Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
PROFESSOR BRYAN
RODGERS, PROFESSOR
JUDY DUNN,
DR LEON
FEINSTEIN AND
DR AMANDA
WADE
12 JULY 2006
Q60 Chairman: By strangers you mean
a non-family member.
Professor Dunn: Yes, they are
not a stranger in the strange sense, children form relationships
with them and there are studies of the attachments between children
and their childcare staff which shows that can be a real plus
in the child's outcome.
Chairman: We are running out of time,
Rob, I am going to have Paul for the last question on this because
it his section, and then we are moving on.
Q61 Paul Holmes: There was an opinion
that once divorce became easy, without all the social stigma of
having to prove fault and all the bitterness around that, that
would then make it easier for the succeeding 10 or 20 years, there
would be less fallout and less bad effects on the way children
grow up. Professor Kathleen Kiernan's research does not seem to
show that that has happened; would people generally agree that
it has not really happened and if so why?
Professor Rodgers: In terms of
no fault divorce which was introduced in many countries and had
the intention of making divorce easier—I mentioned that
you get peaks in divorce rates—probably for families that
are not living together and then get divorced it certainly relaxes
the legal constraints. The UK is a very interesting example because
long after no fault divorce was introduced in the UK most divorces
were still going through on the old fault demonstrations, and
that was because I think at the time you got your divorce more
quickly if you did it by showing fault than if you waited for
the no fault, and people preferred to go with the old system.
It did not seem to reflect that in the UK and the divorce rates
still increased at the same rates as they were doing in other
countries where the majority of divorces were under no fault provisions.
One thing that has remained clear with changes in divorce rates
and whatever impediments there are to separation, which can be
legal and financial and other issues, it is still pretty tough
on parents and it is still considered objectively to be a highly
emotional experience, it is ranked up there with the worst of
life events by both people who experience it themselves and those
who do not but make that rating. We see it in terms of reactions,
acute responses to distress in longitudinal studies, to increases
in substance use at the time of separation in both men and women,
and in long term outcomes too, that divorced people are at a high
risk of a whole range of outcomes, adults and parents included,
whether they are married people or single people. So any sense
in which divorce these days, because it is common, is somehow
an easy event for parents, for other adults, I do not think that
is generally borne out by a whole range of evidence.
Chairman: If we can move on, Stephen,
you are going to do implications for schools and teachers.
Q62 Stephen Williams: I would like
to ask the panel what role do you think schools and teachers or
other professionals within schools have to engage with children
about family change, whether it is family breakdown, death or
dysfunctional families.
Professor Dunn: Speaking from
my own research, none of the children we interviewed had spoken
to a teacher about the immediate effects of the family change;
they had not gone to a counsellor attached to the school and they
had not talked to a teacher, so in terms of the 400 children in
that study the teacher was not important. In some ways, the children
said, the world of school was separate from home, as it usually
is, so they could enjoy and get support from school but it was
not a question of talking about their problems directly with a
teacher. It is not to say schools are unimportant in a child's
general well-being and adjustment, it is just that for these children
teachers were not the person they turned to for intimate confidences
and so on.
Q63 Stephen Williams: That was the
conscious choice of the children rather than the fact that they
felt there was not anyone there who they could turn to.
Professor Dunn: It could have
been the latter, but this is something Amanda really knows about.
Q64 Stephen Williams: Yes, I was
going to ask you do children perhaps, as Professor Dunn said,
see schools as an oasis of calm away from whatever trauma they
are going through at home?
Dr Wade: Again I would say in
relation to that the children differed, as I said earlier. For
some children school was somewhere where they could feel normal
and forget about family problems, other children brought their
family adversities into school with them and their behaviour could
be problematic within the school which could lead to them being
disciplined or threatened with exclusion, so it could be a problematic
experience for them. When I talked with children about what sorts
of support they might look for in school quite a lot of them suggested
that indirect support could be important; for example, my research
was done in primary schools and quite a lot of the primary schools
used a form of personal and social education—some of them
called it circle time—where they would talk with the children
in a general way about personal difficulties. That gave children
an opportunity to ask questions or gain information in a way that
did not identify them as having that problem, and sometimes they
learned skills like how to use breathing to relax, and if they
were feeling tense or anxious they could use that themselves and
practise it, or they would have an opportunity to learn about
where they could go for information or advice. That kind of teaching
in the classroom was very helpful; it also had a knock-on effect
because it could affect the culture of the school, because one
of the reasons the children wanted to keep their family lives
private when they came into school was that if family difficulties
became widely known then sometimes they could be taunted in the
playground, and that could lead to difficulties. Any kind of teaching
that, if you like, creates a greater degree of acceptance and
tolerance within the school is helpful. Also, the children did
indicate that sometimes they would share personal problems with
identified people who they found in the school, and usually they
would select people whom they saw as having the sort of personal
qualities that would help the children relate to them. Often they
were not teachers because the relationship between a child and
a teacher is quite a formal one and teachers do have to discipline
children, but they might be classroom assistants, they might be
dinner-ladies, people like that. We also found that a number of
schools are beginning to have projects based in the school or
liaison teachers who will do outreach work; again, if people come
into the school bringing difficult skills that are seen as being
independent of the school, then again that can help children or
parents feel that they can trust them in a way that might not
want to use a teacher because of the educational role. It did
seem, therefore, that schools could play a multiplicity of roles.
Q65 Chairman: In Judy's research
when ranked in the 400 the most common was the grandparents; who
came after the grandparents?
Professor Dunn: Friends, and that
was particularly striking because these were young children—on
average they were nine—and we think of teenagers as having
important, confiding relationships with their peers, but for children
as young as nine it was a surprise to me. I am not quite sure
how policies can support that relationship, but certainly for
parents knowing that friendships can be important in a supportive
way is worth stressing.
Q66 Stephen Williams: Where does
the balance lie between a teacher concentrating on the teaching
of the whole class but also identifying a particular child who
has a home situation that is difficult? How far should they actually
intervene, particularly if they think a child's educational attainment
or social well-being is being affected by their home life? Should
there be a duty on teachers or the school in general to actually
enquire into a child's family background, or should they stand
back from it?
Dr Wade: This is purely a personal
observation, rather than based on research, but I would have thought
that if a teacher becomes aware that a child is living in difficult
circumstances, then it would be helpful if the teacher took steps
to ensure that people in a position to help that child were alerted,
and that might be informal local projects, focused on family support,
or in other circumstances it might be social services. There are
resources that teachers themselves can turn to, whether they are
based in the school and might be mentors or school counsellors
or family support projects based in the school which can work
fairly informally, or whether something slightly more formal is
needed. We would all be disappointed if the teacher were aware
of a child facing difficulties but who, if you like, turned a
blind eye to that and said "That is not my responsibility."
Dr Feinstein: Particularly in
an Every Child Matters framework the school has some degree
of responsibility for the emotional wellbeing of the child, and
I would not argue that schools have responsibility to know exactly
the family structure of every child in the school, but where there
is a child who is either showing signs of emotional distress or
possibly behavioural difficulties, there needs to be within the
school—broadly defined, not necessarily the teacher—some
adult who has some responsibility to engage with the child and
try and develop some understanding of what is going on. That may
involve developing sufficient contacts and relationships with
the parents to know something about what is going on, and clearly
there are issues in relation to what rights parents have to withhold
information and the extent to which schools ought to be getting
involved in family life, but at the centre of Every Child Matters
is the well-being of the child and if that is held centrally then
that will help. One other point is that thinking more broadly
in terms of education it may not be in the school where this would
happen, it may be out of school youth contact, other forms of
youth work and, depending on the age of the child, other forms
of provision for young people where the young people themselves
may find it easier to engage in the sorts of information flow
that are required in order to have a policy response.
Q67 Stephen Williams: Does your research
show that children find it easy to talk about their problems or
not? My party at the moment has a Four Rs Commission and the fourth
R is articulation, about the concern that children do not express
themselves well or are afraid to express themselves.
Professor Dunn: Certainly all
the way through, talking to the children, the issue of communication
opportunities stands out, so that if a child is talking about
how they cope with living in two households, the things that turn
out to be important are the way they can describe—if they
have problems in one house can they talk about it in the other
house, if they have had problems in the home is there someone
they can talk to, and that comes through again and again. It is
so well-known to family therapists and others that communication
is important; we certainly have hard evidence that that is a theme
that comes from the children very much. Often their distress at
the time of the separation, when they are talking about it afterwards,
is that nobody really talked to them about it, they did not have
anyone who could answer their questions and they were just confused
about what happened.
Dr Wade: The reports from some
of the young children that I interviewed were that counselling-type
interventions could be stressful, partly because articulating
difficulties might not be easy for these children and also because
talking often brought their experiences very much into focus and
would then pre-occupy them, but activity-based interventions could
be very helpful. Some of those—for example symbolic activities—could
be very meaningful for the children; if the children were trying
to understand why cannot my parents get on together, talking about
that might not help them as much as something visual. For example,
having a bottle with coloured oil and plain water in it, you shake
it so that they mix up and then the two separate out altogether.
You can use that in a way with children that shows however hard
you try, the two people are never going to get on, they are never
going to coalesce, and something visual like that the children
could take home with them and remember and somehow that would
help them to see these parents are in a conflict that cannot be
resolved. Activity too could be enjoyable if it was in a group
context, so as well as helping them deal with personal stresses
the children could do something that they enjoyed, that made them
feel happy, and that could be important. Again, it is having a
diversity of interventions and activity-based interventions should
not be undervalued.
Chairman: There will be some opportunities
in the next section on policy; Stephen, you have a couple more,
then Paul briefly before we get on to policy implications, is
that all right?
Q68 Stephen Williams: This is about
the setting of the school itself, and we have a parallel inquiry
going on into school design; one of the features that has come
out of that is that you may want to design out bullying by not
having corners, long corridors, nooks and crannies and so on,
but Professor Wade's research has shown that children actually
want a private place to discuss. I visited a primary school last
Friday where the children on their school council had asked for
a gazebo in the playground which had been built and had been very
successful.
Dr Wade: Certainly, if children
are going to disclose any personal problems within a school—and
of course they may choose not to do that—then privacy is
extremely important to them, and a lot of schools, particularly
primary schools, do seem to be designed on this open plan basis
which has lots of attractions but then means that spaces where
you can be private can be very hard to find. That is important,
I think, that they should have privacy.
Q69 Stephen Williams: One final question,
are there any particular differences between primary schools and
secondary schools in your research in terms of how the schools
interact with their children about their family backgrounds?
Professor Dunn: I do not really
have that sort of data.
Q70 Chairman: Reading the background
material for this session there is a paucity of material on secondary
as opposed to primary; there seemed to be much more work going
on with primary schoolchildren.
Professor Dunn: That is probably
true, yes.
Q71 Chairman: And post-16 Bryan said.
Professor Dunn: Yes.
Q72 Paul Holmes: What are your feelings
about the confidentiality issue between a teacher or a health
professional who does get information from young people, and at
what point should that be confidential, at what point should they
disclose it? The most controversial one is contraception or abortion
where the law says you should encourage the young person to talk
about it, but if they will not then you should go ahead and give
appropriate advice and not pass that on, even though a child might
be under 16. Do you have any thoughts on the difficult position
all this puts teachers and health workers in?
Dr Wade: Confidentiality is very
important to children, and certainly I think if teachers are going
to pass information on that should only be with children's permission
except in cases of child protection, where there is a risk of
harm to the child. I spoke earlier about teachers taking action
if they were aware of problems in children's home lives, but certainly
that is making the assumption that no school staff would do that
without having first talked to the children and the children being
confident about that.
Q73 Paul Holmes: Do you think the
child's interest in all this overrides the parental right to know
if these sorts of issues are being discussed?
Dr Wade: Sometimes I think that
children want help in raising issues with their parents; however,
one of the reasons that children gave for being reluctant to talk
about personal issues at school was that school staff would then
go and tell their parents. That we are talking to the children
is important, because children can have all sorts of anxieties
about what happens when information is passed on, you know, and
that does require quite skilful, sensitive work.
Chairman: We need to move on to our last
section of questions on the policy implications, and Bryan Rodgers
mentioned this earlier on in the session, that he was very keen
to use his research to inform people like us of the policy implications
of the research activity that he undertook. I have a lot of indications
of interest in this topic and we have until quarter to twelve
to cover them; Jeff, do you want to lead off?
Q74 Jeff Ennis: Thank you, Chairman.
Is there a role for children's centres in supporting children
and parents at times of family change? Is this the sort of service
children's centres should be prioritising?
Dr Feinstein: I would repeat what
I said before which is that within the context of Every Child
Matters (which is very useful) perhaps what children's centres
should be prioritising is the well-being of children. That means,
I would say, that children's centres, as in other forms of provision,
have a responsibility to have some level of observation and/or
monitoring of the well-being of children, and that may involve,
in the early years, the carers—in many cases the mother
but also sometimes the father—coming into the children's
centre and creating contact for and opportunities for family learning,
engagement with the parents and so on, in which the issues of
family dynamics can be addressed. It is something we have not
really discussed, which is where there are issues within the family
of the quality of the relationships between the parents and the
child. Children's centres are a context in which all kinds of
remedial activities can be introduced, and they actually reduce
the risk of family breakdown or support the family through the
processes of breakdown where that is actually going to happen,
and children's centres are a context in which those sorts of supports
and interventions can be provided, but that has to be assessed
in terms of the well-being of the child primarily, I would say.
It is not suggesting that as people come into the children's centre
there is a box of chess and an assessment of family structure
and for families that are seen as broken down there is an intervention,
but if there are children where there are observed difficulties
that might be emotional, developmental, intellectual or in terms
of communication skills, children's centres are a concept in which
the interaction between the parents and the child can be supported
or possibly even monitored by a health visitor in order to ask
is there a relationship between what is going on in the home and
what we are observing with the child.
Q75 Jeff Ennis: Going back to something
you said earlier, Amanda, about children, that because of the
formal situation between teacher and pupil the children do not
tend to confide in the teacher, given that scenario we have seen
the development of children's centres both off campus and on campus
in terms of schools. While a lot of them are developing primarily
on the primary school campus, in my area we have got some developing
on a secondary school campus; do we have any preference for whether,
given that sort of situation that you find between the pupil and
the teacher in terms of the barrier to confiding, it would be
better to have children's centres off the school campus or on
the school campus or does it not matter?
Dr Wade: I had a look at some
research by Brid Featherstone and Martin Manby about a particular
project in Rochdale, and what that seemed to suggest was if there
was seen to be a degree of independence between, if you like,
project workers and the school, then it did not matter if the
project was based in the school, what was important was the independence
because occasionally issues come up which raise challenging issues
about school policy and the needs of the child or the family,
and if they are independent projects then they can support the
child and the family and advocate with the school. That independence
is important, therefore. It is also important that both the children
and the parents can access resources for themselves so that they
see that a resource is there, it fits their needs and they can
themselves go along and make use of it, they are not being referred
through a formal process. Sometimes people will want some help
in locating a system and that can be helpful, but people will
generally respond better to help that they access for themselves.
Q76 Jeff Ennis: It is important then
for the children's centre to maintain its independence from the
school.
Dr Wade: Yes, I think so.
Q77 Jeff Ennis: Obviously we are
getting more integration of services between education, health
and social services; what impact do you think this will have on
the long-tail of under-achievement we have been talking about
in terms of trying to address that in terms of the family breakdown
context etc.
Professor Rodgers: I am not familiar
enough with this integration that you are talking about but maybe
you give me a little background to that.
Jeff Ennis: Local authorities are going
to have to form what are called children's trusts where you get
social services, health services, education services all integrated
together.
Q78 Chairman: From the perspective
of countries other than this, what are the policy implications
for the long-tail of under-achievement? What would you advise
governments in Australia or here to do about that particular problem?
Professor Rodgers: I might have
to correct you on just one little point you made before, I do
not go around telling people like you what to do—
Q79 Chairman: What advice might you
give?
Professor Rodgers: I have a primary
advantage in that I happen to live in a small country town which
also happens to be the seat of the national government and you
meet heads of department at the checkout queue.
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