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When you ask Scotland's Children's Commissioner for Children and
Young People to explain how he got involved in working with
children and young people, "chance" is not the first answer you may
be expecting to hear. But for Tam Baillie, Scotland's second
Children's Commissioner, "chance" it was. It was the 1970s,
and Tam had just finished university and was working on the
building sites when he was offered a job under the Government's Job
Creation Scheme setting up an old age pensioners' library in
Ibrox. The scheme, associated with Bellahouston Steven Parish
Church (Rev Dr Johnston McKay was minister at the time), developed
into a project which, in addition to the library, saw Tam
establishing youth clubs which ran four nights a week. This is
where he got his first experiences of working with young
people. From there, he moved on to delivering "intermediate
treatment" to some of Glasgow's youngsters on the edge of entering
care or offending, followed by a spell of employment in social work
in Nottingham and Liverpool around the time of Willie Whitelaw's
"short, sharp shocks", trying to provide alternatives to custody in
the juvenile magistrate's court system.
Wanting his children to be educated in Scotland, Tam relocated
his family back to Glasgow, where he set up the first direct action
homelessness centre in the city. This was at a time when
homelessness was rapidly rising, HIV was beginning to become an
issue, albeit one about which there was a great degree of fear and
ignorance; and drug abuse was increasing too. However, the
job that Tam credits with having "crystallised my motivation" was
doing street work with young people in Glasgow city centre.
Although an experienced youth worker by this point, Tam was not
fully prepared for the horrors he encountered: "those were
some of the most shocking experiences that I have come across in
terms of children and young people. Young people who had been
raped, abducted, beaten up… many had serious drug and alcohol
issues…mental health problems." The project worked by
"scooping them up and trying to plug them back into systems", and
in doing so, attracted the interest of policymakers. This was
Tam's route into policy work, and was an avenue which he keenly
pursued, eventually becoming head of policy at Barnardo's.
This combination of a wealth of on-the-ground experience and
policy work equipped Tam well for becoming Scotland's second
Commissioner for Children and Young People in 2009, something which
seemed a "natural move" for him to make. His term of office
has recently been confirmed by the Scottish Parliament for a
further six years. He acknowledged the negative media coverage
which had emerged at the time of this decision, noting that whilst
on the one hand engagement with the media is crucial, "the media
are always looking for the Commissioner to comment on just about
anything with regards to children and young people"; on the other,
" it's a very personal role too", with criticism of the role easily
merging with criticism at a personal level. He is aware
of the criticisms which are levelled against the way he is going
about his role, with his style being very different to that of the
first Commissioner, Kathleen Marshall. However, in his first
job, recognising that Tam was young and headstrong, the minister
who he worked with had said to him "whenever you know you're
absolutely right, that's the time to think again." This is a piece
of advice which Tam has held on to, and in applying that
self-evaluation, he firmly believes that he is fulfilling the role
of Commissioner in an effective way.
Tam is, however, pragmatic about the scale of the task before
him: "the demands on this role are really wide …you can't satisfy
everyone. The more you limit the areas you work in, the more
you leave yourself open to not covering all the issues, but the
more you try and cover all the issues, the more likely it is that
you're not going to have penetration in any of them, so that's a
huge balancing act."
Nevertheless, he identifies the three main issues which he sees
as priorities. Firstly, keeping children at the centre is
crucial: "history tells us that children's services suffer
disproportionately in budget cuts". Secondly, child poverty
is of great concern, and Tam describes it as "the most corrosive
impact on children's lives right through childhood; and the most
corrosive impact on children's rights. We need to have a more
even and equitable society. Even if we get lots of other stuff
right, but we continue to live in an unequal society, it will
continue to produce children with lesser life chances than their
peers." Thirdly, Tam believes that there needs to be a much
firmer focus on early intervention, particularly from pregnancy to
three years. While he gives credit to the government for
their work on the issue, including the Early Years Framework, "I
think a lot more could and should be done … it's not been
implemented as assertively as it could have been."
Although appointed by the Scottish Parliament, the role of the
Commissioner is non-partisan, making Tam ideally placed to be a
champion for the rights of children and young people regardless of
the political make-up of the Parliament. As we approach the
elections to the Scottish Parliament on 5 May, when asked what one
thing he would ask for of the new administration, Tam apologised,
"I'm afraid it would have to be those three!" However, whatever the
outcome of the election in May, Tam is clear about one thing: if
progress is to be made in improving the lives of all of Scotland's
children, politicians need to work together. He finds that
"dealing with politicians is relatively straightforward; they
understand the issues and realise the challenge. The biggest
challenge is getting them to take politics out of it, and to be
able to work on a cross-party basis, seeking cross-party agreement
on those things that really matter for our children and young
people."
Tam is keen not to paint an altogether gloomy picture of the
situation in Scotland for children and young people: "most children
in Scotland grow up to be reasonably well adjusted adults, and the
reason for that is because they've got good experiences at home,
education, and good health. In many instances we're doing
well by our children and young people. Lots of what we do
ordinarily is satisfying children's rights. We just don't set
it in that context, and that's one of my main objectives, to raise
awareness and understanding of UNCRC (the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child), because I think it can help us in the long
term point to where we could and should be doing better."
Tam has taken an interactive approach to this goal of
awareness-raising, travelling around the country getting children,
and people who work with children, to take part in "A Right
Blether". Speaking to groups large and small, from directors
of social work and education departments, to children in schools
and groups around Scotland, Tam has spoken to more than 12,000
children in a consultation which will form part of his priorities
for the rest of his term of office. However, "A Right
Blether's doing a lot more than just consultation. It's…
getting hundreds and hundreds of people working with children to
get engaged and excited about talking about children's rights, so
that they're not a stick to get beaten up by; they're something
that they're familiar with, they're something that we can build on
for the future."
Nevertheless, he is realistic about the scale of problems facing
too many children in Scotland today. "The flipside of all of
that is that too many of our children don't experience good family
life, good education, good health, good leisure facilities. 55,000
living with substance-misusing parents; 65,000 living with alcohol
misusing parents; 100,000 in families with domestic abuse; 250,000
children living in poverty. These are enormous challenges for
Scottish society." Tam's focus is therefore on the
'vulnerable' population of Scotland's children: children living
with disability, children in families with substance misuse or
poverty, and children in care. But of all of these groups,
Tam speaks with the most passion about children in our care
system.
He believes that, although there are some examples of good
practice, "if we're being honest with ourselves, there's been
little movement in terms of the age that young people leave
care." In contrast to the average age at which young people
leave the family home, in their mid-twenties, and rising; it
remains the customary practice that young people in care, often the
most vulnerable children and young people, leave at 16 or 17.
"My belief is that we should be prepared to care for young people
in age appropriate care for longer periods, and we should certainly
take a similar approach to our young people who are in care as we
do with young people who are in the family home. When my
children say to me 'I'm leaving home at 16', my response is: 'are
you? And how are you going to do that? Because your place is here.'
We should be reflecting the expectations of caring and nurturing
and continuing to be responsible in the same way that we do as
parents; the figures tell us we do something different." He
also reflects that the way in which young people leave care is very
different to the pattern of leaving the family home: returning,
then leaving for a longer period, and returning, until they have
established themselves living away from home. "Young people
leave care in a linear fashion. They're expected to go from a care
environment, to maybe a semi-supported accommodation environment,
to a lesser-supported accommodation environment, to their own
tenancy, in a linear way, there's not much capacity for them to
move back. There's certainly no capacity for them to move
back into care once they've left. But by definition, these
are young people that may not, in many instances, have anywhere
else to go."
It is the combination of these factors that make young people
who have been living in the care system so vulnerable to
homelessness, and chaotic lifestyles, a situation in which Tam has
seen little improvement on since his days working in the homeless
shelter in Glasgow. "… I feel really strongly about this
one. But I think it has to move on a stage. The
production of yet another report, detailing the plight of young
people leaving care, I think we're beyond that now, I don't think
that's good enough. I think what has to happen is we have to
move into a much more formal process such as our inspection
regimes, taking a much keener look at what is actually
happening."
Working across the jurisdictions to improve children's rights
are four Commissioners for Children and Young People, one each for
Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Tam has a good
working relationship with his colleagues, and reports good join
working practices. Although he realising that "you can't go
too far ahead of the devolved arrangements", there is an
understanding that the Commissioners will work on issues relating
to children in their jurisdictions. When asked whether there
are any issues specific to one nation over the others, he thinks
that it is very much a "mixed bag". "I think we've got
particular issues with regard to our substance and alcohol misusing
parents; that's already been given a very high focus. But
we've got some very particular things which we should feel good
about as well: we've got a Children's Hearings System, which other
jurisdictions look at with envy". However, he gives an
example of the Welsh system, where a measure has recently been
passed which requires the UNCRC to be taken into account in the
passage of new legislation in the Welsh Assembly; something that is
not currently required of any of the other Parliaments or devolved
Assemblies. These national variations give opportunities for
cross-border learning amongst the Commissioners, something which
perhaps will inform policymakers in each of the nations.
Their findings are also reported to the UN, a way of keeping the UK
accountable to its obligations under the UNCRC.
However, this reporting does not necessarily guarantee
compliance. Tam recognises the "confusing, different age
barriers" that currently exist in the UK, particularly relating to
"that vulnerable age of 16, 17, which we as a society are quite
ambivalent about, about whether they're children or adults.
UNCRC are quite clear - they're children." (The UNCRC defines
a child as under 18, unless the child has been in care, in which
case it is under 21) Although Scotland has a Children's Hearings
System which focuses on the welfare of the child, 16 and 17 year
old offenders who haven't already been in the system before they
were 16 are dealt with in court, meaning that there is a high
number of 16 and 17 year olds experiencing custody. The age
of criminal responsibility in Scotland remains at 8, which Tam
describes as "unacceptably low".
A common thread running through Tam's assessment of the
political situation regarding children and young people is the
reliance on the issues being placed high enough on the political
agenda for appropriate action to be taken. He gives the
example from his time at Barnardo's, recalling an Institute for
Fiscal Studies which (correctly) predicted that the UK Government's
target to halve child poverty by 2010 would not be met, and that
for the target to be met, an investment of £3bn would be
required. "I thought, how are we going to convince people of
£3bn, that's a really tall order. Then the financial crisis
came along, and the Government allocated £150bn to bail out the
banks, and that told me it was about political priorities… people
often say that they're [children] a top priority but in reality it
doesn't work out like that." If one thing is for certain, in
Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People, Scotland has
a tenacious advocate for children's rights. Whether
politicians will prioritise the issues affecting our children and
young people is a different question.