Childhood

Services and Provision for Children

Phil Jones, Dorothy Moss, Pat Tomlinson, Sue Welch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317865759
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Childhood: Services and Provision for Children provides an important and timely contribution to the field of Childhood and Youth Studies. This cutting-edge text brings together, within a critical framework, an understanding and discussion of a broad range of services, ideas and themes, and debates the impact of them on childrens lives.

The text takes a truly multi-disciplinary perspective, reflecting the wide-ranging experience and backgrounds of the authors and contributors. The wealth of real case study material and reflective activities within each chapter helps develop the evaluative tools and critical skills essential for an understanding of the complex social, political and environmental issues surrounding childhood today and thus makes this an essential text for those studying in this field.

Chapter 1
Introduction

PAT TOMLINSON

When people consider the notion of childhood, they bring to it a range of ideas, themes and perspectives. These are drawn from their own experience and interpretation of the world and the views they have encountered. Scholars and students of the subject are no different. We embark on our respective courses of study and learning in the full knowledge that we have all experienced childhood yet not readily appreciating how different and diverse that experience might have been for those of a different social position to our own and in relation to different services.

The concept of childhood in the 21st century may appear to be a high profile affair. Politicians, researchers, academics, professional practitioners and commercial entrepreneurs consider, investigate and at times exploit notions of childhood. Within the UK, children, usually within the context of family, may appear to dominate social, fiscal and economic policy. Budget speeches by the Chancellor of the Exchequer from the turn of the century to the time of writing reflect this with reference to child tax credits, children’s trust funds, investment in education and opportunities for budding sports Olympians. Diverse professional areas such as health, youth justice, education and social work are involved differently in aspects of child development, care and welfare. Commerce and industry exploit childhood in a variety of ways, for example Marketlooks (2001), a website providing market analysis, identified the growing concept of the ‘tween’ market, children between 8 and 12, that provides revenue to the tune of US$170 billion per annum. From manufacturing to service industries childhood is big business. The ‘Toys and Games Market Report 2005’ shows that since the year 2000 the UK market for traditional toys and games has grown by 21 per cent to a value of £2.13 billion in 2004.

Within this broad and complex framework the study of children and society has emerged as an area of multidisciplinary scholarship incorporating education, sociology, social psychology and social policy. Historically children have tended to be studied as an adjunct or subordinate to other categories. Sociology has traditionally studied children within the context of family. Social policy has tended to study children within the context of adult needs, for example, early years from the perspective of parenting, young people from the perspective of social control, while education has focused on the child as a developing adult and an investment in the future. Although such approaches are still evident there has been a move to explore childhood in its own right. This move considers the cultural, social, educational and political context of children’s lives and explores experiences of childhood from a child’s perspective. The contributors to this book are from many professional, academic and service user backgrounds, yet share a common objective: to consider children and the experience of childhood as a distinct and important aspect of their scholarship and practice.

The focus of the book is predominantly services and provision for children in the UK. It explores broad underpinning perspectives on children’s services, information about particular provision and critical issues related to meeting the needs and wants of children. Although concerned to centre on UK provision and services authors are mindful of international and global debates and actions related to childhood. Within this context chapters variously identify the influence of global agencies such as the United Nations and relationships to services with an international perspective. The book addresses key questions within the context of the changing face of service provision, critical debates about childhood and the voice of the child. These questions include:

• What relationships between the state and the child does service provision reflect?
• How is service provision seen from a children’s rights’ perspective?
• How are children’s views taken into account in relation to services?

The book is informed by two contemporary perspectives on childhood: firstly, the idea that childhood is socially constructed and that the rights of the child should be centre stage; secondly, the long-standing recognition of the social divisions of childhood where emphasis is placed on excluded, oppressed and margin-alised groups of children including those in poverty, looked-after children, refugee children, child offenders and young people. We explore the influences shaping policy (economic, social, political and cultural) both top down, through the impact of national and international law and policy, and bottom up, through social movements for change, community development and the child’s perspective and influence, alongside snapshots of policy and case studies. We discuss the status of the child, the extent to which the child’s voice may be heard in the development of policy and the rhetoric and realities of children’s rights. There has been a growth in multi-professional approaches and a recognition that both the status and understanding of those involved with the children’s workforce need to develop. In this complex and changing environment, not only is it essential to know about prevailing policies and provision but to appreciate the critical context within which these exist.

The broad range of ideas, critical debates and examples of policy and practice raised provide insight into important ideas about the social construction of concepts of childhood discussed within the book. We examine how dominant ideas in themselves create opportunities and constraints for children. In the sense that childhood could be considered to be to some extent a ‘fiction’, the argument is that we need to unpick that fiction if we are to serve children’s interests best. However, it is also important that we recognise the material realities of children’s lives, for example finance, shelter, environment and the quality and quantity of services available to support children. As well as ‘childhood’ being an ‘idea’, individual children’s lives are real and children are socially and historically positioned in relation to ever-changing material forces. The existence of war and the unequal distribution of wealth are two examples. Alcoff points out that we need to study peoples’ lives in the context of the relationship between ideas and material ‘realities’ (1997, p. 343). It is the way that ideas about children and their lived realities interact that should be the focus of attention. Goldson et al. (2002) argue that we must not lose sight of the major material inequalities children experience because our attention is too drawn to the ways in which children are conceptualised. Both aspects of the study of childhood are important and we hope that we have drawn on such debates evenly and holistically.

The book brings together, within a critical framework understanding and discussion of a significant range of services and their impact on children’s lives.

How the book is structured

The book is divided into four parts, each providing different perspectives on childhood provision and services. Part I provides the critical framework which establishes the debates, discussions and dilemmas across children’s provision and services. This is developed in the four chapters where theoretical debates and essential concepts and themes are introduced. These areas are children’s rights, the politics and economics of childhood, inequalities between children and the impact of adult perceptions and images of children on policy. The intention of Part I is not to arrive at definitive answers to questions but to introduce a range of critical perspectives on children’s services which can be drawn on to reflect on and evaluate other chapters.

Part II covers specific areas of provision and service for children providing some contextual background, outlines of provision and critical questions in relation to particular areas. The debates developed in Part I inform the chapters of Part II in different ways. Each chapter is distinct and autonomous, but together they form a broad and contemporary picture of policy, provision and service for children in the UK. Some chapters provide a historical context, some focus on snapshots of contemporary policy and others discuss directly critical questions about the shape and direction of contemporary provision. It has not been possible to cover every single service for children or all scenarios across children’s lives but the range of services covered has been carefully selected to be representative of the diversity of children’s services and ensure the inclusion of specialist services such as play and youth alongside the monolithic provision of education and health.

Part III draws on a range of case studies to exemplify the critical framework of the book in practice and to see the real life impact of provision and services discussed in Part II. These case studies include perspectives from those involved in developing services, those working in them and children using the services. The selection of case studies reflects the key questions highlighted earlier. So, for example, the relationship between the state and perspectives on children’s services is explored in two examples of community development. Issues of children’s rights are examined through the experiences of a teacher of refugee children and a child’s personal account and insight as a recipient of children’s services.

Part IV provides a practical resource for getting the most out of the book and out of study in general. It focuses on the way that the book might be used as a learning resource and the way that knowledge and understanding of the shifting terrain of children’s services and provision may be updated. It offers an accessible guide to those studying childhood services and is structured around questions related to accessing information and academic research, using book-based learning, journals and the Internet. It shows how libraries support this and how analytical skills can be developed and used to aid interpretation of text. It is concerned with building the confidence of those engaged with learning about children and childhood. Reflective activities are integrated throughout the book and this part focuses directly on ways in which particular themes and issues are developed across the book and important strands of research and thinking might be highlighted.

Features of the text

Each part has an opener that identifies the aims of the part and details each chapter included in it. It also indicates the relationship with the other parts of the book and suggests guided reading and links.

Each chapter lists the key questions it is discussing at the start and offers a number of reflective activities that individual readers or groups can get involved with to strengthen their understanding of the text. These can be undertaken without recourse to other sources of information. Each chapter has an annotated bibliography to support selected reading.

Readers can approach the text from any point and will find signposts and guidance to enable broadening of the theme or topic across the book.

PART I
Debates, Discussions, Dilemmas: The Critical Framework

What is the aim of Part I?

The first four chapters act as a grounding for the rest of the book. These include an introduction to relevant theories and concepts; the meanings and implications of children’s rights; key debates about contemporary political issues relating to children and childhood; the ways in which processes such as social exclusion affect children and their families along with an analysis of the pictures of children contained within policy.

Guide to reading Part I

Part I gives a broad analysis, and can be read to familiarise the reader with key concerns across children’s services as a whole. The chapters can be read independently or together. They can be used to help understand critical issues that are raised in other parts of this book.

Chapter 2
Childhood: Rights and Realities

SUE WELCH

The quality of a child’s life depends on decisions made every day in households, communities and in the halls of government. We must make those choices wisely, and with children’s best interests in mind. If we fail to secure childhood, we will fail to reach our larger, global goals for human rights and economic development. As children go, so go nations. It’s that simple.

(UNICEF, 2005a)

Introduction

This chapter addresses the relationship between children’s rights and services and provision for children. It is concerned with the questions

• do we mean by children’s rights?
• Who is responsible for ensuring children’s rights are upheld?
• What status do children have within our communities?
• How effective are services in responding to children’s rights?

It isn’t the intention of this chapter to arrive at definitive answers to these questions but to raise further questions and issues that challenge assumptions and allow for discussion and reflection on a range of views. The focus is on provision in the UK, primarily England and Wales as policy and provision in Scotland is sometimes different. Some comparisons are made with other countries where different approaches illustrate different ways of thinking. Children’s rights are the focus of much debate, both within the UK and internationally, as individuals and governments struggle to identify what rights children should have and how these can be upheld in practice. These debates are important in considering services and provision made for children and underlying them are ideas about how we construct our ideas of childhood and children.

The chapter starts by looking at the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It identifies what the convention says about children’s rights and the rights of others and points to some issues arising from this. It goes on to consider some of the difficulties around who is responsible for upholding children’s rights.

The chapter looks at issues in relation to the status of children in our society and communities and identifies some of the tensions and contradictions in the way we think about childhood and children. The particular tensions are:

• Childhood as important in itself versus childhood as preparation for adulthood
• Children as vulnerable people versus children as capable
• Children as victims versus children as villains

This leads to examination of how these tensions affect the way we provide services and provision for children.

Finally, issues identified during the chapter are drawn together with further questions raised for consideration.

What is meant by 'children's rights'?

Debates about children’s rights are sometimes affected by the way the term ‘rights’ is interpreted so it is worth considering what is mean by a ‘right’. Simplistic media representations sometimes use the term as though it means having complete freedom to do as you please because nobody can stop you from implementing your rights. However, this is a misconception. Rights are also linked with responsibilities. One of the chief responsibilities is to respect the rights of others so when there is conflict between the rights of two individuals or groups there has to be negotiation between the individuals or groups about how to make this work. For example, while I have a right to make decisions about what car to drive I also have a responsibility to consider the effects on others of driving that car, for example the amount of pollution it generates, the speed at which I drive, the safety of passengers that I carry. Some of these responsibilities might be enshrined in laws, for example those that identify speed limits and safety standards, but others are personal responsibilities that need me to make decisions that are not purely selfish, such as the engine size and how I drive the car.

Some societies (e.g. in the US, Australia, the UK) have a strong individualistic approach to how society works with the rights of individuals being stressed. Other societies (e.g. in Latin America, Asia) stress the importance of the group and consider that the individual should relinquish some individual rights because of the rights of the wider society. This relationship between the rights of the individual and the rights of the rest of society is at the heart of many debates. For example, graffiti can be seen as an individual’s right to fr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Author Acknowledgements
• Publisher Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• I Debates, Discussions, Dilemmas: The Critical Framework
• II Service, Provision and Policy
• III Services in Action: Case Studies
• IV Conclusion: Pulling the Threads Together and Furthering Understanding
• References
• Index