Month: March 2015

How rethinking residential care can help safeguard children against sexual exploitation

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In light of how vulnerable looked-after children are to abusers, it’s time to rethink our approach to residential care, argue Tom Rahilly and David Berridge

Tom Rahilly is Head of Strategy and Development, NSPCC, and David Berridge is Professor of Child and Family Welfare, University of Bristol

Not that it has ever gone away, but the government’s recent intervention in Rotherham council brought back into the public eye the horrendous events in which a reported 1,400 children were sexually exploited. The serious case review into sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire shows the problem is not restricted to one area alone. Alexis Jay’s report into Rotherham showed widespread failures. While there were many individual practitioners trying their best, they came up against a wall of denial.

It’s clear that we urgently need to find a better way of safeguarding our most vulnerable children. Children who were abused included those living at home with their families as well as children in care. However, there seems to be a pattern in abusers targeting those who are particularly vulnerable such as in residential care.

Challenge

No-one should under-estimate the challenge of tackling this. Children may yearn for adult affection and be less adept at recognising true motives and exploitation. Numerous girls made comments such as, ‘I know he really loves me’, or, ‘I was special to him’. It is harrowing when individuals will settle for so little, or feel that they are entitled to no better.

Residential care is often misunderstood and most homes work hard to provide stability and boundaries for young people who have led unsettled and troublesome lives. Children arrive with established harmful patterns of behaviour and undesirable contacts. Dealing with this in local, open units is a challenge and residential workers have to be very creative in gathering intelligence, fragmenting social groups and offering alternatives.

Under-professionalised

Despite these efforts, it is clear that there are long-term and structural problems with residential care in England. These relate to role and status. We still expect our most troubled children to be looked after by an undervalued workforce that is the least well qualified, lowest paid and not given the support it needs. In other words a workforce that is ‘under-professionalised’. It doesn’t need to be this way. It is different to this in much of continental Europe.

The government has taken action to address some of the shortcomings. Attention has focused on children placed long distances and the problem of residential homes located in unsafe areas.

There has been a debate about responses to children who go missing. A new set of quality standards is planned. And whilst we need to go further, useful steps have been taken to tighten-up qualifications for the residential sector. This is a reasonable start but, alone, none of this will resolve current problems.

Rethink the nature of residential care

We need to develop a more nuanced, and individual approach to safeguarding children in care; a relational approach. Research shows that it is the relationship that children have with the carer and other professionals that is critical to effective safeguarding. Children need someone they trust; someone that they turn to for support. Alongside improving qualifications – which is critical – we must focus on supporting the quality and stability of the relationships that young people in care have with those there to support and protect them.

Achieving this requires us to rethink the nature of residential care. We must ensure the management of residential care build a positive culture in the home where children and young people know that their needs are understood and that their views and experiences are valued and listened to. We must, for example, eliminate inflexible shift patterns and ways of working that mean that children cannot develop meaningful, trusting relationships over the longer term.

Residential children’s homes as anomalies

Though it may never be the same, residential care should resemble family care as closely as possible.

Most human service professions are now graduate entry: children’s residential homes are, therefore, anomalous. Some councils pay and perceive heads of homes at social worker team leader-level, which seems more commensurate with the level of responsibility and expertise required, but practice remains variable. We are now dependent on a large independent residential sector and the economics of care are a problem.

Hopefully the next government will continue to develop the children’s residential sector, building on the work that has started and based on what we know works. How all this squares with a five-year, average, reduction in council budgets of 37% remains to be seen.

But as the messages from Rotherham and elsewhere have shown us, we cannot afford not to act.

This piece is based on chapter three from the NSPCC’s book, ‘Promoting the wellbeing of children in care’, which was launched om 6/3/15.

This piece was first published on communitycare.co.uk

Poverty in paradise

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Shailen Nandy, Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice at  the School for Policy Studies discusses poverty in the PacifShailenic Islands

“I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes” (Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener)

What images come to mind when you think of the islands of the Pacific? Sun-kissed beaches, turquoise seas, balmy climes? Amazing rugby players? How about poverty? No? Well, you might be surprised.  Poverty, however it is measured, is a very real problem among the Pacific Islands, Countries and Territories (PICTS).  It has also been frequently overlooked.  Data from Oxfam New Zealand spells out in grim detail just how bad things are.  Around one third of the region’s population, about 2.7 million people, lack sufficient income to meet their basic human needs. Rates of child and maternal mortality are high, and large proportions of the region’s children either never enter school or do not complete primary education.  Adult literacy is low, at only 65% in the Solomon Islands.  Basic service and housing provision is poor, with 15% of the population of Papua New Guinea (around 120,000 people) living in informal urban squatter settlements.  These overcrowded households lack access to improved sources of water and forms of sanitation, and are subjected to the spread and effects of debilitating and deadly diseases, which drive child malnutrition and mortality.  These, and other, conditions contribute to a climate with high levels of gender violence, with over half of women in Samoa and the Solomon Islands reporting experiencing physical and/or sexual violence.  Paradise for many maybe, but certainly not for all.

The United Nations identifies 57 countries as Small Island Developing States (SIDS).  Located around the world, they share similar development challenges, including having small populations, limited resources, vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change, and being geographically remote.

The lack of attention and research on poverty in SIDS, like the PICTS, has impeded some governments from developing the strong and effective anti-poverty policies that are needed.  Conventional monetary poverty assessments cannot give a true picture of the extent of the problem, especially in countries where people may use bartering or reciprocal exchange instead of cash purchasing, and where families live together in extended households, pooling and sharing material and social resources.  In addition, in some PICTS, many households receive remittances in cash and as durable goods from relatives living and working abroad and these can be very difficult to measure accurately.  In such instances, assessing poverty needs a more sophisticated approach, with less reliance placed on traditional measures like an individual’s or household’s income.

Bristol’s Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research has an international reputation for poverty research, analysis and anti-poverty policy development.  Members of the Centre have advised governments, the United Nations and many international organisations around the world on how best to identify, assess and ameliorate poverty.  Recently its work, through the ERSC-funded Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom project, informed the public, national media, and policy makers about the true extent of poverty in the UK at the height of the recession.  What made the project so important were its use of methods and techniques which are recognised as being State of the Art for poverty research.  The project used the Consensual Approach, which has been developed over 30 years.  It takes into consideration the opinions of the general public about what items and activities they consider to be necessary for an acceptable standard of living, from which no one should be excluded due to a lack of resources.  Importantly the approach introduces a democratic element into the definition and measurement of poverty enabling populations, rather than just academics or politicians, to determine what constitutes poverty and thus how it should be tackled.  The approach is increasingly being used in a growing number of countries, including many in the European Union, South Africa, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and even low income African countries, like Benin.  Bristol researchers have been involved with most of these studies, and there are now plans to expand use of the method more widely, across the twenty-two Pacific Islands Countries and Territories (PICTS).

In November 2014, Bristol PhD student Viliami Konifelenisi Fifita demonstrated to representatives of regional statistical offices the potential of the Consensual Approach for assessing poverty in the PICTs.  This trip was funded by a travel grant from the Alumni Foundation and the School for Policy Studies.  He showed how, as part of his PhD looking at poverty in Tonga, the method was well suited for use in a Pacific Islands context.  As Government Statistician for the Kingdom of Tonga, Viliami developed a survey module for Tonga’s national Demographic and Health Survey, which he is using to make the first scientific assessments of poverty in Tonga.  His presentation so impressed delegates, that by the end of the meeting a draft module had been drawn up and was being considered for inclusion in other national surveys.  At least four PICTS will run surveys containing the module in 2015, with other countries set to follow in 2016 and 2017.  The data generated will change, and improve, the measurement of poverty in the region, providing researchers and policy makers with new data with which to develop better anti-poverty policies.

Viliami’s efforts to enthuse his colleagues to adopt and apply the Consensual Approach, has begun a process of collaboration between Bristol academics and PICTs statisticians and governments.  One aspect of the SIDS – their small size and close-knit communities – holds considerable potential for policy development and implementation, in that policy changes can be made relatively swiftly, with benefits and improvements to people’s lives following quickly.  Of particular interest in the region is the fact that the Consensual Approach captures important non-monetary aspects of poverty, which until recently have not formed part of regional poverty assessments.  In March 2015 Viliami travelled to the Solomon Islands, to begin training survey enumerators in the method.  Funding for this important work was provided at very short notice by an ESRC Impact Travel Award, the Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice, and the School for Policy Studies.  The use and application of methods and techniques developed at Bristol, and provision of training and assistance to PICTS statistical offices and governments by Bristol researchers will, in the years to come, make a meaningful impact to the lives of people living across the entire Pacific region.

 

 

 

Mayors at a gallop: the national influence of local leaders

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In collaboration with the Institute for Government and the University of the West of England, researchers at the School for Policy Studies hosted a debate featuring the directly elected mayors of Bristol and Leicester. Tom Gash, from the Institute gives his thoughts on the debate in a post that was first published on the Institute’s blog.  Tom Gash-136

Elected in 2011 and 2012 respectively, George Ferguson (Bristol) and Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester) have been working hard to show what mayors can do for our cities. At a recent event hosted at the Institute for Government, Tom Gash heard them raise two questions that any government after May 2015 will have to answer. Should we have more mayors? And should they have more powers?

Elected mayors were first established in England following the election of the Mayor of London in 2000. Later that year the Local Government Act paved the way for votes to set up mayors in a number of other local authorities. Eleven more mayors had been introduced by 2002. The Coalition gave the model another push in 2010 but voters in nine English cities rejected the idea in another series of referendums in 2012. There were yes votes in Bristol and Salford, however, and Leicester and Liverpool have adopted the model. Ferguson was elected as an independent for the job in Bristol. Soulsby got the job in Leicester after giving up his seat as Labour MP for Leicester South.

Sir Peter Soulsby and George Ferguson

George Ferguson and Sir Peter Soulsby speaking at the event

At the event Ferguson and Soulsby were persuasive, passionate advocates for the extra power mayors can wield. Soulsby described the extra influence he’d acquired since stepping down as an MP. “I haven’t missed the life in Westminster,” he said. “Now I’ve got a proper job.” Ferguson spoke with infectious energy about his passion for raising Bristol’s profile and attracting investment.

Both have gained national recognition since taking on the mayoral role. Ferguson’s trade-mark red trousers are recognised well beyond Bristol’s boundaries, and he has quickly gained a national profile that no council leader in the city has previously enjoyed. Soulsby may not have the red trousers, but that didn’t stop him being accosted on his way to the event by a man wanting to thank him for his work in the city. “I was council leader for 17 years,” he said, and “no one said that”. They didn’t in his six years as MP, either.

Of course, there are plenty of people who are less complimentary, but there is no doubt that mayors enjoy greater public recognition than council leaders. According to Dr David Sweeting of the University of Bristol and Professor Robin Hambleton of the University of the West of England, who are conducting research on the impact of the mayoral model, polls show that the proportion of Bristol residents who say that the city has visible leadership has grown from 24% to 69% since Ferguson took charge.

For Soulsby, the key difference between mayors and council leaders lies in their accountability. He outlined how council leaders were elected. “You don’t win it on the doorstep; you don’t win it on the pages of the Leicester Mercury… you win it by getting the support of your fellow councillors,” he said. He then held up a copy of a local newspaper. Its headline, referring to recent gridlock on the city’s roads, asked ‘who’s to blame?’ The question was a direct challenge to Soulsby, the mayor, to find out who should be held to account. Soulsby said that this accountability to the public had led to greater ambition. There had been, he said, a “whole load of risks I am able to take that I wasn’t able to take as a council leader”.

Ferguson pointed to the ability of mayors to act as a figurehead to attract investment. “You don’t invest in people you don’t know…we don’t have very good football teams [in Bristol] so we have to do it another way,” he said. And Soulsby said he enjoys far better access to secretaries of state than he had as an MP. As mayor he can also convene local public service leaders to sort out problems requiring co-ordination. Certainly, the two mayors’ belief in the power of the model chimes with previous Institute for Government research.

But it’s clear that not everyone is enamoured with the model. Ferguson, as an independent mayor, has had to overcome considerable resistance to the model from councillors who resent a perceived reduction in their powers – or in some cases simply dislike his policies. Much opposition has been “very civilised”, he said, but some “unbelievably vicious”. Soulsby spoke of his difficult relationship with Leicestershire’s Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner, Sir Clive Loader. In response to questions, Ferguson reflected openly on some early mistakes in his stance towards councillors – in particular, referring to scrutiny by councillors as a “medieval process”.

However, he now feels he has built stronger, more collaborative relationships. Ferguson’s Cabinet of five councillors comes from four different parties, and Ferguson said he “couldn’t do the job without them”. He is also looking into how he can empower councillors in the city’s 14 neighbourhood partnerships. Soulsby claimed that scrutiny has become “very much more healthy… and effective” in Leicester since the change of model. Both agreed that the introduction of mayors does require a rethinking of the councillor’s role but did not believe that it would become less attractive in future. Soulsby spoke of “really quite good” candidates still coming forward for election in Leicester’s 2015 local elections.

The audience’s questions were mainly focused on the future. Some questions related to how the model of cities could be improved. Here, both mayors wholeheartedly supported the idea of greater proportional representation in local elections. Soulsby was clear that such a system would dramatically reduce his party’s power in Leicester but still believes the system would be far more functional.

Other questions focused on how cities could win further powers from Whitehall and Westminster and how the next government should think about and support city-regional government in England after May 2015. Ferguson pointed to his work bringing together Bristol with three neighbouring councils: “We call it CUBA… the County that Used to Be Avon.” He argued that the area is ready to take on transport powers similar to Greater London. Ferguson also appears to hope that walking the walk will accelerate devolution to the region. “I travel a lot,” he said, “and when I’m abroad I’m mayor of the city region” – not just selling Bristol, but Somerset and other neighbouring areas too. Soulsby wants local government to take on responsibilities from police and crime commissioners too. “I’m not quite sure what they’re meant to do,” he said. Both pointed to Greater Manchester, recent recipient of these powers as well as control of health, as the example to emulate in the next parliament.

They freely admit, however, that – though all parties have promised to devolve further after the election – no one knows what will happen next. Ferguson said further devolution to cities is “not inevitable” – a sensible view given broken promises in the past. And both recognised that gaining further powers is no more important than doing well with the powers they already have.

After all, come May 7, Peter Soulsby will face Leicester’s verdict on his first term as mayor. George Ferguson has a year longer to wait for the electorate’s judgement. And both may wait longer still to find out whether the mayoral model about which they are so passionate grows stronger and expands across England.

Further information
The event was hosted by the Institute for Government, the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England.
Event video
Twitter roundup

Sexual violence in India: feminists and others

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Geetanjali Gangoli, from the School for Policy Studies, discusses the issues raised by ‘India’s daughter’

The recent furore around the BBC Four documentary, India’s Daughter, has once again brought to the forefront the issue of sexual violence in India. Sexual violence continues to be a serious issue for Indian women. The latest crime statistics released by the Home Ministry’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB, 2014) show that 93 women are raped every day in the country. The number of reported rapes a day has increased nearly by 700% per cent since 1971 — when such cases were first recorded by the NCRB.

GG

The documentary, made for BBC by a British filmmaker Lesley Udwin was based on the well publicised rape and murder of 23 year old student, Jyoti Singh in a bus in New Delhi, and featured controversial interviews with Mukesh Singh, one of the six men accused in the case. He is currently on death row, awaiting an appeal to the Supreme Court, and he made several misogynist statements about the victim, including arguing that women were more responsible for rape than men were. He also argued that the woman should not have fought back, and that if he was executed, that it may lead to murders of rape victims. The film also included interviews with the defence lawyers, who also argued that the victim should not have been out at night with a male friend, and with her quietly dignified parents, and friend, whose voices are used effectively to challenge these pervasive rape myths.

As is well known by now, a group of feminists wrote an open letter to NDTV, an Indian news channel, which was planning to air the documentary on March 8th 2015 (at the same time as BBC Four), asking them to show restraint and postpone the broadcast, as the appeal against the death sentences is still pending; but also raising some other objections to the film, including that it promoted ‘hate speech’ against women, that it could lead to increased violence against women, and that it included graphic and gratuitous descriptions of sexual violence. The Indian government however banned the film, on the grounds that it violated ‘permission guidelines’ in airing the interviews with Mukesh Singh, and his comments were ‘highly derogatory’ and violated the dignity of women.

The documentary was, however, aired on BBC Four and released on you tube, rendering the ban ineffective. Since the ban, a number of interesting feminist views on this issue have been voiced, not one of them supporting the ban. What to me has been most impressive is that Indian feminists have been one of the strongest voices standing for the rights of the accused to a free trial (even and especially in a case where the ‘facts’ of the case appear to be clear), and arguing that the death penalty is not only counterproductive, but against feminist principles.

The film itself is interesting and well made, though at points tends to suggest that not much happened in the public and social sphere against sexual violence in India before this particular case, and that sexual violence owes much to poverty, deprivation and social exclusion made worse by globalization, and commodification of women. It projects Jyoti Singh’s rape and murder as emerging from a clash of culture between the upwardly mobile, forward thinking section of Indian society and the socially excluded working class, who have not been able to benefit from globalization. By virtue of omission, it also tends to project sexual violence as happening primarily in the public sphere, by strangers, rather than within the domestic sphere. Recent statistics released by the Delhi police suggest that in over 95% of all recorded cases of sexual violence, the accused was either a family member or known to the victim.

Indian feminists have of course, challenged these rape myths since the 1970s. They have constructed sexual violence as an act of patriarchal power and control, rather than as class warfare, and pointed to the endemic nature of rape and assault across social class, caste and region. Even though most cases of sexual violence around which Indian feminist campaigns have been centred on the rapes of working class and/or Dalit women by those in power (for e.g. the Mathura rape case in the late 1970s, and Bhanwari Devi case in the 1990s), feminists have placed sexual violence as an integral part of the domestic sphere, and demands have been made to the State to criminalise marital rape since the early 1980s. That these have still not been met reflects the pervasive nature of popular beliefs of the sanctity of marriage as a ‘private’ sphere, and the acceptance of male entitlement to women’s bodies, particularly in the home and within the private sphere.

Feminists have always (often simultaneously) collaborated with and opposed State (and media) engagement with gender based violence. Following Jyoti Singh’s rape and murder, feminist groups have fed into Justice Verma Committee , a committee made up of Justice J.S. Verma, Justice Leila Seth (both retired judges) and Gopal Subramanium constituted by the Government to look into possible amendments to the Criminal Justice Law ‘to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals committing sexual assault of extreme nature against women’, and some recommendations of the committee were passed into law through ordinance in early 2013. In opposition to feminist demands, the ordinance retained the marital rape exemption; therefore women in violent and abusive marriages continue to be unable to access the law when raped by intimates. It also created the offence of rape and sexual assault as a gender neutral offence, both in terms of perpetrators and victims, in ‘everyday contexts’ as well as the aggravated rape cases (e.g. gang rape and custodial rape cases).

Demands for legal changes are often an immediate response to social issues, especially in the area of gender based violence, but even moderate ‘successes’ – such as the inclusion of the custodial rape clause and the repeal of the ‘past sexual history’ clause – are often rendered useless where social attitudes regarding women’s sexuality remain unchanged. Legal intervention, even where unsuccessful or partially successful, therefore, must be seen as part of multiple strategies within the Indian women’s movement which seek to challenge, redefine and reshape patriarchal conceptualizations of women’s sexuality in law and society.

Celebrating 25 years of Gender Violence Research @ Bristol Policy Studies.
Save the date: June 15th 2015.