How does it feel to be suspected of child abuse?
November 22, 2008
Together again … Richard, Lily and their son, James. Photograph: Linda Nylind
Last year more than half a million children in the UK were referred to social services over concerns that they might be victims of abuse. As the storm rages on about who was to blame for leaving Baby P in the care of unfit and violent parents, these are the stories of two ordinary families who found themselves under investigation by social services. As in most cases, both investigations were closed after a few weeks with no further action taken and no child protection plan deemed necessary, but for the families it was a devastating experience that they will never forget.
Janet is a 36-year-old graphic designer. She and her partner live with their six-year-old son in a large Victorian terraced house in south London. Four years ago, she was reported to the police by neighbours because her child screamed for hours whenever they tried to put him to bed. At first she thought it was just a ridiculous misunderstanding and that it would make a good story to tell her friends, but it quickly became apparent that it was a much more serious matter.
“Billy was always a terrible sleeper,” explains Janet. “Luckily I had been consulting a sleep-trainer. She had only just been round to work out a strategy. Billy was two at this stage and we were finding it very difficult. It was the first night of the new sleep-training regime and my partner was away.”
“I was outside his bedroom, going in every couple of moments saying ‘I can’t sit next to you’ and he was screaming as per usual, as he would every night.” Janet suspects she was reported by her neighbour’s lodger whose bedroom was directly opposite Billy’s room. “Frankly, I don’t blame him. I would have reported Billy myself if I could have. He would just scream for hours … “
Two policemen arrived at her front door and told her that due to a complaint from an unnamed neighbour about the screaming they needed to check Billy’s body for marks. “I just laughed. I couldn’t take it seriously at first. I told them I was sleep-training him and they just looked at me blankly. I said, ‘I take it neither of you have got kids then?’ She asked if they could come back another time but they insisted on inspecting Billy there and then. By now it was about 9pm.
“We had builders in and the house looked like a tip. I had even left a dirty nappy on the landing as I went upstairs to put him to bed. The reality was that I wasn’t doing a good job of keeping things together. I was going mad with the lack of sleep.”
Janet agreed to allow the policemen to inspect Billy in her presence.
“They walked into the bedroom and he immediately stopped crying and said, ‘Policemen!’ He was really pleased to see them. I took his pyjamas off but they didn’t check him very well. I thought that was because I had agreed to the inspection but now know that social services have to do a follow-up.”
At this point, Janet remembered that Billy had a bad cut on his head under his hair-line, where he had fallen against a brick wall the previous day.
“I had completely forgotten it was there and I started to tremble. My knees went weak. I mean, if they had checked him more thoroughly would they have taken him away? Could they have? That really scared me.” Despite checking Billy twice, the police missed it.
After the police visit she stopped the sleep-training: “I was so scared that they would come back if he cried that I just did whatever he wanted. Billy thought the police had told me to sit next to him while he went to sleep. He thought that was why they came.”
Two days later, social services arrived at Janet’s house. “I didn’t know they were coming. The police hadn’t warned me. They said they had tried to contact me but I had had no messages or letters. They took lots of notes and said they would have to contact Billy’s nursery, and interview the sleep-trainer and my GP.”
Despite support from her friends and family, Janet says that the police visit and the subsequent investigation by social services initially made a difficult situation much worse. “We were so scared that we did anything to stop him crying. He could watch TV at 4am if he wanted to. Anything. And in the space of a week he turned into an utter monster. He was having 30 tantrums a day because we were giving in to him.”
By this point her local social services department had been reassured by Janet’s sleep-trainer and Billy’s nursery that he was not at risk so Janet decided to ask the social services department who were investigating her family for help. “I rang them and said ‘You should be supporting me. That’s your job. I’ve got a difficult child.’ And they responded very well.” Janet and her partner were offered 10 free sessions with a child psychologist. “She was brilliant. She only met Billy once. She told us to keep a diary of the tantrums, what the triggers were and how we dealt with them. We were so addled by lack of sleep that we hadn’t been working together. We started to sit down together and be consistent.”
Janet now views the investigation as a turning point. “All that awfulness resulted in us taking unified action and finding a solution. From that point, things slowly started to get better and he’s a normal kid now.”
Janet will never know who reported her. Steve Goodman, deputy director of Hackney council’s children and young people’s services, in east London, says: “If a member of the public rings up with concerns about the safety of a child, we will investigate and protect their anonymity. We are legally bound to do this by the 1989 Children’s Act. But that is not the most common kind of alert we receive. Most come from schools, health professionals and the police.”
Neither of the families I have spoken to is from Hackney so Goodman has agreed to talk generally about how families are treated during and after an investigation by social services: “There are approximately 80 child protection investigations in Hackney every month. Of that 80, half are closed before we even get to a child protection conference. Of the 40 that get as far as a child protection conference, approximately half end with a child protection plan being put into action, which involves ongoing monitoring and support. Of the 1,000 or so child protection investigations initiated over a year, less than 3% of cases involve separating a child from its family.”
Goodman agrees that for the families any investigation is potentially traumatic but that the duty of care to the child has to come first: “After a case is closed, our obligation to the family is to make sure they fully understand our position, usually confirmed in a letter.
“There are counselling services that a social worker would be aware of. They are not offered as a matter of course but, if asked, social workers will advise parents of these.”
Richard is in his early 60s and lives with his wife, Lily, and their two-year-old-son, James. Last year, he and his family underwent a child protection investigation after taking James to hospital. “James was 10 months old. He had started pulling himself up on things, the first stage of walking. I was busy doing everyday things - emails, washing up - and he fell a couple of times, badly enough for me to stop what I was doing and pick him up, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
Richard is an experienced parent - he has older children. “There were no grazes or bumps. I know about concussion - there were no signs that he was sick or sleepy. We went out that night and I didn’t even think to say to his granny, who was babysitting, that he had fallen but I did mention it to Lily.”
Four days later, Richard noticed that a soft lump had developed on James’s head. “Lily looked it up in a medical book but he had none of the symptoms associated with a serious head injury.”
They took him to the doctor, who suggested that going to the accident and emergency department for an x-ray would be faster than a referral letter. “Our GP was not particularly concerned but we chose to go sooner rather than later,” says Richard. “We were seen by several people, mostly junior doctors. They did an ultrasound and said there was bleeding under the scalp. They were cagey. One of them said that it was unusual and might not be connected to the fall. We were really panicking; we thought it might be a tumour. They said he needed cat scans and blood tests and x-rays and we couldn’t jump the queue. Being told he had to stay in to be monitored was a low point. We had left home in the morning thinking we would be back in a few hours.”
A senior consultant arrived and asked Richard lots of questions about the fall. “I had to tell the story again. He asked whether the floors were wooden or carpeted, how and why it had happened and why had we waited so long to bring him to hospital.”
The next morning, an x-ray revealed a small fracture of James’s skull and the consultant told Richard and Lily that the baby’s own weight wouldn’t be enough to cause such an injury. “We began to realise it was all taking another direction. James was fine - there were loads of things for him to play with. He thought it was a holiday camp, but we couldn’t take him home. We were officially under suspicion and he was ‘at risk’, although no one would actually say it.”
The following day, a social worker attached to the children’s unit of the hospital arrived. “She was much more formal. We were told we were being investigated for a non-accidental injury to James. That was devastating but we realised how important it was to stay calm, reasonable and cooperative. We thought they might try and take him away from us. Then the police arrived. I couldn’t believe it was happening.’
The police have specially trained child abuse investigation teams who liaise with social workers on cases in which they suspect criminal activity. Richard was under suspicion partly because he had said the house was carpeted and James’s injury suggested that he had fallen against a hard surface. In fact, Richard had meant that most rooms had fitted carpets but not the kitchen, where James had fallen. He had no idea that his answer was so significant at the time. “The injury was obviously caused by James falling against a wooden play brick or a skirting board but no one asked me about that. Exhibit A - I had said the house was carpeted. Exhibit B - we hadn’t brought him in for four days. We were officially cautioned by the police. I was in a room full of people who thought I had intentionally fractured my son’s skull.”
A strategy meeting then took place between the doctors, police, and social workers and their health visitor but Richard and Lily were not allowed to attend. “Immediately after we were formally told that we were being investigated. The policeman and social worker wanted to see the flat, which I took them to see. They made a plan of the whole place.”
Richard and Lily were told to present themselves for interview at the police station the next morning. “Imagine how we felt,” says Richard, “accused of fracturing our own child’s skull, under caution, awaiting formal interview by the police, with our child in hospital. At this point we discussed getting in touch with our solicitor but we knew we had absolutely nothing to hide. We wanted to keep behaving normally, not get drawn into their world.”
At the end of the interview, Richard was told that the police believed his version of events and were going to stop the investigation. “It ended quite suddenly. He switched off the machine and said, ‘Have you got any comment to make?’ I said, ‘This has never happened before, people thinking this of me. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m so angry but I can’t express it,’” says Richard. “We had one follow-up visit from the health visitor and three from the social workers. The health visitor said how soft babies heads are at that stage and how easy it would be for James to suffer an injury like that by falling against one of his toys.”
Looking back at the investigation, Richard tries to be balanced: “I understand that a child’s safety is paramount, that they can’t allow themselves to think, ‘Oh, they’re a nice-looking couple.’ It’s a procedure that might save a child’s life, but we were left completely traumatised. No one apologised. No one stopped to reassure us. Maybe that’s how it has to be, but a more fragile person, someone in relationship difficulties, might not have the resilience to deal with it. If I had had a drink problem or if we had been having problems. If Lily had begun to doubt me … “
Richard doesn’t finish the sentence and it’s clear that he is still very upset, even though the investigation was closed more than a year ago. He and Lily now wish that they had been advised to take their own notes of the investigation and the names of all those who questioned them. They are still waiting for a copy of the report promised to them by social services.
“We didn’t realise it but right from the start we were under suspicion, within half an hour of us getting to the hospital. No one was asking us proper questions or advised us to think hard about what we said as it could have a big impact on what happened next. They just kept us there without explaining why. We thought that they were worried about James’s condition. That’s what made us really angry.”
• All names have been changed.
Are modern buggies bad for babies?
November 22, 2008
Double trouble … children facing away from their parents as they are pushed by their buggies. Photograph: Lisa Petkau/Getty Images
Liz Attenborough first started worrying about buggies in 2003. It wasn’t that they had got so complex - although her eyes did widen in wonder at the “3D travel systems”, lockable front swivel wheels and “cosi” sleeping bags - what bothered her was the position of the baby: most face outwards, rather than towards the person pushing. This means that mother and baby can’t commune and for Attenborough, who is manager of Talk to Your Baby, the National Literacy Trust’s campaign to encourage parents to talk more with their babies, this is very bad news indeed. “We know we’ve got a problem with communication skills and buggies aren’t helping,” she says.
Attenborough, 56, believes that talking to babies is as essential as changing their nappies. She thinks cooing and chattering and singing should be statutory because the amount you talk to your children influences all sorts of things, not just how they learn to talk, but also their ability to make friends, and progress academically. She says that 90% of nursery workers are worried that speech difficulties among pre-schoolers are increasing. “Lots of young children start school only knowing a few words and aren’t able to construct sentences,” she says. This, she warns darkly, can lead to behavioural problems, exam failure, delinquency, perhaps even prison.
Clearly, talking to your baby is a serious business, an act for the common good. Attenborough has identified aspects of modern life that inhibit it: television, radio, iPods, mobile phones and au pairs who don’t speak any English. “It’s just terrible,” she says, head in her hands. “People think they’re doing the right thing, having someone look after their child, but they’re not looking to see if they’re actually engaged with the child.”
Now she is focused on another culprit: forward-facing buggies. They may be good in practical terms. They may be excellent at off-roading across mountainous terrain and collapsing to the size of a handbag, but for her they are rubbish at the one thing that matters: tuning in to your baby.
A former director of Penguin Books (and head of Puffin children’s books), Attenborough first joined the National Literacy Trust as director of the National Year of Reading (1998-99), a government-backed initiative, administered by the NLT. She set up Talk to Your Baby in 2003 after the NLT became increasingly aware that problems with literacy are linked to early communication skills. Talk to Your Baby is a small but passionate operation, with support from hundreds of health visitors and childcare professionals.
Attenborough is married to an economist, and has two children, aged 27 and 23. She cuts a commanding figure and, unlike her target parents, is very good at talking indeed: entertaining with lots of jolly laughter and theatrical asides, especially when recounting badgering phone calls to buggy manufacturers. “They won’t speak to a little charity that is being annoying,” she cries.
“I endlessly get put on to PR people.” They wouldn’t talk to her either.
At the moment, she is disappointed by pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow. In 2004, Paltrow had a Bugaboo, an extremely expensive upmarket pushchair (499) with a facing-in function, and Attenborough was thrilled to see pictures of her interacting with her daughter Apple as she pushed her around. But now she has been photographed with a Phil & Teds Sport Double, which is lavishly equipped with air-filled tyres, four-position ergonomic seats (both outward-facing), multi-position handle and a double-decker design, where one child can be seated above the other. For Attenborough it represents a new low: “Where I live in Richmond there is nothing but these things and you see lots of little people hanging over the edge or looking unspeakably bored.” They haven’t got room to lift their hands up, she says, let alone interact. “All they’ve got to look at is the shape of an older sibling’s bottom in the seat above. They are sitting where the shopping should be.”
Attenborough’s anxiety about buggies wasn’t backed up by anything concrete because nobody had done any research. Until now, that is. This week, Talk to Your Baby has released the results of a study by Dr Suzanne Zeedyk at the University of Dundee school of psychology. Asking the question “Does the direction a buggy faces alter the style of parent-infant interaction?”, it observed 2,722 children in buggies in 60 towns across the UK, as well as a more detailed second study of 20 mothers and their infants. “The data clearly shows that away-facing buggies are the worst for talking to children,” concludes Zeedyk. The study also confirmed that the buggy of choice is away-facing, which means that there are a lot of babies left to entertain themselves.
But does it really matter? “If it’s for short periods of time, maybe it doesn’t matter,” admits Zeedyk. “Those are the kinds of questions we need to ask - what is a good amount of time?” According to the NLT, the average baby sits in a pushchair for between half an hour and two hours a day. “If you have long periods of time when babies can’t find their parents, that is damaging to their development,” she says. There was something else: babies in buggies that face-in are twice as likely to be sleeping, than if they are facing away. Zeedyk thinks this reflects stress levels: “If you’re being pushed down the street and you’ve got big things looming in front of you, that makes you a little anxious. You start to look uncomfortable, or maybe whimper. Does your parent notice and come around and say, ‘Honey, it’s OK’? Or are you left to cope with that stress on your own and do you do that quite a lot during the week?”
In the second study, only one baby laughed during the away-facing journey, while 10 did so during the facing-in journey. Attenborough is gripped by this finding: “How extraordinary is that?”
If anything, Zeedyk says the need to commune with babies is more urgent than ever. “We now know that a baby’s brain is developing more quickly between birth and five than it ever will again.” She says that babies aren’t inert beings, but have brains teeming with busy neurons just waiting to be connected - “I like to see it as building motorways in the brain” - and, more alarmingly, if the road isn’t built, the neurons die.
“Between birth and five is the window for language development. If you don’t get interaction during that period, the window closes. That’s not to say you can’t learn new words and have a bigger vocabulary - it’s just harder.”
So why do so many buggies face away? The earliest examples of baby carriages in this country were facing-in, such as those coaches in miniature built for Lady Georgina Cavendish at Chatsworth in Derbyshire. By the 1860s, their popularity had increased, and children were bobbing about in sprung carriage-built prams with liveried wooden casings, rich buttoned leather (and arsenic-coated harnesses). Thereafter, most prams stayed facing-in, until 1965 and the invention of the now ubiquitous Maclaren pushchair. A former test pilot, Owen Maclaren designed the compact, easy-to-carry “umbrella fold” buggy, when the arrival of his granddaughter made him realise how heavy and cumbersome prams and pushchairs were for mothers. Maclaren buggies were never intended for newborns, but the shift to facing outward remained in pushchairs for all ages, for practical reasons. “It has a lot to do with the way the product folds down,” says Andrew Tarbett, marketing manager of Silver Cross, one of the oldest pram makers, most of whose products face inwards, though they are expensive - the Balmoral costs 1,000. Like most manufacturers, Silver Cross also makes reversible pushchairs that will face both ways, for about 340. An ordinary stroller can cost as little as 15. “Suddenly we have the possibility of a socio-economic divide,” points out Zeedyk. “Middle-class parents can afford buggies that are good for babies, but parents from a different class can’t.”
But surely one of the benefits of prams is that they allow babies to be quiet for long periods of time, thus giving exhausted mothers a welcome break? “Absolutely right - parents want some peace,” agrees Zeedyk, “but if we can’t find some balance between parents’ peace and babies’ needs, then we create babies that are actually more anxious and more difficult for parents.”
Maclaren sees it differently. While parent-facing buggies are reassuring for newborn babies, older children of six months and above need to be stimulated by the world. “By then they are usually sitting up and are highly inquisitive, insisting on looking at where they are going and interacting with the surroundings that are approaching them rather than facing backwards towards their parents,” a spokesperson says. Parents are more likely to nurture a child’s verbal skills when they spend “quality time sitting down with a child in a calm environment, without any external distractions”, she adds.
Attenborough disagrees: “What parents don’t realise is that you are the stimulation your child needs,” she says. “Seeing the world go by unmediated is scary beyond words.” The irony, of course, is that parents are encouraged (by the trend for early-years education) to believe that it is far more stimulating for babies to be facing the world after the age of six months, and that you cannot expect a child to learn much with nothing but the face of whoever is pushing the chair to watch for hours on end.
To prove Attenborough’s point, Thirza Ashelford, the principal of Norland College for nannies, has made a film of a 25-minute buggy journey, from a child’s point of view. “It is mind-numbing in its boringness and compelling in its ghastliness,” reports Attenborough. “You see nothing but the backs of people’s thighs and the lower shelves of shops, and when they wait to cross the road a lorry comes within an inch of the child’s nose.”
Attenborough’s aim is simple: she wants everyone to realise that talking to your baby is as important as feeding, cleaning and keeping it warm. “I don’t think people are wilfully not talking to their babies - they just don’t think about it. Often, these days, the first baby you hold is your own. You haven’t got lots of aunts and cousins all around with everyone having lots of children. One reason that people come up with [for not talking to their babies] is they don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything, which makes you want to weep, quite frankly.”
She says you don’t have to talk non-stop and that simple things such as looking at books, singing songs and nursery rhymes are a great way to bond. There are lots of opportunities throughout the day, and going out for a walk with the buggy is one - for example, “Look, there’s a fire engine.”
“We’re not saying that if you change the way buggies face, all communication problems will be solved,” Attenborough says. “Buggies alone aren’t going to transform things. But [ones that face out] are surely a missed opportunity.”
A working life: Taher Ali Qassim, public health manager
November 22, 2008
Taher Ali Qassim: ‘Health inequalities are relative.’ Photo: Christopher Thomond
Taher Ali Qassim was seven or eight when responsibility for the family farm in the Yemeni village of Karaba landed on his slim shoulders as the only surviving male. His two younger brothers never survived infancy and his father and older brother had long since set off for Aden in search of work. The boy farmer would never see his father again. He died soon after arriving in that bustling port, a strategic staging point for the British navy in the 1950s.
“Malaria probably killed him,” Qassim speculates. “It was rife.” Smallpox, too. One of his earliest memories is of charity workers coming to the village to vaccinate all the children against it. It was an early introduction to an aspect of his eventual career in public health management. Not that he could have imagined such a dramatic change of fortune when his small hands were struggling to grip the plough handles. “I hated ploughing,” he says, emphatically. But not quite so much as he hated the goats that became his responsibility when his sister left home to get married.
“Every time I drove them to the top of the mountain, I’d look towards the horizon and say to myself: ‘I want to get away from here’,” he recalls. Within a year or so he was off. First he followed in father’s tyre tracks as far as Aden. Many years later, he made it to another port that still had some strategic importance to the British economy in the 50s.
By the time Qassim arrived in Liverpool in 1995, however, the city’s economy was struggling to get off its knees. Still, it must have seemed a place of comparative wealth for someone from his background, I suggest.
He nods and admits that at first he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. He still feels frustration when “lack of resources” is trotted out as a reason for not taking up one of many campaigns and initiatives that he pushes for in his role as public health manager for two of Liverpool’s five healthcare neighbourhoods. “Where I came from, people were dying of malaria or malnutrition. In the developing world, obesity is a sign of wealth. Here it’s more usually associated with poverty. Eventually you come to realise that health inequalities are relative to where you are. People in the north of this city are likely to die seven years earlier than those in the south.”
The neighbourhoods that Qassim is responsible for are Liverpool East (”huge problems with alcohol and drugs”) and South Central. “There are pockets of deprivation in the south and this is one of them,” he says. Well, we are in inner city Toxteth - in the Arabic Centre, to be precise, next door to the Somali Women’s Centre and opposite a Caribbean take-away. This is one of the boltholes that he evidently uses in those brief periods between meetings. He has a meeting this afternoon with the Alcohol Action Group (AAG) and another this evening in a community centre in Anfield. Residents near the home of Liverpool FC are worried about the air pollution caused by the cars revving up outside their homes at the end of every home match.
He’ll listen to their concerns in a few hours’ time. For now he has put aside an hour to chat about his extraordinary life in a warm, windowless room. The public health manager removes first his jacket and then his jumper to reveal a natty yellow shirt. The frame beneath it looks lean. He cycles regularly and likes to eat healthily. With the occasional glass of wine? “Of course,” he beams. “We share the cooking as we share everything,” he says of his Irish wife Ann, who is deputy director of public health in the north west. Does that make her his employer as well as his spouse? “Theoretically, yes. She looks after management and performance of primary care trusts, and I work for the Liverpool PCT. But she has nothing directly to do with my work.”
Qassim is 56. Or at least he thinks he is. Birth certificates were hardly commonplace in Yemeni villages in the early 1950s. His elder brother, Ismail, told him that he was nine when he finally escaped to Aden in a Land Rover taxi that arrived in the village once a month. Ismail was 16 or 17, married and earning what was considered a good wage for a Yemeni as a naval clerk. He paid for the taxi that would bring a new life to a little brother torn between mounting excitement at his liberation and sadness for his weeping mother. “She must have been in a terrible dilemma,” Qassim reflects. “Another son would eventually be able to send her money. But her husband had gone to Aden and died.” I ask whether his mother survived long after his departure. “She only died last year,” he reveals. “She was a fighter, an amazing woman.” For a moment his eyes mist over. But soon they’re gleaming again as he recalls the excitement of arriving in Aden, turning on a tap and seeing running water. When he went to school for the first time, he was 11. The other pupils sneered at the “mountain boy” from the north. But he confounded everyone by coming out with top grades. “Ismail had educated himself at night school and he gave me extra tuition at the little house that we shared,” he explains.
Qassim’s education continued in fits and starts, set against the turbulent background of revolution and civil war. He had a spell as a soldier before joining a nursing school run by Americans. His English came on in leaps and bounds, but his next move was to a Swedish hospital where there were two attractions. One was the chance to work on public health schemes, including vaccination programmes and hygiene promotion. The other was the Swedish woman who eventually became his second wife and the mother of his third child. Later he would have two daughters with Ann, whom he met while working for a Norwegian version of Save the Children.
Eventually, they headed for the UK where Ann had a place at the University of Liverpool to do her masters degree. Qassim went to the University of London to upgrade his own qualifications, but found the great metropolis too big and impersonal. One of the aspects that he most enjoys about his current job is the opportunity to inter-act with a wide range of Liverpudlians, including police, teachers, councillors and housing officials. Improving health depends on improving housing and education, he points out. “When I came here, I soon discovered that Yemenis, Somalis and Liverpool-born black children had the lowest educational achievements.”
His MBE was awarded for his work on founding the Black and Racial Minorities Network to mediate between parents and schools as well as to set up housing and health improvement projects. “It started on a voluntary basis,” he explains. “But eventually came under the wing of the PCT as part of my job.” Another part of that job might find him as the only ethnic minority representative addressing a meeting on a predominantly white estate. “I’ve always found Liverpool people friendly,” he maintains. So does he feel like an honorary Scouser?
“I don’t think I’ll ever speak the dialect,” he grins. Perhaps his mastery of English is enough to be going on with. It was good enough for him to complete his own masters in community health at the city’s School of Tropical Medicine. Now he’s working through the AAG to try to persuade students throughout the city that getting regularly legless is not necessarily an undergraduate right of passage. “We’re trying to involve the Students’ Union to get across more effective information,” he says. “Just telling them not to do something doesn’t work. People in this country have a choice about how they want their lifestyles to be.”
Where he came from, there was no such thing as lifestyle. There were just lives or, more accurately, existences. Trying to persuade Liverpudlians to consume less and exercise more may have its frustrations, but for one public health manager it’s infinitely preferable to ploughing and herding goats.
Curriculum vitae
Pay Public health managers earn between 33,000 and 50,000 a year, depending on experience.
Hours Nine to five, plus meetings two evenings a week.
Work-life balance “It was difficult when the girls were younger because there were always calls on my time and my wife works long hours. But we put weekends aside for the family.”
Highs “The unpredictability of who you are going to come across next and the Liverpool humour that spices up those meetings.”
Lows “It can be frustrating when you have to accept majority decisions on issues that you feel strongly should be tackled another way.”
Campaigner wins seven-year battle to force rethink on use of pesticides
November 15, 2008
Campaigner Georgina Downs celebrates outside the High Court after her victory. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
An environmental campaigner yesterday won a landmark victory against the government in a long-running legal battle over the use of pesticides. The high court ruled that Georgina Downs, who runs the UK Pesticides Campaign, had produced “solid evidence” that people exposed to chemicals used to spray crops had suffered harm.
The court said the government had failed to comply with a European directive designed to protect rural communities from exposure to the toxins. It said the environment department, Defra, must reassess its policy and investigate the risks to people who are exposed. Defra had argued that its approach to the regulation and control of pesticides was “reasonable, logical and lawful”.
Downs, who lives on the edge of farmland near Chichester, West Sussex, launched her campaign in 2001. The judge described how she was first exposed to pesticide spraying at the age of 11 “and began to suffer from ill health, in particular flu-like symptoms, a sore throat, blistering and other problems”.
Downs said the government had failed to address the concerns of people living in the countryside “who are repeatedly exposed to mixtures of pesticides and other chemicals throughout every year, and in many cases, like mine, for decades”. People were not given prior notification about what was to be sprayed near their homes and gardens, she said.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Collins highlighted that the 1986 Control of Pesticides Regulations states that beekeepers must be given 48 hours notice if pesticides harmful to bees are to be used. The judge said: “It is difficult to see why residents should be in a worse position.”
Speaking after the ruling, Downs said her seven-year battle was over “one of the biggest public health scandals of our time”. She called on Gordon Brown to block any Defra appeal. “The government “should now just admit that it got it wrong, apologise and actually get on with protecting the health and citizens of this country”.
The case centred on the way the government assesses the risk posed by pesticides. The current method is based on occasional, short-term exposure to a “bystander” and assumes that individuals would be exposed to an individual pesticide during a single pass.
Downs said: “The judge has agreed with my long-standing charge that this bystander model does not and cannot address residents who are repeatedly exposed.” The model does not account for rural residents exposed to mixtures of pesticides and other chemicals “throughout every year and, in many cases like my own, for decades”.
She said: “The fact that there has never been any assessment of the risk to health for the long-term exposure for those who live, work or go to school near pesticide-sprayed fields is an absolute scandal, considering that crop-spraying has been a predominant feature of agriculture for over 50 years.”
Downs’ campaign has collected evidence from other residents who report health problems including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, ME and asthma, which they claim could be linked to crop-spraying.
The judge said “defects” in Defra’s approach to pesticide safety contravened a 1991 EC directive. He said Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, “must think again and consider what needs to be done”.
A Defra spokesman said: “The protection of human health is paramount. Pesticides used in this country are rigorously assessed to the same standards as the rest of the EU and use is only ever authorised after internationally approved tests … We will look at this judgment in detail to see whether there are ways in which we can strengthen our system further and also to consider whether it could put us out of step with the rest of Europe and have implications for other member states.”
The European parliament’s environment committee last week approved new ways of assessing the risk of potentially hazardous sprays to protect crops and plants. The new criteria are part of an attempt to halve the use of toxic products in European farming by 2013. A final vote on the proposals is due next month or in January.
Backstory
Georgina Downs was first exposed to pesticide spray in the garden of her parents’ house near Chichester, West Sussex, in 1984 when she was 11. She suffered several years of ill health, and after years of study into the possible causes, she founded the UK Pesticide Campaign in 2001. A hard-hitting video of a mannequin picnic in her garden, regularly drenched in pesticide spray, helped make her case. She has won many plaudits and awards, and was joint winner of the Andrew Lees Memorial Award at the 2006 British Environment and Media Awards.
Sally Williams interviews pioneering children’s TV presenter Floella Benjamin
November 15, 2008
Through the rectangular window … Floella Benjamin. Photograph: Teri Pengilley
In the 70s and 80s, Floella Benjamin was known throughout the land for Humpty and Little Ted, for having beads and braids, and making us guess the window. The square! No … the arch!! She is now nearly 60 and Play School last appeared 20 years ago. But Benjamin is still cherished. “I do the marathon every year and people shout out, ‘Floella! Which window!? We love Humpty! Jemima!’ People still have those fond memories, lasting memories.”
Those of us who watched Play School know that Benjamin had a lovely voice, that her dancing was graceful, and she was in a class of her own when it came to tickling. “Let’s tickle ourselves!” she would say. “Start with your feet. Come on! Up your body, back of your legs now.” She was a role model for a whole generation. “Wherever I go, no matter what social level or class, people say to me, ‘I’m now a nursery school teacher because of you.’ Or ‘I am a doctor or a lawyer, because you made me feel I could do anything.’ Isn’t that incredible?!”
But then, Play School was from an age when children’s television was the pride of Britain. Everybody wanted to be a zookeeper after watching Johnny Morris. John Craven’s sweaters mesmerised us on Newsround. We all cried How! after watching Jack Hargreaves, believed furry puppets really lived on Wimbledon common, and knew Ant and Dec as two cheeky characters in Byker Grove. The only real choice was whether you watched Blue Peter on BBC or Magpie on ITV.
Now there are 28 children’s satellite channels, from Nickelodeon to the Cartoon Network. Children these days can flick between My Spy Family, Hanna Montana, SpongeBob SquarePants, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hollyoaks, Flog it!, Kipper, Galactik Football, Tak and the Power of Juju, and countless other shows. Children have never had so much choice.
And that is the problem. Not only did the arrival of multi-channel television in 1991 mean that terrestrial broadcasters are now locked in a vortex of competition, but budgets are cut to the bone because hundreds of channels are fighting for the same advertising revenue. “How can digital channels start producing and commissioning top-quality children’s programmes with high content value? The money isn’t there,” says Benjamin, pointing to the cheap cartoons and American kids’ dramas that now fill the networks. There is growing anxiety about the vertiginous decline in children’s programme-making and Benjamin is campaigning furiously with two lobby groups - Save Kids’ TV and Voice of the Listener and Viewer (VLV) - to get the government to intervene.
She says the death knell sounded in 2006 when Ofcom, the industry regulator, banned ads for food and drinks high in fat and sugar during children’s programmes. The cost of children’s TV rocketed and executives decided it was more profitable to screen shows for adults instead. Where once there were dramas such as Press Gang, there is now the Weakest Link. “Children have no alternative but to be sucked into adults programmes such as Deal or No Deal, or soaps being shown in the early evening,” says Benjamin. “Children are being influenced by adult content before they’ve had a chance to develop.”
The upshot is that the BBC is virtually the only provider of home-grown children’s television. Plus, everyone is obsessed with global markets, so pre-school programmes with presenters, such as Play School, don’t offer a good return, unlike those with puppets and costumed characters which can easily be dubbed into every language in the world (and used for merchandising). Cartoons now account for 61% of all children’s TV. Even more depressing is the fact that in 2006, just 1% of the total hours of children’s shows being broadcast for the first time on a UK channel were made in Britain.
“Why are our children being exposed to more and more cheap imports, which stifle our children’s minds rather than stimulate them?” asks Benjamin. “The diet of programming children are receiving at the moment is sucking their brains.” What is more, she asks, who is going to guide and comfort children now that there are no humans involved?
I meet Benjamin at her house in south-east London, where she has lived for 30 years with her husband and business partner Keith Taylor. They have two children, aged 27 and 20. Now 59, she looks wonderful. She says she took up jogging as she approached 50 and needed a new challenge. She is the most tactile woman I have met. From the start, she reaches for my hand and then gives me a hug. It’s impossible not to warm to her. “Children are hypnotised by her,” says Taylor. “It’s the rhythm and pace of her voice, empathy, eye contact.”
It’s easy to forget that Benjamin was a successful actor before she went into children’s television. She excelled as a shoplifter in Within These Walls with Googie Withers. And you can’t turn a corner in her house without seeing a photograph of Benjamin with a big household name. And yes, that really is Nelson Mandela with her daughter.
She bubbles with projects and ideas, and right now, Benjamin is campaigning to save children’s television. Only last week she gave a speech at a meeting of the VLV. It’s not all bad news: BBC’s CBeebies is “fantastic” she says (but CBBC, for six to 12-year-olds, has to compete with the distractions of Disney and imported US kids’ dramas - which isn’t easy, as Disney might spend $1m on a half-hour children’s drama); and Five is great for under-fives. Plus, it’s not that she hates cartoons, per se, or wants a return to the bygone age of the Wombles, it’s just that she wants more “wholesome, British-based” children’s shows.
The nub of her charge is this: bad TV - cartoon violence, cheap exploitation and empty commercialism - is bad for children. A recent Unicef report on childhood concluded that Britain was the worst developed country in which to grow up. Childhood depression is rising, education standards are falling. Benjamin sees children’s TV as a force for public good. “People think it’s only children, so we don’t have to put much money in it. But TV is formulating their thoughts, ideas and values. If you don’t give them core values of morality and integrity, thinking about other people, all the emotions children need to develop, then how can we expect them not to be antisocial and hyper and for feeling they are not part of anything.”
Benjamin has always had a strong moral drive. She doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol and managed to appear in Hair, the hippy musical, without taking her clothes off. “I was offered thousands in 1979 to appear nude in a Playboy magazine. I said no, I don’t need your money.” She says it all goes back to the three Cs taught by her parents: consideration, contentment (with your lot) and confidence.
One of six children, Benjamin was born in Trinidad where her father was a policeman. She says she had a wonderful childhood with loving parents. But then, aged nine, her parents moved to London, leaving the four older children behind, while they got established. “During those 15 months I suffered at the hands of people who didn’t care about kids, so I’ve grown up knowing what it’s like to be without love. I lost my confidence in those years.”
She was reunited with her parents and they lived in Beckenham, Kent. After leaving school, aged 16, Benjamin set her sights on becoming the first black bank manager, but soon changed her mind after joining the chief accountants office of Barclays. “My boss treated me as if I was a servant. I realised I wasn’t going to get very far.” At 19, she saw the ad for Hair, and after promising her parents she “wouldn’t ever do anything bad”, she auditioned. Taylor was a stage manager on the show. Her move to Play School came in 1976. “As an actor appearing in evening shows, I used to watch children’s TV during the day, and I thought, hey, that looks good! I’d like to do that!”
Benjamin likes talking about Play School. Not only because of the craft that went into it: “We had child experts - psychologists, play workers - advising us while we rehearsed” - but because she pushed barriers: a black woman heading up a TV programme, in diversity unaware 70s Britain. She challenges other attitudes, too. “I was the first children’s presenter to appear pregnant,” she cries. Children even sent in drawings of the baby in her tummy with blue beads in its hair. “But that is the magic of TV,” she says, “having that presence on the screen. You can change people’s attitudes and use it in a way to better society.”
Is dental cover the best option?
November 15, 2008
Open wide … your wallet that is. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Getty
When a crown fell off my tooth a couple of weeks ago while I was chewing gum, first there was a feeling of panic, then of revulsion, then … relief. At least I wouldn’t have to pay anything to have the ghastly gap sorted out. The dental insurance policy I’d taken out 15 months ago would cover the full cost of an emergency replacement.
I bought an HSA Dental Plan which, as far as suiting the needs of my family, looked too good to refuse. I was right at the time. I’ve paid out 585 in premiums at 39 a month for the top level of cover but received back payments totalling 1,577.50 - saving us 992.50 in costs. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the “too good to be true” now turns out to be just that.
HSA has just written to its 80,000 policyholders explaining that, because the two-year-old plan “has exceeded our expectations in both popularity and levels of claims”, premiums are to go up and some benefits reduced from January 21, 2009. But though disappointed by the increased cost and reduction in cover, our experience to date makes me reckon the policy is still worth keeping, at least for now.
We live in an area of west London where NHS dentists are virtually non-existent. The dental practice we’ve used for years offers only private treatment, even charging for our two children’s check-ups and treatment. The quality seems excellent but fees are correspondingly high - a routine check-up, for example, costs 45 (15 for a child) as does a visit to the hygienist. Root canal treatment plus crown typically works out at around 1,000.
When we were uninsured, both my husband and I required major bouts of dental work, landing us with sudden, unexpected bills for hundreds of pounds. We were, therefore, keen to find something that would help protect us and the children against such shock costs in the future.
There are a number of plans on the market.
The “capitation” schemes, offered by private dentists in conjunction with a provider such as market leader Denplan, didn’t appeal. These plans spread the cost of your estimated dental care over a year with the monthly premium based on the dentist’s assessment of the condition of your teeth.
The problem is, capitation plans are expensive for people like me who have a comparatively poor dental history.
The alternative is a dental insurance policy, which doesn’t require a dental inspection to get cover, and doesn’t tie you to a particular private or NHS dentist, making it much better value for those of us with less than perfect gnashers.
The HSA deal, as it stood at the time, certainly looked good for our purposes. We opted for the top level of cover costing 34 per month for a couple plus 5 for all children under 18. The policy gives 100% payback for all “maintenance” including check-ups, hygienist visits and x-rays up to 150, plus 75% of the cost of treatment including crowns, bridges, white fillings and dentures plus lab fees up to 2,000 per year.
The cover applies anywhere in the world for trips of up to 28 days. Policyholders must be between 18 and 60 years old and, like any standard dental insurance, the policy does not cover cosmetic and orthodontic treatment, such as braces.
We calculated that if we attended all our dentist’s recommended check-ups and hygienist visits, our annual bill for the routine maintenance alone would be 420, of which we could claim 360 within the limits.
So, for annual premiums of 468, we felt it was a no brainer - we’d only be spending 108 a year to protect ourselves against the cost of any other treatments. Once we’d taken out the policy we could claim for maintenance visits straight away - we had to wait three months before we could make a claim for any subsequent treatment.
First, my son chipped his front tooth in an accident on holiday (95), then I needed a filling (75% of 95) followed by emergency root canal treatment (505) and a crown (75% of 495) all topped off by the previously mentioned replacement of another crown (65).
And claiming is pretty easy. We pay the dentist for each treatment, then send off the receipt with a claim form signed by the dentist and the payment goes straight into our nominated bank account within a few days, usually with no further questions asked.
From January 21, our monthly premium will go up by just over 25% to 50. Among the most relevant benefit cuts for us, the annual limit for maintenance claims goes down from 150 to 100 per person and we can claim only 50% (down from 75%) of treatment costs, up to a limit of 1,000 instead of 2,000.
For people using an NHS dentist, who want a budget plan offering a lower level of benefits, HSA offers a core plan from January 21 costs 7.70 per adult, 13.95 for two adults plus 2 for up to four children per month.
For us, the insurance odds of our HSA policy still look worthwhile. But we’ll be comparing it to what’s on offer from some of the newer entrants to the market. Tesco, for example, which also offers two levels of cover under its dental insurance launched in August 2007, would charge us more as a family - 58.60 - for its equivalent premium service. But the benefits are better including 100% reimbursement of dental maintenance costs up to 200 per year and 70% of general treatment costs up to 2,000 a year. By switching though, we’d have to again wait three months before making a claim.
I’ll have to chew over that decision with the rest of my family.
How to find an NHS dentist
Finding a dentist willing to do NHS work can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. Go to nhs.uk and on the Find Services page click on “dentists” and put in your postcode. Then you have to click on each dentist surgery listed to find out if they are accepting new NHS patients.
Sadly, the number of people seeing an NHS dentist has continued to drop, despite government efforts to improve provision.
Official statistics from the NHS Information Centre show that 27.3 million people saw an NHS dentist in the two years to last December, compared with 28.1 million in the two years to April 2006, when new commissioning and contractual arrangements for dentists were brought in - a drop of nearly 1 million.
Across England, less than half the adult population went to a dentist on the NHS - 49.3% in the past two years to December. A bigger proportion of children - 69.6% - whose treatment on the NHS is free, saw an NHS dentist.
Three told to expect ’significant’ jail time over Baby P’s death
November 15, 2008
Baby P, 17 months old, died in Haringey, north London, after months of abuse. Photograph: ITV News/PA
The mother of Baby P and the two men convicted with her of causing his death have been told by an Old Bailey judge to expect “significant terms of imprisonment” when they are sentenced next month.
The 27-year-old woman, her boyfriend, 32, and Jason Owen, 36, were convicted this week of causing or allowing the death of the 17-month-old boy, who suffered months of violent abuse including a broken spine.
The mother and Owen were in court yesterday and the boyfriend appeared on video link from prison. They were told that whatever reports are submitted on their behalf, they face a substantial sentence.
The three, who were all remanded in custody, have been cleared of murder. The offences for which they were convicted carry a maximum term of 14 years.
The judge declined to lift a ban on naming the mother and her boyfriend, and on giving the full identity of Baby P.
The judge also turned down applications for the lifting of contempt orders from media organisations including the Guardian. However, he agreed to allow photographs of the child to be published.
Last night the boy’s natural father, who also cannot be named for legal reasons, spoke of his anger at the three responsible for his son’s death. “Those who systematically tortured P and killed him kept it a secret, not just from me but from all the people who visited the house up until his death,” he said. “Even after he died, they lied to cover up their abuse.
“I loved him deeply. I remember how he used to run up to me … or when he was in his pram he would bounce up and down until I took him out, giving me hugs and kisses … I would like to thank the police for their efforts in obtaining the evidence to bring a conclusion to this case.
“I would also like to thank the social workers who have been involved since P’s death. They have acted with professionalism and courtesy.
“Finally, I wish to thank my family and friends who have given me comfort and support during this traumatic time.”
In New York, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, reiterated the government’s commitment to reviewing child protection procedures. “I am determined to do everything in my power to make sure that this does not happen again,” he said. “Every family needs to know that their children are safe at night.”
The government refused yesterday to accept blame for failing to act on a whistleblower’s warning of defects in the child protection service in Haringey that was sent to ministers several months before Baby P’s death in August last year. Lawyers for Nevres Kemal, a social worker involved in an employment dispute with Haringey, wrote to three health ministers in February 2007, including Patricia Hewitt, then the health secretary. Kemal wanted Hewitt to intervene over alleged faults in the Haringey children’s department.
Whitehall departments and inspectorates took several hours yesterday to complete an audit of who did what with the letter. The Department of Health was quick to point out that it passed the correspondence to the education department, which had taken over responsibility for children’s social services in 2003. A spokesman for Hewitt, who stepped down from the cabinet last year, said she never saw the letter personally but was satisfied her officials acted correctly.
A Downing Street spokesman rejected Conservative accusations that Whitehall was engaging in “bureaucratic buck-passing”.
The spokesman said: “There is an appropriate body for complaints regarding social care. It is right that complaints should be directed to the Commission for Social Care Inspection [CSCI] to take appropriate action.”
This would have been correct in February last year, when the letter was written, but not two months later, when responsibility for regulating the social care of children passed to Ofsted, the schools inspectorate.
Lawrence Davies, Kemal’s lawyer, said the complaint “got pushed from pillar to post” between departments. Kemal subsequently received an injunction against speaking publicly about her claims and was unable to pursue the matter.
The CSCI found it had dealt with the whistleblower’s allegations before handing over responsibility to Ofsted.
When the lawyer wrote to Hewitt he sent a copy to CSCI, whose spokesman said: “We raised these issues directly with Haringey at a formal meeting on 12 March 2007 and were satisfied that the council had dealt properly with the individual case raised by Ms Kemal.”
Children in Need does not address the real issue
November 13, 2008
Pudsey prepares to play host to the ‘glitterati’. Photograph: BBC
At the end of this week a host of entertainment-celebs will present the most distasteful junket in the ‘blessathon’ calendar, Children in Need.
It is a sad spectacle of hypocrisy, with self-promotion masquerading as care.
These glitterati of screen and disc pursue a lifestyle that provides another take on the title of the event.
Self-obsessed and career dominated, like their companions on frontbench and premier pitch, in boardrooms and the pages of Hello, they crave the very deficit common to all children in need – attention.
This deficit occurs in a culture deemed among the least child friendly in the world. A culture which has demonised its own youth and which pays minimum wage to those who provide proxy childcare in nursery, childminding and adoption.
However, perhaps most offensive of all about this annual event is that the material has little to do with children’s real needs.
So how about an alternative format that addresses and incorporates those needs?
For the celebrities, there could be games such as A Question of Care, where skills in filling in child benefit forms are tested, or The Price is High, examining their knowledge of the price of everyday non-food basics.
Similar parlour games could be held involving directors of our culture. Gladiators, pitching parents of Special Educational Needs children against directors of Local Education Authorities; or The Grocer where a team of MPs would compete with single parents on benefit estimating costs of food basics. There could be Neighbours, with a chief executive’s family comparing facilities in their neighbourhood with a sink estate family, or Dragon’s Den experts assessing proposals put forward by a community support team.
The phone-in format could be retained, with a competition to establish the issue with the most votes - unanswered letters of application for educational provision, delayed appeal hearings in disability tribunals, cancelled meetings between parents and professionals, delayed operations, under-resourced therapy units, incomplete care packages.
Let’s generate some real indignation in place of schmaltz. Let’s see those who supervise the attention-deficit culture confronted by those who experience it. Let’s use this occasion to get real about what children really need.
Anti-Bullying Week begins
November 13, 2008
Andre Roberts and Natalie Ralph, Young Anti-Bullying Alliance members
Charities, young people and the education secretary joined forces today to tackle bullying.
Diversity will be celebrated and prejudice challenged in the fifth annual Anti-Bullying Week, launched today by Ed Balls, secretary of state for Children, Schools and Families at the Globe theatre in London. The theme this year is Being Different, Belonging Together.
Balls was joined by representatives from the Young Anti-Bullying Alliance (Young ABA), two of whom talk below about what the project means to them.
Anti-Bullying Week (November 17 to 21) is run by the ABA, which brings together charities including the NSPCC and Mencap.
Andre Roberts
My name is Andre, and I go to the University of Buckingham.
I was bullied a long time ago. It was probably because of my height and my ears and I felt really bad about it at the time, but it has given me the motivation to do something about bullying now.
It made me accept myself for who and what I am and made me appreciate my characteristics. I have learned to respect myself and others.
‘I was bullied a long time ago’
I got involved in the Young ABA through winning the Diana Anti-Bullying Award, as children and young people who win the award automatically become members of Young ABA.
I got my award for setting up a scheme for young boys in my area - a Saturday school.
I knew the boys had nothing to do, so I set up the club so they could come on Saturdays and do their homework and other activities, and I could mentor them at the same time.
The club soon became really popular.
Now I am at university, I am working with schools in the Buckingham area and helping them with their anti-bullying events.
This morning, I am meeting Ed Balls, and the rest of the board of Young ABA, before the launch of Anti-Bullying Week 2008 at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre.
I am really looking forward to it, and am planning to ask him about the progress that has been made on the government’s investment in peer mentoring.
I think there will always be differences between people, but overcoming bullying is really important. We need to accept that we are all different, and that difference is positive.
This Anti-Bullying Week I would like to see more people finding out about the great work that Young ABA does, and it would be great to see even more schools getting involved in anti-bullying activities during the week.
Through understanding our differences, I think we will be able to combat bullying and Young ABA has a really important role to play.
• Andre Roberts, 19, is a Young ABA board member from Gravesend in Kent
Natalie Ralph
I’m Natalie and I’m currently on my gap year.
I became involved in the Young ABA after being nominated for a Diana Anti-Bullying Award for my drama work.
My work has since been made into a national DVD that looks at different forms of bullying, including cyber-bullying.
‘Difference actually helps you develop as a person’
Young ABA was set up in 2007 to make sure that young people are at the heart of the work that all of ABA’s 60 members do to prevent and tackle bullying.
I’m a member of the Young ABA board. There are 18 of us - two for each region - so we make sure that all young people in England have a chance to get their ideas heard.
Having not experienced bullying myself, my work with Young ABA has taught me about the effects that bullying can have on children and young people, and how important it is to raise awareness.
Ihave been helping to plan some of the events taking place in our area for Anti-Bullying Week 2008.
I think this year’s campaign theme of Being Different, Belonging Together echoes our Young ABA belief that differences are strengths.
People tend to categorise young people into different groups, but I think that this can actually lead to young people feeling isolated.
Young ABA, and Anti-Bullying Week 2008, is about bringing children together and celebrating what they have in common.
I plan to thank Ed Balls for the government’s continued support for Young ABA, and to ask him how we can work together to make sure young people have more of a say in how we tackle bullying.
It is important that as many young people as possible get involved in Anti-Bullying Week 2008 to send out the message that bullying won’t be tolerated.
• Natalie Ralph, 18, is Young ABA board member from Norwich
Teenage deaths: a catalogue of tragedy
November 12, 2008
Forensic experts scour the scene after a stabbing in north London at New Year. Henry Bolombi became the first teenager to die in such an incident this year. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/PA
The shooting of a 15-year-old boy as he walked along a street in Derby with friends last night adds to a catalogue of violent deaths involving teenagers around the UK this year.
January 1 - Henry Bolombi, 17, dies from a single stab wound to the chest after being attacked as he walked home in Edmonton, north London, after celebrating New Year.
January 1 - Bradley Whitfield, 16, dies from a puncture wound to the neck following a street attack near his home in Leicester in the early hours.
January 5 - Faridon Alizada, 18, of Bexley, south-east London, dies from three stab wounds to the chest after being attacked in Verona House, a tower block in Erith.
January 21 - Boduka Mudianga, 18, known by his middle name Louis, dies in a street brawl in Silver street, Edmonton, north London. He was stabbed.
January 26 - Fuad Buraleh, 19, of Hayes, Middlesex, dies from a head injury after being beaten minutes after getting off a bus in Dean Gardens, Uxbridge Road, Ealing, west London.
February 10 - Louis Braithwaite, 16, dies in hospital in Manchester 12 days after being shot inside a bookmaker’s in Mauldeth Road West, Withington, on January 29.
February 11 - Joe Dinsdale, 17, dies in hospital from a stab wound to the stomach after being attacked in Bilton Grove, Hull.
February 19 - Sunday Essiet, 15, dies after being attacked following a row between groups of youths in Invermore Place, Woolwich, south-east London.
February 23 - Tung Le, 17, of Deptford, south-east London, is attacked during a row outside a nightclub in Cockspur Street. He dies from a stab wound.
February 29 - Ofiyke Nmezu, 16, known as Iyke, of Edmonton, north London, suffered a head injury in a brick attack on February 15. He attends hospital two weeks later, where he dies from a skull fracture.
March 10 - Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim, 17, dies after being stabbed in the head in an incident near Sefton Park, in Croxteth Drive, Liverpool.
March 13 - Michael Jones, 18, dies from severe head injuries and a stab wound to the chest after being attacked by an intruder at his home in Stanley Road, Edmonton, north London.
March 14 - Nicholas Clarke, 19, dies from a gunshot wound to the head after a shooting at the Myatts Field Estate, Brixton, south London.
March 27 - Devoe Roach, 17, dies after apparently being stabbed in the chest in Stamford Hill, north London.
March 27 - Amro Elbadawi, 14, of West Kilburn, dies from a stab wound after being knifed in Queen’s Park, west London.
March 27 - Ashley Horton, 16, dies in hospital after being stabbed in the leg at a boarded-up house in Tern Grove, Hawkesley, Birmingham.
May 3 - Lyle Tulloch, 15, from Peckham, south London, is fatally stabbed in a stairway of a block of flats.
May 10 - Jimmy Mizen, 16, is attacked with a shard of glass in a bakery in Lee, south-east London.
May 24 - Rob Knox, 18, is stabbed to death in a fight outside the Metro Bar in Station Road, Sidcup, south-east London.
May 25 - Amar Aslam, 17, is beaten to death in a walled garden of Crow Nest Park in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
May 28 - Sharmaarke Hassan, 17, dies in hospital after being shot in the head in Camden, north London, on May 24.
June 2 - Arsema Dawit, 15, is stabbed to death in a block of flats near Waterloo station, south London.
June 7 - Frazer Endicott, 19, dies after being found stabbed on a pavement in Bainbridge Road, Balby, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, in the early hours.
June 29 - Ben Kinsella, 16, dies after he is stabbed in York Way, Islington, north London.
July 3 - Shakilus Townsend, 16, dies after being stabbed and beaten with a baseball bat in Thornton Heath, south London.
July 7 - David Idowu, 14, dies almost three weeks after being stabbed in an attack in Great Dover Street, south London.
July 10 - Melvin Bryan, 18, is fatally stabbed in an attack at a bedsit in Gloucester Road, Edmonton, north London.
July 11 - Tarek Chaiboub, 17, is gunned down at a barber’s shop in the Burngreave area of Sheffield.
July 17 - Frederick Moody, 18, is stabbed to death near Stockwell tube station, in Lambeth, south London.
August 6 - Ryan Bravo, 18, dies from a single gunshot wound to the back in a drive-by shooting at a Costcutter store in Walworth, south-east London.
August 16 - Nilanthan Murddi, 17, dies three hours after being stabbed in a street fight in Croydon, south London.
August 16 - Conor Black, 16, dies in Manchester after being stabbed in the shoulder in Moston Lane, Harpuhey, in the early hours.
August 24 - Charles Junior Hendricks, 18, dies after being stabbed in Walthamstow, north-east London in the early hours.
August 24 - Mohammed Al-Majed, 16, dies in a London hospital two days after being attacked near a takeaway in Hastings, East Sussex.
August 24 - Dominic Barritt, 18, of Clacton, Essex, dies after being punched during a street attack in Walton, Essex, in the early hours of August 23.
August 30 - Shaquille Smith, 14, is stabbed once in the stomach in St Thomas’s Place, Hackney, east London, by a gang of youths who rode up on bikes, and dies in hospital the following morning.
August 30 - Luke Howard, 16, is fatally stabbed after a party in Ashcombe Road, Old Swan, Liverpool.
September 2 - Stephon Davidson, 19, dies in hospital of injuries sustained in a drive-by shooting in Monument Road, Birmingham on August 5.
September 5 - Courtney Eaton, 17, dies of stab wounds after a fight near a petrol station in Salford, Greater Manchester.
September 7 - Dale Robertson, 18, dies after being stabbed in Rokeby Drive, Parson Cross, Sheffield following a party.
September 13 - Oliver Kingonzila, 19, dies in Croydon. south London, after being stabbed outside a bar in the early hours of the morning.
September 26 - Craig Marshall, 19, dies in hospital nine hours after being stabbed near his home in Acton, west London.
October 20 - Joseph Lappin, 16, dies after being stabbed outside Shrewsbury House Youth Club in Langrove Street, Everton, Liverpool
November 8 - Nabeer Bakurally, stabbed to death on High Road, Ilford, Essex, following an altercation with a group of men.
November 11 - Kadeem Blackwood, 15, was shot dead as he walked along Caxton Street, Derby, with friends.
