Examination of Witnesses (Questions 471
- 479)
TUESDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2007
MR MELVYN
DAVIS AND
MR NEIL
SOLO
Q471 Chairman: Good afternoon. I
think you both heard the previous session so you have some idea
of how we operate. Could I ask each of you to introduce yourselves
and then we will move straight to the questions.
Mr Solo: My name is Neil Solo.
I am Project Manager of the Babyfather initiative at Barnardo's.
We have been working in the African Caribbean community exploring
fathering issues.
Mr Davis: My name is Melvyn Davis.
I am the Manager of a project called boys2Men which works with
boys, young men and fathers.
Q472 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. As you have gathered, in trying to understand why there
is an overrepresentation of young black people in the criminal
justice system we have already established that there is a very
complex set of factors involved, and you have just heard us wrestling
with one small part of that, music and so on. I would like both
of you to start with what role you think family and relationship
factors may have in explaining why there is this overrepresentation
of young black people in the criminal justice system.
Mr Solo: From the work that we
have been conducting over the last three years in the African
Caribbean community speaking with fathers themselves, both in
the community and in custody, we think there is a very clear link
between parents and young people and their activities. Specifically
our work has centred on the involvement and importance and input
of fathers. What we have found out there is that fathers are extremely
important in many areas, such as raising self-esteem, building
self-worth in children that can help to make them more resilient
against the more destructive aspects of youth culture.
Q473 Chairman: Mr Davis, do you want
to add to that?
Mr Davis: Yes. I think what I
would say is that in a real sense the families provide the training
ground for life. Where those families are vulnerable, where those
families are isolated, where those families exist in conflicting
or disadvantaged environments, children suffer as a consequence.
We have too many negative examples where black families in particular
are perceived to exist, or do exist, in environments that do not
promote or present themselves in a positive light, so what you
have is a trickle down effect where too many both from within
and outside the community see black families in a very negative
way and it becomes very difficult to support those isolated and
vulnerable families in changing that dynamic for themselves and
their children.
Q474 Chairman: Can you shed light
on why there should be such a high proportion of lone parent families
within the African Caribbean community? We have had a number of
different explanations, some rooting back to the history of slavery
and the disruption of family patterns that involved, and other
more modern factors, migration and so on. Do you have a sense
of why this pattern of family break down appears to have become
so deeply established?
Mr Solo: I think the issue is
complex and I take on board what you have just said, the disruption
in the evolution of the black family due to slavery. You have
to be cautious in possibly trying to impose a Eurocentric 2.5
model on another ethnic grouping. The danger of that is that we
could miss some of the important strengths that exist in that
alternative model. In the African Caribbean community we hear
of visiting fathers, so we do not have a broken down one parent
family, we have an intact family structure where the father visits
from outside the home. Also there are social factors involved.
Linking on to what Melvyn said previously, the social conditions
in which the majority of the African Caribbean community find
themselves give rise to frustrations and tensions and that can
lead to break down. Given the high proportion of African Caribbean
families in those conditions I think you will find a higher number
of one parent families.
Mr Davis: It is a very complex
state of affairs that brings this about. If you look at slavery
there are very strong arguments to be made about the generational
impact on black communities. There has often been a long-held
belief that black families existed with extended families and
when our parents came over here—my parents came over here—they
lost a lot of those links with their families, they lost a lot
of the values and support structures they had, so they had to
work very hard both to support the family and transmit the values
they had from Jamaica into a culture that within themselves they
were not necessarily welcomed into or felt a part of. I think
what happened as a consequence of that was they did not have the
support structures and as a result my generation did not have
many of the things that they had. It was very late in my grandparents'
lives that I met them for the first time. I did not have a very
good, what I would call, moral upbringing. What I had was I had
to work very hard and I had to be as good as other people in order
to succeed and survive, which would not have been the case had
I grown up in a different environment. The realities of growing
up in an environment where you were made to feel different meant
that you did not necessarily have some of those protective factors
that go a long way to holding families together. Just going back
to the previous discussion, where you have a culture which has
materialised for lots of different reasons that promotes through
music and lots of other mediums sex and violence and glamorises
it, as in the previous conversation, there are consequences to
that and some of those consequences we are seeing in children,
in promiscuity, not just related to the black community but more
closely related to poverty and deprivation where vulnerable communities
have to find other ways of affirming themselves. In those harsh
environments we have all had to bring ourselves up and as a result
of that there has been a tendency to have a truncated childhood,
a childhood that is often characterised by efforts to aspire to
material wealth and adulthood far too quickly.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q475 Mr Streeter: Mr Solo, if I can
just go back to something you said just now, you seemed to indicate
that might be a different model for some families from the black
community where perhaps the father does not live in the house
but visits from time to time. Can you just say a bit more about
that. Is that because the mother or the woman in the relationship
wants it that way or would that be a choice by the father? Could
you say a little bit more about that, I did not fully follow that
one.
Mr Solo: Yes, sure. What we do
is run the risk of maligning and demonising the family structure
that does not conform to the 2.5 model. The reasons for this are
complex and many. It works for that community. There are the deprivation
and pressures I mentioned before that are moving partners away
from each other. I would direct you to some research that was
done by Robert Beckford from Birmingham University and whilst
I have not got that study here today I will make sure that it
gets to you.[1]
Q476 Mr Streeter: Thank you very
much. I think we all agree, however, that fatherlessness in any
community is an issue and has consequences, and you have both
said that. In your experience where there has been a family break
down with the kinds of families you are working with, what kind
of proportion of fathers stay in touch with their children compared
to those who have no real contact with their children as they
grow up?
Mr Solo: In our experience, talking
with African Caribbean fathers, overwhelmingly the majority want
contact and are frustrated in that generally by the operation
of the law which would imply that mothers and women are the primary
caregivers and also understanding that difficulties post-relationship
will make the father visiting and building a relationship with
the child somewhat more difficult. I would say that by and large
in our experience, talking with fathers, the majority want that
contact. In terms of percentages, it is hard to say.
Q477 Mr Streeter: Just ball park.
Mr Solo: Ball park, 40% I would
say are not having contact and overwhelmingly the majority of
African Caribbean fathers have contact at some level.
Mr Davis: I would support that.
I think the vast majority of fathers do have some contact but
the perception is because they are not resident they are absent.
Q478 Mr Streeter: Yes.
Mr Davis: There are lots of reasons
for this. One Neil mentioned was economic. In a lot of the cases
in the families that we work with if the father was to become
resident the family would be penalised because the benefits are
reduced, so unless he is working and has enough money to compensate
for that loss of benefit they are financially better off living
apart. A lot of those fathers do provide financial support to
their partners without being resident with the family.
Q479 Mr Streeter: So they would have
a flat somewhere else?
Mr Davis: Yes.
1 Not printed. Back
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