Children's rights to legal services: A child law centre for northern ireland

1 Introduction

1.1 CRDU and the UK Agenda for Children

This paper has been.produced by the Children's Rights Development Unit (CRDU), an independent project set up in 1992 with support from major child welfare agencies including Barnardo's, Save the Children, NSPCC and UNICEF-UK. CRDU opened in Northern Ireland in February 1993, with the support of the N.I. Children's Rights Alliance, to work for full implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UK Agenda for Children, CRDU's report to the UN monitoring body, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, gathered information from a wide range of organisations on how far law, policy and practice in the UK meet the standards of the Convention. The UK Agenda makes recommendations for hundreds of legal and policy changes which would, if implemented, ensure compliance with the standards of the Convention.     

Child poverty as public policy: direct provision and asylum seeker children in the Republic of Ireland

This paper evaluates responses to asylum seeker children in Ireland from a child poverty perspective and from that of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It draws upon research undertaken in early 2001 on behalf of the Irish Refugee Council among asylum seeker families with children in Cork, Limerick and Ennis on their experiences of poverty and social exclusion. The research was primarily qualitative. Interviews with adult members of households and some children were triangulated with data on benefit entitlements and take-up, household consumption, accommodation and amenities. The research sought to ascertain levels of income poverty and material deprivation. A range of indictors of child poverty and social exclusion were also employed. The research found that asylum seeker children experienced extreme income poverty, material deprivation, housing deprivation and social exclusion in considerable part due to the imposition of a system of lesser welfare entitlements, known as “direct provision”, introduced in April 2000. The paper argues that state-fostered social exclusion of asylum seeker children resulting from “direct provision” is contrary to Ireland's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the goals of the National Children's Strategy and the goals of the National Anti-Poverty Strategy.     

Quality children's television: the case of “Lift Off”

“Lift off” is a new, innovative children's television series produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation. It has been well received by critics, parents, educators and most significantly, by its three-to-eight year old target audience.

The program easily satisfies the five criteria for quality programming formulated by the Children's Program Committee of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal. The typical half-hour program is dense, requiring close viewer attention but it is claimed that the viewer is rewarded for her viewing investment with an enriching and pleasurable experience. The doubt is raised that the socially disadvantaged segment of the child audience, who use television for diversion rather than enrichment, may not be prepared to make such an investment of viewing attention.

One final concern is voiced. The Foundation's official spokespeople publicly claim that “Lift Off” will enrich the lives of a whole age cohort. It is argued that such claims overemphasise the supposed direct consequences and impact of media messages on individuals.     

Children's Services Planning in Northern Ireland: Developing a Planning Model to Address Rights and Needs

This article reflects on a number of key concepts and planning tools that have been developed or adapted through the inter-agency planning of services for children and young people in Northern Ireland (Children's Services Planning). These conceptual models have been developed between 1999 and 2005 and illustrate the key contribution of Children's Services Planning to two significant shifts in how the planning task has been understood. These refer to, firstly, the movement from service orientation to needs orientation, and secondly, the progression from needs to rights within service planning.

Children's Services Planning in Northern Ireland is now based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Whole Child Model, which demonstrates the understanding that there is no such thing as a uni-dimensional child who only requires services from one agency. The Family Support model has been in use for some years within the process, and the joint outcomes framework, to be designed to enable agencies to address rights and needs has also been adopted across all four Children and Young People's Committees. In terms of outcomes, an overarching Strategy for Children and Young People will develop an outcomes framework within Northern Ireland, which is likely to build upon that of Every Child Matters, as well as children's rights. Children's Services Planning has also demonstrated that the approach to planning of universal services must be consistent with the planning of services for children with additional needs. There needs to be a strong linkage between the planning and delivery of universal and targeted services.

It is a contention of the article that concepts such as those described are required for multi-sectoral planning, and that a whole system planning approach is required to address the rights and needs of children and young people.     

NIGERIAN CHILDREN'S PERSPECTIVE OF URBAN LIFE QUALITY

The Convention on the Rights of the child put in place some set of standards to ensure that in all consenting countries every child is wanted, healthy, educated, safe and loved. Nigeria is one of the countries that has taken some steps to put into practice the accepted rights.

Two hundred children (100 boys and 100 girls) in primary schools in four urban centres were served with questionnaires requesting their views on issues bordering on their well being and quality of life, in such areas as:

1. quality of education
2. space for movement and play
3. food and clean water for drinking and washing
4. play equipment and materials and
5. loving care giver.

The children's responses showed that provision was not made for recreational space for play, the quality of education is poor, there was no provision for play equipment and material and in most cases the adult-child ration was low. Children also complained of polluted environment.

Suggestions were made for the provision of adequate play parks for recreational purposes for the children. Suggestion is also made for government to pay more attention to the well being and health of the children.     

International year of the family 1994: Family and gender equity in education

“Building the smallest democracy at the heart of society,” is the motto of the International Year of the Family being celebrated during 1994. The year 1994 has been designated by the United Nations to highlight issues concerning families locally, nationally, and globally during the year and to suggest recommendations for changes in policies and programs.

Since 1975, when the world celebrated International Women's Year, and again, in 1979 during International Year of the Child, evidence has been accruing regarding gender disparities in all countries. It is discouraging, yet perhaps not surprising, that in 1994 the world still awaits gender equity, even though a considerable amount of progress has been made since 1975.     

“Potentially” contaminating behavioural practices in the preparation, feeding and storage of “ogi” — an infant cereal in a rural Nigerian community

Thirty households with children aged 6-18 months from four villages in the Badagry Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria were studied. Open-ended unstructured ethnographic interviews were used to collect information on “potentially” contaminating food handling behaviour with particular reference to the preparation, feeding and storage of “ogi” an infant cereal. Focus group studies were conducted for women aged 18-45 years in the four villages to obtain more information.

Improper handwashing, widespread acceptance and use of feeding bottles, long storage and safety of place of storage were some of the “potentially” contaminating behavioural patterns identified.

Intensive health education on the dangers of feeding bottles, improper hand-washing and long storage of cooked “ogi” to the health of infants and young children is strongly recommended.     

Ethical and practical considerations in palliative child care and the support needs of parents and siblings

Death is one of the few certainties in life and yet it is the one event that most people avoid contemplating until forced to do so. When considering death and dying it is assumed by most to occur in old age and in hospital. The death of a child is a devastating loss which can cause the most distressing and long lasting grief (Davey, 1995). According to “Childhood cancer UK” the number of children developing cancer in the United Kingdom has remained constant over the past 30 years (about 1300 new cases each year), with only two-thirds of children with the disease being treated successfully. In Britain 32 per cent of cancer deaths occur at home (Bean, 1994) however only a small proportion of these will be children. Despite the deaths of children at home being a statistically small group it must not be ignored due to the great emotional impact it has on the individual, family, health workers and often local community.

The changing status of children in the UK means that health care professionals must uphold childrens' rights whilst working in partnership with parents. A balance must be found between the traditional protectionist and paternalistic attitude of care and the liberationist approach. This can only be achieved through communication and collaboration between families and members of the multi-disciplinary team allowing the promotion of constructive problem solving

The key aim of palliative care is to give the child as good a quality of life as possible in the time remaining with freedom from distressing symptoms including pain. Every health professional working with a dying child who has pain should give consideration to the complexity of pain, it's unique and diverse effects and engage the entire family and health care team in planning interventions and providing support to the child and to each family member (Graner, 1976).

Siblings, parents and health professionals may be profoundly affected by the experience of the death of the child, therefore, each multi-disciplinary team must develop formal coping strategies to deal with the possible psychological disturbance and to facilitate adjustment after the death of the child.

Martinson, writes of her greatest encouragement which came from the parent of a dying child;

“No matter if it culminates a full life or a life shortened much too soon, does death have to be terrorising? There are many to rejoice and aid in the event of birth, as with the patient that can be helped, but for those going through the frustration of 'not getting better' when science and the masses, sometimes even family and friends who can no longer face them, have deserted, could there be a greater challenge or more considerable need for help?”

(1976, p. 13)

This is a powerful message for health professionals caring for children in the end stages of a terminal illness. It is at this time that the family and dying child are in most need of the consistent, expert and humane relationships provided by the caring professions. The challenges are immense but great reward lies in the privilege of being intimately involved in this final rite of passage through life.     

Characteristics of successful directors of for-profit child care centers

The need for quality child care is a national concern of increasing interest to parents, child care providers, employers, and policy-makers in the United States. One of the newest entries in child care options available for consumers is for-profit daycare chains. As for-profit chains increase in both number and size, they will receive increased research attention. Few studies have examined for-profit centers in general or the background characteristics of their directors specifically.

The purpose of this research was to develop a profile of directors of for-profit child care centers and to investigate whether certain background variables, such as level of education, differentiated “successful” from “unsuccessful” directors. Data were collected on 362 child care directors employed during a three-year period with a nation-wide daycare chain in the United States.     

Children first: Protection & prevention in services for disabled children part II

SYNOPSIS

This paper is written in two parts.

Part I outlined the legislative and social economic contexts. A framework for analysing prevention and protection services for handicapped children was then presented. This framework was illustrated in relation to services at four levels of intervention: populations, early risks, significant harm and children already abused or “looked after”.     

Teaching art appreciation in the nursery school -- it's relevance for 3 and 4 year olds

This article, a report on recent research, draws attention to the positive response shown by nursery school children to art appreciation when it was introduced into their curriculum.

It explains how art appreciation was integrated into an intercurriculum approach and “taught” through activities that are a normal part of a nursery school day viz. mime, movement, telling stories, expressing feelings, games and puzzles. The method and content of each session is outlined and findings reported. It is noted how art appreciation allows for reflective and physical participation, cognitive growth, observation, the development of vocabulary, and can lead to children responding to paintings sensitively yet critically -- many four year olds can “spot” stylistic similarities and make cross references between paintings.

As art appreciation is a useful means to learning and children find it an enjoyable activity, it would be beneficial if it was “written-in” to the forthcoming National Curriculum document for art education.     

Human capital development: A family objective

Human capital contributes to economic development just as does physical capital or natural resources. Human capital begins developing in the family. Human capital includes nutritional levels, life expectancy, skills, knowledge, abilities and attitudes. Human capital development contributes to the individual's future economic output. The generalization - “If you educate a mother you educate a family”; - is given supportive evidence from an analysis by T. Paul Schultz of research on measures which contribute to human capital. Schultz (1994) shows that “subsidizing schooling for females may be justified in terms of (1) efficiency (high individual private market returns); (2) social externalities (reduced child mortality and fertility; (3) intergenerational redistribution (better health and education of children and a slower growth in population; and (4) equity (an increase in the productive capability of poorer individuals relative to richer individuals.”

Thinking of human capital as an economic construct may prove useful for human service professionals because funding agencies may appreciate the objective, substantive, or measureable evidence that the concept presents when compared to more subjective evidence from the fields of education, human development, and family studies     

Some aspects of mother-child relationships following the birth of twins

In the outline of a research program on the process through which mothers of twins begin to make a differentiation between their children and succeed or do not succeed in individualizing each of them, we have undertaken a preliminary study to get closer to the psychological and social questions mothers have to face in the first weeks after the birth.

We followed up five triads mother-twins at the maternity unit and at home for the first three months. The observations of children's behaviour, babies' material environment, and of mother's behaviour as well as mothers interviews have brought evidence of the complexity and specificity of such a situation.

We have shown that the overloading of the nursing tasks obliges the mother to adopt a precise organization in which she cares not to favour one of the twins to the detriment of the other. Furthermore the mothers feel they will never be able to satisfy each child fully, despite those true “egalitarian strategies”.

To those behaviours which consist of “doing the same thing” with both babies, an individualized representation of each child opposes itself very early in the mother's speech.

This lag between the differentiating maternal representation and the maternal behaviour that tends to cancel such a differentiation allows us to suppose there exists a double process: the necessity of individualizing the twins and the desire to confound them in one unit.     

“Missing Milestones”

Missing milestones are known to be a normal variant of development. The purpose of our study is to find if missing milestones always lead to normal development?

METHODS

This is a prospective case study on seven patients referred for motor developmental problems from July 1997 to February 1998 and then followed over a 2-year period. On each attendance, the multi-disciplinary team assessed children

RESULTS

We present a case series of seven children with “missing motor milestones”. Six of the seven, had tactile defensiveness but absent parachute reflexes on presentation

At the end of the two year period, 3 infants had normal development (Group I). One was discharged after 7 months. The second one had speech problems most likely secondary to her bilateral serous otitis media, with no other developmental problems. The third child acquired age appropriate milestones before the care was transferred to another hospital. Of the four in Group II, three developed global developmental delay and the fourth was diagnosed to have multiple cavernous haemangiomata in the brain. The pre-school alert panel was alerted for two of them possibly needing future help in school

Five of the seven children in our study were still being followed up after two years

CONCLUSIONS

Missing milestones in a subject can be a benign variation of normal motor development. However, they may also be the first sign to appear in children with neuro-developmental disorders

Tactile defensiveness may be the most useful early sign to enable the early diagnosis of non-weight bearing children with 'missing milestones'     

IMeonate-mother interaction: tactile contacts in the days following birth

The analysis of tactile contacts in the days following birth was conducted on the basis of observations of maternal behaviour in a natural situation #opduring the exchanges associated with the feeding of the new baby#cp.

This behaviour recorded by video, among 42 mothers — full term baby couples and 19 mothers — premature baby couples, allowed us to describe the “pattern manipulatoire des meres apres la naissance”. Different categories of contacts were distinguished according to the parts of the baby's body involved #oplimbs, face, trunk, clothing#cp and the apparent intention (so-called “utilitarian” contacts and contacts “not absolutely necessary for feeding”). No significant difference was found in the frequency of these contacts as a result of the order of birth, the term or age of the baby. On the other hand, a greater frequency of tactile contacts was shown with baby girls than with baby boys.

These data allow, within the framework of a wider study of the first corporal interactions, questioning of the significance to accord to this quite specific pattern.     

Building a Comprehensive School-based Drug/Alcohol Prevention Program

Concerned educators trying to help students who abuse alcohol and drugs want assurances that the process they use does work. They ask, “How are we doing? Are we making a difference in the lives of our students?”

Unfortunately, there often is no one person or group they can call on for a quick answer. The district personnel directing the prevention and intervention program, as well as trained outsiders, struggle to determine whether progress is being made. Self-made assessment tools can become subjective and selective.

Schools are struggling to find effective, cost-efficient programs that reduce drug use. Building a comprehensive Drug/Alcohol program is one of the most important tasks administrators can face.     

The efficacy of the parent-teacher “partnership” of the 1990s

The 1990s are times of rapid social and technological change. There are many unknowns that face both adults and children. We all have problems that need resolution. The time when adults “knew” the answers and children learned by “watching” echo faintly in the whirl of scientific change which is impacting on most aspects of our daily life. As early childhood teachers we have to learn to enquire, to listen, to think together with children, their families and society. The concept of negotiation is central to communication while the basic tenet of the process focusses not on the person but the issue. It is in these times of rapid change that we need to deepen our understanding of the family and further our professional insights by “tapping” the wealth of crucial kndowledge that parents have about their children. Hurst asserts that the partnership of parents in issues of their children's education:

“is probably the greatest single opportunity for educational advance open to teachers today”.

Hurst: 1987; 109     

Forms of knowledge, the curriculum and the young child

Children need to learn many matters, but not all their learning is of the same epistemological kind.There are something like eight fundamental and fundamentally different ways in which human beings encounter the world: Knowledge of Mathematics and Logic, Empiricist Knowledge, Scientific Knowledge, Knowledge of Persons and their Minds, Moral Knowledge, Knowledge and Experience in the Aesthetic Domain, Religion, Philosophy. These Forms structure children's learning, understanding, and experience both formal and informal, at all ages.Moreover they structure not just “scholarly knowledge and experience”, but also, “commonsense knowledge and experience”.

A suitable curriculum will be one which in one way or another provides diverse experiences of these Forms. Because there is no “transfer of training” between Forms as such, children need to be introduced to them all and to be shown how they differ. To say this is not to beg any questions about the best way in which to teach young children: no matter how we decide to organize a curriculum,we are still able to use a range of modern methods.

Although much learning in pre-school and early elementary school ought not to be directly concerned for the deliberate acquisition of the Forms as such, much of the casual learning in schools (and outside them) does indeed involve the Forms-with examples drawn from the child world.

In introducing children to the Forms, those who care for and who teach young children have an enormous responsibility.     

Co-operating to protect children -shifting the thresholds

It is now 30 years since Kempe delivered his watershed address to the American Academy of Paediatricians graphically describing the battered child syndrome. In the 30 years that followed elaborate child protection procedures, supported by strong legal powers, have developed not only in the UK and the USA but also in may countries around the world. In the last 5 years or so, however, there has been another great watershed. Independently in both the USA and in the UK, evidence has accumulated which is questioning the efficacy of our elaborate child protection systems. For social workers in the UK the history is familiar; the child abuse inquiries leading on to the Cleveland Inquiry, on going scandals in residential care and concern about the outcomes for children in the public care system, and, finally, the recent message from the Department of Health in 1995 “Child Protection - Messages from Research”. Less familiar will be the concerns which emerged in the USA. There, following the introduction of mandatory reporting which in some states is mandatory even for civil citizens, there was a huge rise in the number of children reported (3 million reported in 1992 of which less than half were substantiated). This largely incapacitated the child protection agencies and led to large numbers of children being admitted into the public care. In 1990 the US Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect concluded that there was an urgent need to develop new approaches.

The answer put forward in this country and the USA has been the rediscovery of targeted preventive approaches. Central to these approaches is what we call family support and what is called social support in the USA.

Child protection is an important and demanding activity

- research and our own limited local information does pose serious questions about the efficacy of the process;

- this points to the need for reviews by area child protection committees;

- research also tells us important things about the characteristics of families involved especially about their social and economic circumstances. These need to be addressed.

Addressing these needs requires several things

- a good individual assessment and population assessment to plan appropriate services;

- a sound interagency/multiprofessional approach;

- maximising all the resource options and taking a broader view of the task - as well as mainstream services as currently arranged, we need to embrace a community development approach and to view die families involved in terms of their inclusion or exclusion from society and address these shortfalls.

We are only at the threshold of the implementation of the Order and we need to approach it with a broad vision.     

South Australian Parents want Child Protection Programs to be offered in Schools and PreSchools

It is now widely realized that child sexual abuse is an all too common crime against children, resulting in long term damage to victims and heavy costs to the community. It is also realized that much abuse could have been prevented if children had been given basic information about acceptable and unacceptable touching, secrecy about touching and norms of adult-child behaviour.

Parents representing 250 families, caring for 565 children aged 3-12 were interviewed to find out what parents tell their children to protect them from sexual molestation.

Three quarters of all parents told their children nothing and most of those who thought that they had given information had only given hints. Furthermore, this “information” was passed on only after a traumatic event had already occurred.

Parents revealed an inadequate knowledge of the dangers to children and a desire for school and preschool programs to remedy the deficit.