Children’s champion attacks treatment of young offenders in Wales
Wales’ Children’s Commissioner today demands improved treatment of young offenders and asylum-seeker children in Wales, better policy to combat child poverty, and more joined-up thinking to ensure good policy makes a difference.
In his first annual report Keith Towler challenges those responsible for developing and delivering children and young people’s services to focus on closing the gap between the number of good policies and their inconsistent implementation across the country. Mr Towler said while he recognises that there may be valid reasons why policies aren’t being implemented he is not prepared to accept excuses. He cites as examples inadequacy of funding to set up the national parenting helpline Parentline Cymru and for the delivery of effective child and adolescent mental health services.
Setting out areas of concern he highlighted the fact that the UK has one of the lowest ages in Europe for criminal responsibility. Ten-year-olds who commit criminal offences are given custodial sentences, and in many cases these children were sent to young offenders institutions in England.
The Commissioner said due to the numbers involved youth justice could be devolved to Cardiff Bay.
The state of school toilets, which was first condemned by Wales’ first Children’s Commissioner Peter Clarke in 2004, was also back on the agenda. The report concluded that “the standard of cleanliness and the provision of school toilets continue to be of major concern”. But Mr Towler did welcome a call from Education Minister Jane Hutt, in July, for local authorities to review school toilets. And he reiterated his recent damning criticism of the treatment of asylum-seeker children.
“I have been shocked by the lack of respect and the fundamental breaches of children’s rights in the asylum and immigration system,” he said. “I have represented children who have been detained for months. They returned to Wales traumatised by the experience, suffering physical symptoms such as weight loss and psychological symptoms such as nightmares, bed-wetting and behavioural problems.”
One child told staff: “One day the immigration people took us to Yarl’s Wood (detention centre near Bedford). It was more than four hours. I was sick in the car. They didn’t stop. They didn’t stop for me to have a wash. They were not nice. They were all nasty and I was frightened”.
In the past year the Children’s Commissioner for Wales’ office represented many children and offered advice and support to hundreds of parents and supported the setup of a national group to work on a suicide prevention action plan. Staff were contacted by more than 500 people in the year. A total of 417 cases were resolved and 90 are still ongoing. In May last year the Commissioner’s office launched a new freephone service for children and young people. Half of the children who got in touch were children in care. The majority of calls were in relation to education problems such as the failure of school complaints procedures and there was a big caseload involving social services. Other calls related to bullying, child protection, environment, family law, housing, immigration and youth justice.
Mr Towler also wants to raise awareness of the failure of policy to combat child poverty which focuses on getting parents into employment. “It remains unacceptable that more than one in four children in Wales lives in poverty,” he said.
“UK Government’s focus on getting more parents into work does not sufficiently recognise the extent of in-work poverty: 54% of poor children live in a household where one or more adults are working. Such an approach is also inappropriate for the substantial minority of parents who cannot work either because of their own ill-health, disability or the care needs of their children.”
Moira Sharkey
16 October 2008
