Every Child Matters - but so does our privacy

We must not accept state intrusion in our private lives in the name
of children's 'well-being'.

David Clements, spiked-online, 16 October 2006 
< http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1889/ >

David Clements is producing and speaking at the debate Does Every
Child really Matter - has the abuse panic gone too far?, at the
Battle of Ideas festival in London on Sunday 29 October 2006. 

Under the Blair government's Every Child Matters reforms, local 
authorities and other agencies working with children are required to
protect children under a new duty to 'safeguard' them and promote
their welfare, to work together more closely and share information,
and by creating new high-powered posts to oversee children's
services. 

However, these reforms are not so much the antidote to
child abuse panics, as implicated in them.

If anything, the evidence suggests that abuse is on the decline. The
origins of our anxieties are cultural, rather than down to specific
threats 'out there'. In this regard, a distinction needs to be made
between the targeted activities of child protection agencies and the
'awareness' campaigns of the child protection industry. 

The conspiratorial obsession on the part of civil liberties campaigners
with what information is kept on our children, whilst important,
tends to distract us from the bigger threat of a growing mistrust in
society created by other more fundamental erosions of our privacy.

Society is not facing a major child abuse epidemic. 

In fact, the official figures suggest quite the opposite. In the year 2004-05, 
23 children in every 10,000 were on the child protection register. This
compares with 27 just five years ago, and 32 in 1995. In absolute
terms, the numbers of children registered has dropped by more than a
quarter in the past 10 years (1). Despite this, we do have a serious
problem with anxiety.

It is all too common for the apparently informed commentator to 
argue that 'stranger danger' is exaggerated, only then to explain to
the concerned parent that most children are abused by somebody known
to them, as if in some perverse way suspicion of what goes on
'behind closed doors' is somehow preferable or reassuring. 

A recent UN-commissioned report claims that in the UK alone seven per 
cent of children are living in 'violent homes' - a figure apparently plucked
out of the air but not regarded as any less authoritative for that (2). 

While some will readily concede the damage done by relentless panics
and scandals such as these, few would challenge the notion, for
instance, that the vetting of people working with children is still
necessary. Similarly, to declare that 'no touch' protocols are an
example of political correctness 'gone mad' might meet with knowing
approval, but this would not begin to challenge the underlying
culture of fear that gives rise to such measures (3). 

We are not over-protecting our children. We are projecting our fears
onto them. 

By conflating the alleged dangers associated with mobile
phones (4), bullying and obesity, with cases of serious abuse, we 
exaggerate both the gravity and the extent to which children and
young people are exposed and made vulnerable to innumerable risks to
their welfare. Indeed even those episodes serious enough to merit
registration on the child protection register are worth a closer
look. 

Of the children registered last year, 43 per cent were 'at
risk' of neglect, nearly 20 per cent exposed to emotional or
physical abuse, respectively, and just nine per cent to sexual abuse
(5). Without seeking to minimise the seriousness of each, the
undifferentiating campaigns promoted by the child protection
industry give a very different impression.

Though there is very little differentiation between the presentation
of one risk and another, it is notable that sexual abuse, the rarest
of all the recorded categories, features particularly prominently. 

For instance, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Children (NSPCC) have recently launched a high-profile campaign
aimed at uncovering the sexual abuse that they claim is happening to
one in six children (6), and have urged schools to teach their
pupils all about it. But also evident, and arguably more worrying,
is the degree to which the safeguarding agenda is internalised by
even the more conservative elements in society, its inexorable logic
meeting scant resistance as it moves from one institution to the next. (7) 

Earlier this year the leader of the 'Muslim Parliament' raised the
alarm on the UK's madrasas (Islamic schools). He urged that they 
institute the necessary protocols and safeguards if they are to
avoid the scandals that rocked the Catholic Church in the 1990s. 

As is typical of such entreaties, it was the continued use of physical
discipline by minority sections of the community, and speculation
that incidents of sexual abuse were being 'swept under the carpet'
that featured most strongly. (8) 

But the origins of these alleged dangers are not to be found in a
propensity to abuse of particular (as yet under-surveilled) sections
of society (9). 

They are instead a symptom of our anxious and 
risk-averse culture. This is not lost on a political class that is
never too cynical to promote a fearful outlook (that incidentally
paralyses itself most of all) as an opportunity to connect with us
(10). 

Which is why initiatives like the vetting of people working
with children and the introduction of 'no-touch' protocols; and the
proposal in the Children Act 2004 to store and share information
about the nation's children on a database - are as much an 
expression of this wider mood in society as they are policy
solutions to specific problems.

Eileen Munro, reader in social policy at the London School of
Economics, thinks the database is further evidence of the
'government's belief that there is a regulatory solution to every
problem' (11). 

However, it is suspicion and not surveillance per se
that poses the greatest threat to society. Despite important
campaigns like Munro's, including a conference she jointly organised
recently (12), many of those opposed to the civil liberties
implications of information sharing are remarkably quiet on more
everyday incursions into our lives - especially those premised on
the protection of children. This inevitably undermines their argument. 

It is revealing that the libertarian tendency (to the extent it
exists at all) is more likely to be found debating the finer points
of the Data Protection Act or worrying over what our store cards
reveal about our shopping habits. Munro, at least, is more mindful
of the far-reaching implications of the reforms: 

'For most of us, families are a safe haven against the outside
world, allowing us to have both a private and a public life.
Historically, we have been reluctant to intrude into the family
without permission except in extreme circumstances such as serious
abuse. The radical reduction in privacy [implied by the proposals on
information sharing] can only be justified if it will make a
significant difference to the well-being of children... (13).

But she concedes too much. We must not accept the erosion of our
privacy in the name of children's 'well-being'. 

While I would agree that with the children's database 'the government 
proposes extending the surveillance mechanisms to all parents because 
they do not trust any parent to keep track of their own child's well-being' (14), 
this applies equally to other government initiatives such as Surestart,
Children's Centres and Extended Schools. It is for these reasons
that an important principle needs to be restated. In the absence of
suspicion of 'significant harm' parents must be assumed to be
competent to care for their own children (15). 

Maintaining this test as to when intervention is warranted is
important because while it seeks to protect children from abuse, it
does not do this (in theory, at least) at the expense of unfounded
allegations and state intrusions into our lives. 

The problem today is that contemporary notions of what constitutes 
harm, and its significance for the child, are increasingly broad. 
Consequently, it is only when we begin to challenge the heightening 
of risk-consciousness, on the one hand, and the exaggerated
vulnerability of children, on the other, that we can question the
triggering of interventions on dubious grounds, and tackle the
broader cultural anxieties that inform them.

Similarly, the case against the children's database can only be won
by trusting rather than undermining those charged with attending to
the welfare of our children, be they social workers, teachers,
carers or coaches. Though professional competence cannot always be
assumed (incidentally, this is one of the lessons we should be
learning from the Climbié Inquiry (16)) unless we challenge our
culture of mistrust such professionals will never be able to win our
confidence, and we will all be the poorer for it. 

Unfortunately, as the nation's dentists become the latest recruits (17), 
the undermining of the traditional roles of professionals working with
children, and the introduction of new safeguarding duties, is going
to make this an uphill battle.

We need to develop a political culture that resists the replacement
of relationships based on trust with relationships based on
procedures. It is only by seeking solidarity as adults best able to
look after our own children and look out for the welfare of each
other's, that we will be able to achieve this. Distrust of
surveillance by the state must not be allowed to extend to the
competency of parents or the motivations of adults who work with
other people's children.

Though the death of Victoria Climbié at the hands of her carers was
the ostensible catalyst to Every Child Matters, the scope and reach
of the children's agenda makes no sense in its own terms. Only by
understanding how the reforms resonate with our anxious times can we
see how incidents of abuse, real or imagined, are able to gain a
wider significance. 

Footnotes 

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