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The role
It was the Scottish Parliament that established the post of
Commissioner for Children and Young People (though Kathleen
Marshall's appointment was actually made by the Queen to ensure the
independence of the post). When she took up office on 26 April
2004, what completely took her by surprise was that when she turns
up anywhere "people treat me like a visiting dignitary", which she
had not anticipated at all; instead she has tried to generally
side-step the pomp and ceremony and focus on the substance of her
job.
The job of Commissioner for Children and Young People is not
that of an enforcer. Neither is it to be a lobbyist arguing for the
rights of children because those rights have already been promised
by the government, particularly through the UN's Convention on the
Rights of the Child. So Kathleen's job is actually to ensure that
the government keeps the promises that they have already made by
promoting those rights. In that respect she is a promise keeper;
and she also has the role of a watchdog because if she thinks
someone is not respecting the rights of children and young people
she can conduct a formal investigation. As she says herself, a lot
of her job will be about persuasion, information and awareness
raising and she hopes that at the end of five years all service
providers will be familiar with the UN Convention.
Current Issues
There is a whole range of issues occupying Kathleen's attention
(although she says that she has tried to follow the advice given to
her by a wee girl in a video made for her by groups of children,
who said "don't overstretch yourself"). At the moment, she is
particularly concerned with asylum and immigration issues, despite
the fact that there was a feeling in some quarters that her role
had nothing to do with asylum seekers (her investigatory powers
don't apply to reserved matters); but "I said from the beginning
that whilst there might be reserved matters, there are no reserved
children". She is troubled about the way children and families are
removed for detention and deportation. She was told by the Home
Office that there was a pastoral visit before every removal for
failed asylum seekers but after further probing she was angry to
discover that the "pastoral visit" involved two immigration
officers visiting them to fill in a questionnaire, without telling
them that they were to be removed - "I don't see anything pastoral
about that at all, I thought it was atrocious to call it that and
the whole idea that you go and pick people up out of their beds at
five minutes notice and take them away". She was impressed by the
pupils in Drumchapel who protested against the way that their
friend (who had lived in Scotland for four years) had been removed
from her home and added that because it was the children who
expressed for themselves how they were affected by at the
deportation policy it made the message all the more powerful.
Kathleen has also been doing a lot of work on how health and
safety issues have actually had an adverse effect on the lives of
disabled children. Children in wheelchairs have told her how people
will not help to straighten them up in their seats because they
think it is against health and safety legislation: "people think
that they can't lift or handle at all".
She is also concerned at how young carers or the children of
drug-abusing parents often end up staying off school, getting
stigmatised and marginalized for not turning up or for antisocial
behaviour, when what they actually need is support to help them
deal with the very serious responsibilities that they have in their
families. In her SCPO lecture Kathleen talked of a powerful
Panorama report on the lives of children of drug-abusing parents
which she thought would lead to campaigns, petitions and a change
in attitudes, funding and practice; instead, she was "stunned by
the silence".
Another major issue is the pressure that there appears to be on
young people in care to leave when they are sixteen, when in fact
they should be allowed to stay until they are eighteen - "I thought
we had got over that". She wondered why there were two young people
looking quite depressed at a conference she was at when all the
other young people seemed quite jolly and when she spoke to them
she found out that they were both sixteen year olds in care. The
young man had just been given what he called his notice to quit and
the girl was expecting hers anytime. They were both scared and
depressed by it, while Kathleen was incredulous that this was still
the situation for young people in care. As she says it has huge
implications for the young people who are expected to sustain
tenancies at the age of sixteen so it is no wonder that a lot of
them end up homeless. She plans to do something about this
practice.
Immediate plans
In time she will have a staff of fourteen to help her cover all
the work she faces as the Commissioner (her first member of staff
only started at the end of September 2004). Once she has more staff
in place Kathleen is going to conduct a big publicity campaign at
the beginning of June to raise the profile of the office (having
delayed this to avoid giving false expectations about what she
could do in her first year).
She also intends to launch soon a consultation on what her
policy priorities should be, to give her clear priorities for
pro-active work in the future. Two of her staff will actually be
young people (aged between 16 and 21 years old) who will be
employed to develop the office website, making it attractive and
relevant to younger people, and to talk to groups about what the
office is for.
Kathleen is required to consult with children, young people and
organisations that work with children. But what she can't do is
take up individual cases, although she can use an individual case
as an example of an issue and she says it is sometimes through such
cases that she is alerted to a more general issue that affects
other children and young people.
Highlight
One of her highlights to date is the positive reaction to a
public lecture that she gave to SACRO in November. She was allowed
to choose her own topic for the lecture, although there was an
expectation that she would speak about anti-social behaviour.
However, she chose to take up the issue of anonymity until
conviction because she thought that it was unhelpful to children
that as soon as an allegation is made against an adult it is
splashed all over the papers. She was aware that the Law Society
had supported the principle of anonymity but that they had been
given a bad time by the press who said that such a law would result
in the protection of abusers. Braced for a negative response and
ready to justify her stance, she gave her lecture but was
completely taken aback by the amount of support that she received,
with Newsnight Scotland even doing a very positive piece on it. The
unions were also positive and she has tried to take the issue
forward.
Kathleen's Personal Background
Before taking up the post of Commissioner Kathleen was Director
of the Scottish Child Law Centre and had been part of the campaign
to create a Children and Young Person's Commissioner, so she knew
that "this job was coming up". When it was finally advertised she
applied for it not only because she had long recognised the need
for it, but she also relished the opportunity of having a truly
independent role. She says that one huge advantage to her role is
that she can deal with unpopular subjects. When she was Director of
the Scottish Child Law Centre she always had to think about their
funding but as the Commissioner she can say things that are
difficult for voluntary organisations to voice: "say things that
are quite challenging and I know that I'll quite possibly get some
flak for it but hopefully I have the time to reason it through
without the sudden implication of having your funding
withdrawn".
Prior to that Kathleen had a background in law (studying at
Glasgow University where she represented law students on the SRC
along with a certain Graham Blount) but she had been at home for
eleven years to raise her family and had then thought about whether
she should go back into law. She decided to test the waters by
working at the Scottish Child Law Centre as a volunteer back in
1988. She went in with a general air of benevolence towards
children but not with a radical approach, but after being exposed
to the problems and difficulties that children and young people
faced "that did in effect radicalise me". Being Director prepared
her well for being the Commissioner as she had to deal with every
area of the law at the Child Law Centre: education, adoption,
abduction, child care, criminal justice, employment, marriage and
separation, medical consent - "you name it".
Not one to rest on her laurels, Kathleen also did a theology
degree via distance learning over five years (graduating in
November 2003, two months before she was interviewed for the job of
Commissioner). She is a practising Catholic and likes to get
involved. In fact, just before she took up the Commissioner post
she was quite active in ACTS and was vice-convener of its Church
& Society Network. But when she started her current job "I had
to more or less sign in blood that I would be prohibited to be
involved in party politics" and so until she knows where she stands
with other activities like ACTS, she felt that it was best to
resign from it and a variety of other positions.
Outside the Job
Not that she has much time outside of her job but when she does,
Kathleen's biggest passion is her family. But if she ever had the
time she would like to learn about archaeology. If she was ever
stranded on a desert island and was only allowed to take one luxury
item she would take the Catholic Church's liturgy of the hours,
which has a mixture of readings from across the centuries and comes
in three volumes. She says it covers the whole spectrum of human
life and that in it you can read a psalm, or something from St
Augustine or St Ambrose, or a medieval person, or something from
the second Vatican Council. When asked which two people she would
like to take with her to the desert island, she was appalled that
she could only choose two! But on reflection she decided she would
take her husband "or he would divorce me!" and a 16th
century Carmelite called Theresa, as Kathleen has read a lot of her
stuff and "I always thought I would love to talk to her and find
out more about her". Theresa's character doesn't sound a million
miles away from that of our Commissioner for Children and Young
People, as apparently Theresa was very wise, humorous, active, down
to earth and had a deep faith - "a very interesting combination of
a contemplative in action".