What if Baby P had survived?

I spend an interesting afternoon yesterday at the Hammersmith HQ of Haymarket Publishing – the publisher of the youth sector magazine Children and Young People Now. They, along with the National Youth Agency, were launching a report identifying initiatives around the UK that aim to counter the negative public perceptions of young people.

I was a last minute stand-in for a colleague, but I was glad I went: catching up with the inevitable small group of people who work in this field.  It was great to see (if not talk to) Fiona Blacke, the new Chief Exec of the NYA and recent Twitterer.

The discussion was useful, but it was preaching to the converted, and although I agree with UKYP‘s Andy Hamflet that it’s great to see people coming together and starting a movement, we need to engage a much wider circle if we want to make a difference. It needs to be young person led, yet adults have to stand up and be counted when it comes to challenging the negative perception of young people by the media.

But, without doubt, the comment of the afternoon came from Lisa White at 11 Million. She said her colleagues had been discussing the horrific Baby P case, and a similar story that is going to become major news over the next few months concerning a recent incident in Doncaster.

The public have been rightly outraged at the abuse that Baby P (who we can now know was called Peter) suffered during his short life. And yet what Lisa argued, and a sentiment I totally understand, is that had Baby P survived, or had the abuse been inflicted on him in his teenage years, then the public’s sympathy for him would have waned the older he got.  The words “suffered physical abuse as a child” is a phrase that we read far too often without thinking about what that actually means.

As Channel 4′s excellent Lost in Care programme highlighted, kids who are permanently taken away from abusive parents aren’t always placed into a loving, caring adoptive family. Baby P was young enough to still be attractive to potential-parents, as most adoptive parents go for children under five, but they also, on the whole, avoid children who have physical or mental health problems.

Had Baby P not been adopted, he would have most likely been fostered. Children can be placed in a foster parent for periods of up to six months. If Baby P was two when he was taken away, he would have been moved a minimum of 32 times before his 18^th birthday. And, because of a lack of suitable foster carers, those moves would regularly be into other counties or cities. That there are children who come out of extended fostering reasonably stable is an enormous credit to them.

Baby P may have one of the 10,000 children placed into a care home. Unlike the rest of Europe, the UK prefers fostering over care homes (although that is starting to change, particularly with the introduction of social pedagogy). Many young people, particularly teenagers, live in collective accommdation rather than with individual families.

Children in care fall massively behind their peers when it comes to educational attainment. According to the DSCF 14% of looked-after children received five GCSEs A-C in 2008, as opposed to a national average of 65%. Children in care also are twice as likely to offend than the national average, and half of young people in Young Offenders Institutes have been in care.

The kids the Daily Mail see as feral are often the kids whose lives began in a similar vein to Baby P. Abused by their parents, taken into care, let down by the state and aged 18 kicked out on to the streets and told to fend for themselves. That’s not justifying the actions of out-of-control children, but there needs a more sympathetic approach to their plight.

Photo courtesy of DrGaz. Used under licence.