The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has today published a scathing report about the UK government's child rights record, which makes for embarrassing reading. Along with concerns about Britain's child protection sector, including the disproportionate number of children in state care, the UN also urged England to ban all forms of corporal punishment.
The periodic reports are designed to track the UK's progress in implementing child-welfare-focused recommendations, policies and legislation. The UK has ratified several pieces of legislation which focus on children's rights, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The report covers all forms of violence against children.
While the committee welcomed some improvements, including the prohibition of marriage under 18 years of age in England and Wales, the lowering of the voting age to 16 years in Wales and the prohibition of corporal punishment in Scotland and Jersey, its 23-page report was devoted almost entirely too serious concerns about the way in which the UK is failing to protect children and uphold their rights.
Before we get into the concerns the UN raised about children's social care in England and Wales, it's worth setting out some of the key recommendations in the committee's report. These included:
Developing mandatory child-rights impact assessment procedures for legislation and policies relevant to children in England, Northern Ireland and Wales;
Ensuring government action plans include a special focus on children in disadvantaged situations, including asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant children, children belonging to minority groups, children with disabilities, children in care, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children, socioeconomically disadvantaged children and so-called “young carers” or children with caregiver responsibilities;
Introducing budgetary allocations for children in disadvantaged situations and ensuring that children are not affected by austerity measures;
Improving data collection as it relates to children in all settings, including care;
Giving national human rights institutions and/or Children’s Commissioners, appropriate powers to monitor children’s rights and to receive, investigate and address complaints by children in a child-friendly manner;
Adopting a national strategy for awareness-raising of children’s rights among the public, and promote the active involvement of children in public outreach activities;
Providing confidential, child-friendly and independent complaints mechanisms in schools, alternative care settings, foster care systems, mental health settings and detention for reporting all forms of violence, abuse, discrimination and other violations of their rights, and raise awareness among children of their right to file a complaint under existing mechanisms;
Expanding the types of support provided under the legal aid budget;
Ensuring children have access to officials working with children in the justice system who have been adequately trained on children’s rights and child-friendly proceedings.
There's a huge amount of bold type in this report, which has been done to show the government that the concerns are not only serious but also need to be addressed immediately.
The concerns themselves cover racism, homelessness, poverty, restricting a child's right to demonstrate, maltreatment of disabled children, the use of restraints on children, the use of stop and search on children, restrictions on gender identity, restrictive voting age laws, the asylum process, maltreatment, child mortality rates, child deaths, child protection, lack of support for care leavers, and much, much more.
Children's social care, which the UN calls "alternative care" has its own section in the report, which is entitled, "Family environment and alternative care."
The committee said it was "deeply concerned" about "the large number of children in alternative care, including in unregulated accommodations such as hotels, and unnecessary or frequent transfers of alternative care or changes in social workers assigned to children; the placement of children, including children in situations of vulnerability, in secure care and residential care homes, sometimes amounting to deprivation of liberty and insufficient support services for children living in and leaving alternative care."
The UN goes on to urge the UK government to reduce the number of children in care without delay, to provide community-based care options for children who cannot stay with their families, and to "facilitate the reintegration of children into their families and communities whenever possible."
In relation to children's social care, the committee said it "remained seriously concerned about, the high prevalence of domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, gender-based violence and other forms of violence against children, including in alternative care, and insufficient measures to investigate such cases and bring perpetrators to justice," and "Inadequate resources allocated to related services for child victims."
The committee goes on to make several, urgent recommendations, including:
Ensuring that child protection systems take a child rights-based approach in preventing and addressing cases of abuse and neglect, including psychological violence; that social services and other mechanisms for identifying and supporting children at risk of violence as well as child victims of violence are adequately resourced; and those child victims are fully recognized as victims and have access to community-based, trauma care and child-sensitive support services;
Developing measures aimed at preventing violence against children in alternative care, children with disabilities, asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant children and children belonging to minority groups;
Ensuring that the principle of the best interests of the child is consistently applied in all policies, programmes and legislative, administrative and judicial proceedings affecting children, including in relation to placement in alternative care;
Conducting an independent inquiry into the unexpected deaths of children in alternative care, custody, mental health care and the military, and ensuring the regular collection and publication of disaggregated data on child deaths in all institutional settings;
Ensuring the right of all children, including younger children, children with disabilities and children in care, to express their views and to have them taken into account in all decisions affecting them, including in courts and relevant judicial proceedings and regarding domestic violence, custody, placement in alternative care, health, including mental health treatment, education, justice, migration and asylum;
Ensuring that all relevant professionals working with and for children systematically receive appropriate training on the right of the child to be heard and to have his or her opinions taken into account;
Investigating all cases of abuse and maltreatment of children in alternative care and health settings, particularly among children with disabilities, adequately sanction perpetrators and provide reparation to victims;
Ensuring that children are heard in decisions affecting them in alternative care placement throughout their stay;
Strengthening measures, including increased funding, aimed at providing education, skills, housing and opportunities for independent living for children leaving alternative care and;
The provision of advocacy services for all children in care is an “opt-out”, rather than an “opt-in”, service.
It's a dense report, with a lot of troubling observations, but worth a read if you have the time and the patience.