have given a commitment to include the main results in the strategic plan. My message to children and young people all along has been, “I trust your judgment and I want you to help guide what we should be working on.” On the home, the three options are a caring and loving environment in the home, a safe and secure environment, or a place where there is privacy. Each of those has different implications for the work that we will do. I cannot predict what will come out of the process, but I trust the judgment of children and young people to help direct the work.
That is not the whole story. We know that there are vulnerable groups of children and young people and we have another consultation exercise that will help to identify the children and young people on whom we need to focus the most attention—the vulnerable youngsters who suffer the most serious breaches of their rights. So not all the work will be directed by children and young people, but they will be able to see the results of “A Right Blether” and whatever comes out of the strategic plan.
I want to pursue that a little. You have produced the strategic plan for 2011 to 2015, yet you want to take the results from your big blether and use them in the strategic plan. Will the document be rewritten?
There is enough flexibility to be able to direct the operational plans underneath the strategic plan. There are strategic aims, objectives and certain actions that we have detailed and on which we are consulting. There will be a yearly operational plan, which is where we will incorporate the results of “A Right Blether”. Because it is such a significant undertaking, the timing of complying with the requirement to lay the strategic plan and taking account of what comes through from “A Right Blether” has been difficult.
Four years is a fairly long period and it is a considerable strategy. What evidence did you put into the strategy document?
There are four strategic aims. The fourth aim is about ensuring that we have an efficient office that is fit for purpose, but the other three are on raising awareness and understanding of the UNCRC, the participation and engagement of children and young people, and protecting and safeguarding rights. I characterise that through the prism of vulnerable groups. Those are all set out in the Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2003, so they are all duties that I would have to fulfil in any case.
I accept that—that is fair. Are you saying that, if children come back with slightly different results from what you pursue in the strategy document, you will change it?
If the results are radically different, I will amend the document. However, I know what questions are on the voting card and the things that children and young people have said. I am comfortable that, whatever results come from the process, they can fit the strategic plan as it is now. The strategic plan is going out to all relevant professional groups to find out whether it has the right balance. I am confident that, whatever comes from the process, we can incorporate it within the structure of the plan. That was what I was getting at when I talked earlier about being flexible enough.
So other groups are contributing.
Yes. The committee is the first group that has seen the strategic plan. That is the way that I want to engage with Parliament, as I did previously when I gave evidence—this committee was the first one that I made any public statements to. Next week, the plan will go out to councils, health boards and relevant voluntary sector organisations. That is a fairly wide distribution of the plan, so that we can try to take account of views. I am sure that the plan will change in some shape or form.
We are doing those two exercises, but the one involving children and young people is more than just a consultation, because it achieves objectives on raising awareness and understanding and on participation and engagement with children and young people. It will not identify our vulnerable groups, because it takes a population approach, but we have plenty space beyond that to consider what the issues really are for some of our more vulnerable groups. In the strategic plan, I have already identified some of those groups, such as children who need protection, children who experience discrimination and children with disabilities. We know that those children are already disadvantaged and that we need to consider how better to safeguard and protect their rights.
I accept all that you say about that—it is important—but I am slightly concerned that we will go through another strategic plan process having just gone through one already.
No. The deadline will be the end of January. I have a quick turnaround before I put the final strategic plan to the Parliament. My responsibility is to lay that before 31 March. I admit that we are working close to the wire, but that is because we want to take account of what comes out of our large consultation as well as to consult the professional bodies.
Remind me what the date of the two-day right big blether is.
It is in early February. I cannot say for definite, because we are looking at two out of three dates, but it will be within the first two weeks of February.
The next part of the process is for us to receive the results. Tally sheets will come from the 500 voting centres that have been set up throughout the country and which are being administered by schools, youth clubs and residential care groups—the list is comprehensive. We are relying on them to get the tallies to us so that we can bring them together into one final, national result.
We will cut the results in two key ways. There will be an overall national result, but because we have carried out the vote in local areas we will have a platform for going back to local authorities to tell each of them what the children in their area said in participating in the vote.
A lot of good engagement and participation is happening at a local level, so there are already areas in which local authorities regularly meet groups of children and young people. That can provide a platform to enable us to tell them what we found in their areas. That is not the case throughout the country, but as soon as I talked to the senior people in each local authority area they said that they wanted to use the vote to generate dialogue between children, young people and them.
I will not be able to do it with the same intensity as I have done recently, but we will have a vehicle and platform for going back and telling local authorities what came up in their areas.
Your organisation has been busy and proactive in a welcome way. I have seen the work that you have done on “A Right Blether” in my part of the country, which does not actually seem that far flung, as you put it, if you live there.
It was difficult getting there. I was cancelled because of the ash.
I know.
I will ask about the other side of your work, which concerns inquiries. It surprised me a bit that you had only 154 inquiries in the year. Is that because you do not consider it to be a primary part of your function? Do you envisage it growing in future?
The inquiries service is responsive and is not widely advertised. Most frequently, inquiries are at one of two extremes. At one extreme, people are looking for more information about the office’s work, which is quite easy. At the other, the inquiries are most often from parents who are absolutely at the end of their tether. They have tried and tried, and in desperation they are contacting all and sundry. The commissioner’s office is one of those points of contact.
The figure fluctuates: 154 is in the report, but it has been up as high as 300-plus. The figure of 154 is rather false. I am confident that it will be higher next year—I know that. We now get lots and lots of inquiries from children and young people. When I visit schools, the question-and-answer session is never long enough to satisfy the children and young people. When we have glow meets, there is never enough time to answer children and young people’s questions, so we have asked them to give their questions to the office.
Next year, a separate section in the report will detail the number of inquiries that we get from children and young people. The inquiries service serves a range of purposes. Given that a number of advice services or places where people can go for advice already exist, I do not want to set up a parallel service, but I think that it is appropriate to respond to the inquiries that we get. I do not have the power to investigate individual cases, but we can certainly assist by pointing people in the right direction or, on occasion, making some inquiries on their behalf because of the issues that emerge.
For example, people frequently inquire about custody of children when a marriage has broken up. I think that there is an issue with children being caught in the middle of warring parents. We do not know a lot about the impact that that has on children. Another issue that has come up relates to children with disabilities who have been fostered, whose foster parents are in distress because of what they see as the lack of care planning as those children move from child services into adult services. A worry among 16 and 17-year-olds about what provision will be available when they move to adult services is another theme that comes through.
Our inquiry service is a responsive service. I do not have the resources or the powers to set myself up as an ombudsperson, but we certainly try to respond to all the inquiries that come in.
Good morning, Tam. I see that you have been busy giving evidence and producing briefings on a number of bills and petitions that the Parliament has dealt with in the past year. Given that your main strategic aim is to increase awareness of the UNCRC and the extent to which it is reflected in provisions in law, how much influence do you think that you have had in that regard?
There is a balancing act to be maintained. There will always be an aspect of the office that needs to be responsive to the business of the Parliament, because that is where our laws are made and where we can have a significant impact. The key bills this year have been the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Bill, on which the committee has played a central role, and the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill. My interest is always our most vulnerable children. It is really for you to tell me how influential you think that our briefings are. I have taken the approach of focusing on highly specific areas—the ones that I feel are the most important or are not receiving the attention that they should. Among the areas that I have been working on are the feedback loop, which has received a lot of attention—I am pleased about that—and criminal responsibility, on which we have made some progress, but not nearly enough. I will always ensure that the office has the capacity to respond to that aspect of the work. It is just one of our responsibilities. I must ensure that we identify the bits of legislation that I want to express a view on.
The Public Petitions Committee offers opportunities—which are sometimes unusual—for the expression of views on children’s rights, on which there are real issues. For example, there was recently a petition on children being tied to contracts with football clubs. The way in which those are enacted makes it look to me as if children are having their rights to play and to development stifled, so it is appropriate for me to make representation on that. I will track the petition as it goes through the Parliament.
I hope that I speak for everyone when I say that I find your briefings extremely helpful. Generally, they come at just the right time to inform a debate.
For a number of years before I was elected, one of my main focuses was on having the UNCRC enshrined in Scots law. You mentioned a couple of things that you think that you have made progress on. What do you think that you have made concrete progress on?
11:45
We have made progress with regard to the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Bill and the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill. You will see that our work plan discusses how we might incorporate the convention in law or make progress towards its incorporation. It is a four-year work plan, and we are working on the convention’s incorporation right now. There are decisions to be made about what is competent at a UK level and what is competent in the Parliament. I expect to produce stuff on that over the next year, and I have already initiated work. That will not be about just me; it will be done in partnership with organisations that have the same interest and keenness to make progress on the convention. So, that is already sitting in the work plan and it will not be influenced by “A Right Blether”, for instance. I expect some feedback regarding the consultation with professional groups, but children and young people are not being asked to comment on that.
There are several balances to be maintained when it comes to producing a work plan that means something to everybody who has an interest in it. Incorporation of the convention is sitting there as one of the action points, anyway; I hope that you are reassured on that.
Your office has raised awareness of the UNCRC in the Parliament, and we are pretty well aware of it in the committee.
I note from your report that two sets of rights resource packs have been developed, one for under-11s and one for over-11s. What impact are they having for those age groups, and is that being carried on into adulthood?
That was one of the starting points for “A Right Blether”. We have distributed 3,700 of those packs, mainly, but not all, to schools—there are just over 2,000 schools in Scotland. We have run out of them. We now have to decide what further resources to distribute through those networks. We have generated a huge database of people with a willingness to engage with children and young people on a rights basis. We know that we can produce the materials, and we know that we have the distribution network to make it happen.
It is really heartening to know that there has been an enormous uptake, but we now need to draw breath and evaluate the impact. I am clear that the materials are being well used—they have been downloaded from our website. We do not have the resources to produce other resource packs along the same lines—that was geared to making things happen through “A Right Blether”.
Just the other day, a teacher at a secondary school said that, now that their school has the work packs and the teachers know that they work, they will become part and parcel of what they do next year. The packs are out there, and they are ready to be exploited. We have been doing a lot of work with Learning and Teaching Scotland, which has been extremely helpful with regard to the glow meets, and also in ensuring that the material that we are producing is compliant and in line with what is being looked for under curriculum for excellence.
We are only scratching the surface compared with the potential. It is really heartening that people see the materials that we produce as user friendly, rather than something that they should be wary of. Rights are not a stick that people can get beat up with; they are something that can help to improve their engagement with children and young people.
Recent research has come through from the rights respecting schools initiative about the positive impact on pupils’ behaviour in those schools that have engaged with it. That initiative is run by UNICEF, and I often get invited along to give out the prizes and awards. I cannot cope with the demand, in fact.
The whole story about getting rights better embedded in the curriculum does not lie with us, but we have gone a long way towards starting the process. We know that we can use the positive contacts that we have so as to produce other materials. My staff might be nervous about that, but there is a great deal of untapped potential—that is what I am trying to say.
I will ask about the themes that you outline in your introduction to the report, to which you suggest that you will probably return in the work that you do. How will you go about addressing the concerns that you highlight? Will you commission research and reports or comment publicly?
Let us take, for example, the development of early years services. Whether or not it has been successfully implemented, the Scottish Government is still committed to developing an early years strategy that is a continuation of an existing policy, which is great. However, there is evidence to suggest that, in the field of health, because of changes to the way in which our health visitors work, to district nursing and so on, there is now less intervention from the public authorities than there has been in the past. In particular, a gap has been identified between birth and when children attend nursery school, because of the withdrawal of health interventions in that time. Have you picked up on that? If so, how do you intend to address it?
I will start with early years services. The last time that I addressed the committee, I told you how easily persuaded I was by the evidence that we need to improve our early years services and the evidence about the emotional, social and cognitive impacts that good early years services can have. That remains the case; in fact, more and more evidence is pointing us in that direction. I hope that there is cross-party agreement on that score.
I have been publicly very supportive of the early years framework that the Government produced, although, in the past month, I have been rather more critical about its implementation. In fact, I produced a light-touch report that looked at how we are doing with the early years framework and how well it is being implemented at a local level. One of the conclusions that I have come to is that a stronger, more assertive lead needs to be taken at the national level. One of the things to come out of that report—maybe I should send it directly to committee members—is that, although there may be champions at a local level, it is not easy, in the current economic circumstances, to allocate additional resources to the development of early years services. My view is that there is a very mixed response at the local level. In some areas, there is increased provision; in some areas, people will do well to hold on to their services; in other areas there will be cutbacks. That flies in the face of our huge ambition to get our early years services on a par with those in some other countries in Europe.
I will give an example of the size of our ambition in the UK. In 2006-07, according to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report, the UK allocated 0.5 per cent of its expenditure to early years services, whereas the European recommendation was 1 per cent. Expenditure in the Scandinavian countries, with which we compare ourselves most frequently, was 2 per cent. We must ask ourselves whether we will realise our ambition—to which I give my full backing—for the development of our early years services through the mechanisms that we have just now.
In addition, we must be much more articulate about what a good early years framework implementation would look like at a local level. In that respect, I have highlighted two things. First, we should give consideration to the national picture that we want in terms of parent programmes. No one parent programme will satisfy all communities, but not many parent programmes have the research base behind them. We should have a discussion with and a lead from the centre on that. Secondly, we should develop family learning centres, especially in our most deprived communities, to provide the services from pre-birth right the way through to age 5. We need to develop that kind of approach at a national level to assist people at a local level. I am not for a minute suggesting that it is not about local implementation, but I think that a greater lead needs to be given at the national level about what the implementation should look like. I give credit to the current Government for the priority that it has given to the early years—in fact, even in the budget it set up additional funds to help progress the early years—but we need to be clearer about what it would look like at a local level. So, that is what I am doing on that theme.
Child poverty is quite a tricky theme, because the levers of power are at Westminster, with the Scottish Government and local government. I am absolutely sure, however, that in all the work that I do on vulnerable groups and vulnerable young people the theme of child poverty will figure highly because we know that it has the most pernicious impact on children’s lives. So I will continue to highlight that, more than likely through the impact that it has on those vulnerable groups.
The third theme is an emerging one. When I spoke to you the last time I had only two. I have allowed myself a third: the impact of the economic recession. We cannot miss that, because we know from our previous recession that services to children and young people suffered disproportionately and were hit harder than any other sector. We cannot allow that to happen this time. We have the evidence, and we know that if we cut back on certain services we will pay for it later. I am looking at how we develop models that will help to assess the impact on children and young people, and at how we might pilot those models. That is in the early stages of development.
Can I pick up on that? I will give you two examples of areas in which we might be concerned about the impact of the economic recession. My belief is that the budget that was recently announced hits education extremely hard, not just at a high level but through local authorities’ education funding, which we expect to take the brunt of the savings that are to be made. Already there is evidence to suggest that areas such as additional support for learning have taken a disproportionate hit. In other words, because support for learning workers are not statutory appointments, they are the ones who have been laid off. We have many examples of support staff, classroom assistants and additional support workers losing their jobs, despite the fact that we have legislated on ASL. We have the law, the strategy and the policy going in one direction, but the practice going in another.
On nursery education, West Lothian decided recently to replace nursery teachers with nursery nurses. The decision was very clearly made on cost grounds, not educational benefit grounds. Other authorities have acted similarly. The net effect on the nursery profession is that nursery teaching is no longer a career route for teachers coming out of teacher education colleges, so there is quite a long-term impact as well as an immediate impact. How do you see your role in relation to such developments?
I have been looking at information and a number of pieces of research in that area. The Government has a responsibility to monitor what happens at a local level, but over and above that I am interested in looking at how much we allocate to children’s services. It is very difficult to baseline that, given how our finances operate. Regardless of how smartly we use the money and resources, there is a significance in how much we allocate. We can look at exploring that route.
I am interested in assessing the impact of certain policy decisions that are taken at local and national level. If I am being honest, I am still in the process of trying to see what that would look like in terms of the work plan for next year. However, I feel strongly about the impact of the economic recession and I would not have included it as an overarching theme if I was not prepared to do some exploration of it and try to provide as much information as I can, along with my view of where we might be going, because what happened previously worries me deeply.
We are in danger of drifting into that situation as a result of many small local decisions that go under the radar, either because of their size or because they are not announced at all but are simply described as wee budget adjustments. However, when aggregated, they are a great cause of concern. There is a lot of work to be done in that respect because we do not know what is going on and we need to know before we can think about what can be done. As we know, we are entering some of the most difficult times that we have ever faced.
12:00
What partnership working do you do with other organisations or agencies with which you have common cause?
I often say that I am one commissioner and 14 staff—actually, as a result of cuts to my budget and my budget submission, I will be losing my most senior member of staff, my chief officer, so the number is going down to 13. We want to change the world and make things better for children and young people, but we cannot do that unless we engage with the thousands and thousands of professionals who work with them. That is my real aim and why the starting point for “A Right Blether” has been engagement with the other partner agencies; after all, they are the people who make a difference at local level. When we get the results for that consultation, I will go back to the local areas because, as I always say, local implementation is the most effective means of improving children’s lives.
Sometimes I work in partnership with other organisations; sometimes, I am quite happy for those organisations to take the lead and do the work and I give weight to their campaigns by lending my name to them; and sometimes, we contract organisations to carry out particular work, often a piece of research. I remain open to different forms of engagement with different organisations—it just depends on what suits best. The key point is that we will not make things better for children and young people unless we work in partnership, and I work in partnership with many champions at a local level.
As I have said, we have set up structures and mechanisms to get material out to people, but that has happened only because they are engaged and because what we are doing fits with some of their responsibilities and their dealings with children and young people. I find that really heartening, because it means that we are going with the grain. We are winning hearts and minds—not all of them, but we will get there. We will win over more and more of the hearts and minds of those who want to use the approaches that we are looking at to improve their engagement with children and young people.
An important group in that respect is the media. Most if not all of us will at some point be critical of the way in which the media deal with children and young people. Although you in your role and the rest of us in our role will come into contact with young people doing fantastic things, the diet that the media give many people is full of news of children who are not. Do you have good engagement with the media? How has your relationship with the media progressed?
I am in the same boat as you are. However, although I might want to be critical about certain sections of the media or would want to pick out or highlight to them particular areas of our work, I would say that by and large our engagement with the media has been really positive. Later this week, for example, “Newsround” will air a story about our visit to Shetland for the “A Right Blether” consultation. Getting that kind of reach and buy-in is really helpful to us and a lot of positive things are coming out of the approach.
Something that is in our work plan and which will be picked up in the new year is a piece of work that I have initiated with a group of similarly minded organisations on the perceptions of children and young people in media reports. For me the issue is not about promoting positive images of children and young people, because a lot of that work is already going on, but about countering a lot of the negative images and perceptions of children and young people. An example that has been highlighted to me is the public reaction to the deaths of Brandon Muir and Baby Peter at their carers’ hands. Everyone was, quite rightly, outraged by those events; no child should suffer, far less die, at their carers’ hands. However, we should contrast that with the reaction to children who commit serious, sometimes dangerous, offences. Most often the children’s behaviour is criticised and we forget that in many instances they are the Baby Peters and Brandon Muirs who were allowed to grow up. However, they have been traumatised by their experiences. One of my ambitions is to achieve a more even approach to children the whole way through childhood and to ensure that people do not forget that we have responsibilities to these children right up to the age of 18.
In thinking about the need to counteract the negative media portrayal of some children and young people, I have been impressed by the way the see me? campaign has managed to shift public opinion. If that can happen with mental health, it can happen with children and young people. The tendency to vilify and demonise our children goes back a long way; indeed, Plato asked “What is to become of our children? They don’t pay attention to their elders and they’re rioting in the streets.” However, we can make in-roads into this problem.
That concludes our questions. I thank Tam Baillie for his attendance. I am sure that he will have many opportunities to return and tell us about the progress of his future work.
Meeting closed at 12:07.