Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
TUESDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2007
MR MELVYN
DAVIS AND
MR NEIL
SOLO
Q480 Mr Streeter: Do you think there
is a specific link between that kind of family structure, and
particularly I am exercised about the issue of fatherlessness
and that relates to any community and every community, and young
people, particularly young boys, getting involved in crime from
the work that you have been doing? Could you speak to that, please,
Mr Davis.
Mr Davis: I would say yes. In
all the areas that we work within, which cover all the areas of
social exclusion, the vast majority of the young people that we
work with have very poor relationships or no contact at all with
their fathers.
Q481 Mr Streeter: Yes.
Mr Davis: The impact of that is
seen very much in the sense of identity and needing to belong
somewhere, needing to validate who they are as males and men and
that creates a vulnerability. It creates a vulnerability if, for
instance, you are not successful in terms of education, or you
do not have other things to compensate for that, and as a result
of that you then compromise who you are in order to fit in, you
go to extreme lengths or you create a caricature almost of masculinity
in order to prove yourself. With a number of the boys that we
work with the impact for them in not having a positive role model,
in growing up in reality in a lot of cases in a very predominantly
female environment, means they almost reject at some point in
their journey towards masculinity a lot of what I would call life
skills and emotional literacy that they need in order to cope
with change, loss and disappointment. So we have boys with very
narrow definitions of masculinity, behavioural traits that are
very much around the machismo type behaviour, and this need underneath
it all to connect with other men and other boys.
Q482 Mr Streeter: That is very helpful.
Mr Solo: I would support what
Melvyn is saying in the sense that fathers are so important that
the lack of a father in the life of a young person can promote
something called "father hunger". Along with what Melvyn
was saying, young boys have to develop and work out for themselves
what it is to be a man and, given the context of the last discussion,
working out what it is to be a man you learn to draw from a wider
society and if that wider society is violent, is promoting getting
by by any means you can, that child becomes vulnerable to that
message without that father who is the best role model a child
could have. I would definitely support, and this is borne out
by the work we have done throughout the communities, that families
are extremely important in the lives of young boys and young girls.
Mr Davis: If I could just pick
up on something you said. I believe that it is something that
affects all communities, classes, races, et cetera, but there
is a particular dynamic in the black community, in black and ethnic
communities as well, being in a predominantly white society in
that you have to validate yourself as a male but you also have
to validate yourself as a black male and that does have a compound
effect, it does make it much more intense and, therefore, there
are risks along the way in terms of finding your place in society
but also being validated along the way in that process.
Q483 Mr Benyon: Mr Solo, we are interested
in the evidence that you have provided on the way you have described
the moving from traditional African Caribbean parenting methods
to more modern methods, and you described it as a revision that
is work in progress, and talked about the impact of this on setting
boundaries and discipline. We have evidence from people who have
deplored the lack of discipline amongst young people in their
own communities saying it is a problem they have to address themselves.
Can you say a bit more about this problem and the impact it is
having on young people?
Mr Solo: Yes. There I was referring
to the revision that is potentially taking place in the African
Caribbean community. In the Caribbean the use of corporal punishment
and physical discipline is not unheard of. It is not abusive but
it is not unheard of. In the movement to, I would not say a modern
society, I would say to European society where corporal punishment
is not the first option, we have a people who have to seek new
ways of enforcing discipline in guiding their youth. As I said
in the written evidence, this is a work in progress. As this revision
takes place the loosening of the ties between family and child
can be loosened and allow for the more destructive elements of
youth culture to take place. Also in that move from the Caribbean
to England, Caribbean peoples, not to romanticise that community,
exercise the idea that it takes a whole village to raise a child.
Where we find ourselves now operating in nuclear family units
the village is no longer there, so when Johnny is down the road
committing graffiti or whatever that can often get overlooked.
If we were operating on it takes a whole village to raise a child,
adults in that community would feel a responsibility for that
child, for that community and could intervene. These traditional
ties are loosening and it creates a gap.
Q484 Mr Benyon: That is the problem
and we are trying to find a solution. That is a really interesting
area of thought that we have got to consider. How can we get communities
to take responsibility for that child in the way that they did
perhaps, or still do, in the Caribbean?
Mr Solo: I think in the African
Caribbean community, and from the context in which I am working
we can see the important link between fathers and the outcomes
for children, what we would like to see, or what we would like
to suggest, is a celebration of fatherhood. What we have here
is black men and fathers who are subject to the most negative
stereotypes. I feel in talking with African Caribbean men throughout
the country that this has robbed them of a confidence that they
need to assert themselves as fathers and as community members.
It is not lost on that community and African Caribbean men and
youth that they are overrepresented in the mental health system,
they are over represented in the penal system and African Caribbean
children are disproportionately excluded from schools. This is
not lost on men and the community which tends to weaken it and
its ability to enforce its protective role, especially in regards
to fathers who are seen as mad, bad or sad. In talking with fathers
they feel devalued. What we would have to do is to continue to
work with African Caribbean men and the community to celebrate
the gifts that fathers have to offer.
Q485 Mr Benyon: Could we extend that,
Mr Davis. You have both drawn attention to the existence of a
negative self-image amongst black males. Do you have any thoughts
as to the root causes of this in the same way that Mr Solo has
expressed?
Mr Davis: I think it starts very
much with the family and the early years experiences of children.
Most things you have to look at to really understand and appreciate
the context and the environment in which these children have grown
up and the messages that they are constantly being given. The
overt ones I think we have done very well as a society in dampening
down but throughout life and throughout the journey of a black
man growing up there are so many messages and pitfalls, negative
messages and, as a consequence, pitfalls that arise. To give an
example: in some of the work that we do we get young people to
think very much about what it is that makes them who they are
and top of the list will often be "I am black" and then
you ask them what does that mean and it actually does not mean
anything, it has not got anything of substance. It is not a culture
in the same way that other cultures exist, it is fluid, not substantive.
What makes you black as an individual is often a response to the
discrimination and negativity that you face. If that is the basis
upon which you are developing your identity and personality it
then has a tendency to be quite defensive, negative obviously
and almost entirely self-deprecating because you do not see yourself
as an equal within society, you are somebody who is tolerated,
somebody who has undue power and influence in that you walk into
a room and people pick up their mobile phones or readjust themselves
because you enter a room, people react to you, the security guard
in a shop will spend more time focusing on you and children, black
boys in particular, are aware of these things. That sends very
powerful messages about acceptance and belonging and it has a
detrimental impact on the notion of citizenship and acceptance.
Q486 Mr Benyon: We have had evidence
from people who say that if our report does not find that young
black people face enormous amounts of discrimination and racism
in their daily lives we will be part of the problem as much as
anything. I suppose what I am really trying to ask you is how
much of it is perception and how much of it is reality? You have
spoken about everyday factors in people's lives which affect their
self-esteem and can contribute to problems that they may get into.
In everyday life, is racism and discrimination a real burdensome,
horrendous factor in young black males' lives?
Mr Davis: I would answer it in
this way. When you grow up as a black male in an ethnic minority,
as I have already said, because you are not validated by wider
society you have these things that you draw to yourself to validate
yourself. Speaking personally, and characterising that with some
of the young people I work with, the analogy would be you wake
up in the morning and you may pick up your iPod, your mobile phone
and then you pick up your paranoia because as you go through life
the moment you step outside that door there are people you are
going to meet who will react to you and you have no idea why they
are reacting to you in that way. If I am dressed as I am today
and I sit on a Tube and there is a seat beside me, that seat will
be taken up quite quickly, but if I am dressed very differently,
as I sometimes am, much more sporty, relaxed casual attire, often
that seat will not be taken even when there are no other seats
available, people will choose to stand. I can choose to ignore
that but that does not mean I am unaware of it.
Q487 Mr Winnick: Would that not happen
to a white person who was dressed in the sort of clothes you are
mentioning? Would there not be some hesitation, not because of
the colour of the skin but simply because of the possibility of
criminality which could come as easily from a white or Asian person
as a black person? Would you not accept that?
Mr Davis: I would accept that
as a possibility but given my history—
Q488 Mr Winnick: More so as a black
person?
Mr Davis: Exactly.
Q489 Mr Winnick: I accept that.
Mr Davis: It is that perception
that becomes reality. If it is real for me then it is real.
Q490 Mr Benyon: You are saying that
in these circumstances perception is reality.
Mr Davis: Very much so.
Q491 Mr Benyon: Regardless of why
that seat is empty you believe it is empty because of the colour
of your skin.
Mr Davis: But I do not think it
ends there. I think it is about the other protective factors:
how do I deal with that? Everybody will face discrimination in
their lives but do I have other skills or things to offset that
or if my identity is just about my colour and my ethnicity I do
not have other things to offset that with. My self-esteem, my
self-worth and my self-efficacy are not just around whether you
sit next to me on a bus or a train, I have other things that make
me feel good about myself; a lot of these young people do not.
Q492 Mr Benyon: We went down to Bristol
to look at a scheme there and these points were all being made
by an organisation called Right Track but when the individual
who followed these cases up with the young people, going to the
school or to see the police and was saying, "There has been
an allegation of discrimination here", in nearly all of them
there may have been ignorance but it was not racism. What I am
trying to get to the bottom of, and perhaps Mr Solo might like
to comment, is how we tackle that difference between perception
and reality and whether the two are the same.
Mr Solo: From the way people act
perception is reality. However, I would revisit the point I made
earlier in terms of the question is racism playing a part. I think
the messages that the young black youth receive are very specific.
When we had the killings of Anthony Walker and Stephen Lawrence
this was saying "This is a racist killing" and this
sends out a message to young African Caribbean youth that they
have less stake in this society than possibly they do perceive.
Q493 Mrs Cryer: We need to look for
solutions, there is no point just keeping trawling over where
we are now, that will not help. Can I just check with you that
I have got something right. According to our graphs, 57% of the
families within the black Caribbean community are lone parents.
Am I right in saying that were those families still in Jamaica
the percentage would be pretty similar, there would still be this
majority of parents, mothers, bringing up children alone but I
think what you are saying, Neil, is the difference would be that
they would be helped along that path by a supportive village or
community? Have I got that right?
Mr Solo: Yes.
Q494 Mrs Cryer: We are where we are,
so what could either of you suggest that would be the strongest
single thing that could happen to help steer young black people
away from a life of crime given the position that we are in now?
Mr Solo: It is an incredibly complex
argument and one that is not going to be solved overnight. From
our point of view at Barnardo's and the Babyfather initiative
and the work that Barnardo's has been doing in the community,
the feedback that we are getting would suggest that we are some
way along the right track. Again, for us this is about bringing
that community together, helping them to recognise that they are
a community, going beyond working as a community, working directly
with fathers, celebrating fathers as a positive resource as the
most appropriate role model a child could have. In terms of solutions
and turning children away from deviant behaviour, from our point
of view we would suggest more work in the communities, more work
with parents, and in that regard we welcome the Government's initiative,
the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners, as a good move
in this area.
Mr Davis: I think we are all familiar
with the realities of the overrepresentation and disproportionate
number of black people who are in the criminal justice system
and end up in prison. The reality that we face and work within
is that many of these young people go into prison, youth offending
institutions, come out and go back into their same communities
and as a result they have less hope, if you like, than they had
before. Before they went in they maybe were failing in school
but now they have come out with poor education and a criminal
record. They then go back into their communities and really only
have one option, which is to not get caught next time. I think
that is one area that I would like to see some real work and effort
put into to ensure that those young people who do come out are
not just left to, as it were, train up the next generation of
young people. One other area of social exclusion for me that I
think is scandalous and really we should be making much more of
a political, if needs be, or community campaign around is the
high number of young black males who are excluded from school.
I think that is the beginning really. Once you fail to be educated
properly your options, your resources, how you are viewed in society,
all of those things impact greatly on your life chances and outcomes.
I know schools which have experiences of 30 or so young boys in
a particular year being excluded. I was talking to a young person
not too long ago who said to me that every single black boy in
his class before year 11 had been excluded. Often that is for
reasons that I would consider with a little effort and probably
some accountability, if schools were picked up on these things,
through Ofsted reports, et cetera, they should not be happening
on the scale and level that they are and we are allowing to happen
and not making a big song and dance about it. Going back to what
Neil said, it sends a very powerful message about, "Am I
valued? Am I accepted within society?" If we can have such
large cohorts of black young males excluded from the educational
system and nothing is said on a national level, it does not make
the news, as it were, then what message is that saying to "How
am I valued? How am I viewed within society?" If black males
are shot and killed on the streets and that does not make the
news and does not result in a big campaign, again it sends a very
powerful message about how we are viewed. We need to be far more
angry, far more militant almost, about making sure that we do
identify why these things are happening and we put stringent things
in place to make sure they do not. I do not think it is that difficult
but the will has not materialised or the way has not been identified
in the way that it should have been and resources have not been
applied effectively.
Mr Solo: Could I just add in terms
of solutions that Barnardo's and the Babyfather initiative have
attempted to be proactive in this area and we have developed two
specific training programmes that we are particularly proud of.
We spent the best part of 2005 speaking with practitioners from
a variety of settings, from social workers to teenage pregnancy
workers and health visitors, and the message we got from that
dialogue was the central difficulty that they were having was
one of engagement. We have been proactive in this regard in developing
a training programme specifically for practitioners who are having
difficulty engaging African Caribbean men, engaging them in their
services. In terms of solutions and being proactive, Barnardo's
have developed a culturally specific parenting programme for African
Caribbean fathers. Again, this is to meet the demand that fathers
have expressed to us and we have identified ourselves. The parenting
programmes are there but services are not reaching the community,
so what we have done is we have developed something that is culturally
specific and we have had some opportunity to try this out over
the year and it has proved successful.
Q495 Mrs Cryer: My next question
was what the Government can do to address the problems that are
causing young people to become involved in crime. I think you
have answered it. Neil, I think you said perhaps money can go
through social services, presumably, to encourage better parenting
within the community. If you could say to the Government, "Can
you give us help?", would that be what you would be asking
for now?
Mr Solo: I work for Barnardo's
in the voluntary sector and I see that particular sector of society
engendering more trust from the community. I am not so sure we
would have had the success we have had if our community was getting
that from the local authority. I think the success of the Barnardo's
Babyfather initiative has been based on the fact that it has been
from the voluntary sector and that engenders more trust in the
community. In terms of what the Government could do specifically
for ourselves and for other groups in the area, that is to open
up lines of dialogue, distribute programmes that have been developed.
I mentioned away from the voluntary sector, the Government moves
around the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners, which
is a wonderful idea in terms of equipping the workforce to work
more effectively with this group.
Q496 Mrs Cryer: Melvyn, would your
request to government, if you were able to do that, be to put
more resources through local education authorities and schools
in order to try to keep more black boys within the school system
much longer than we are achieving at the moment? Do you think
that would be the best way of directing government funding to
keep those same black men out of the criminal justice system?
Mr Davis: Yes, I would agree with
most of that. I think what I would be saying is that money would
need to be ring-fenced, that money would need to be both given
to schools and to voluntary sector community groups who may be
better able to work with that young person or also work with parents
as well. It needs to be long-term because this is not a problem
that can be solved with a year or two years' funding. We have
a cycle, a generational problem that we need to tackle here, and
there needs to be a long-term commitment to addressing that. If
we can tackle the leakage from the education system we will begin
to see young people coming out with more options, with more choices.
The young people that I have to spend time working with too often
feel that they have no choice and we spend a long time trying
to convince them that they do have choices. From the starting
point that they are often coming from when they are 17 or 18 years
of age and cannot read or write, their self-esteem, their sense
of being a man, hoping that will change whilst their emotional
development is severely stunted and limited, that is the difficulty
that we face. We are failing them educationally in so many different
ways and it is not just about academic education it is preparing
them for life and the environments that they exist in. We can
always look and say not every single parent family has these problems
but we can see that too many do and often there are other protective
factors in those single parent families that need to be recognised
and too many of the families that we work with are isolated, vulnerable
and do not have the resources to deal with that.
Martin Salter: Melvyn, I just
want to follow up something you said that rang some bells with
me. I am very interested in re-offending and this revolving door
that we have got. You said that a lot of young black males are
coming out of prison even less able to get a job outside of the
criminal networks than they were before they went into prison
so they are more likely to re-offend. There are some schemes rattling
around that take lads from prison and give them training, education
and a work placement, so there is a completely different pathway
for those kids, another option for those young men when they come
out of prison. I may be wrong but from what I have seen in some
of these schemes black people were not particularly highly represented
in that approach. Can I just get your reaction starting from the
point of particularly young black men who are coming out of prison,
and who are almost certainly going to be back there again, almost
certainly going to re-offend, and targeting intervention at that
point to enable them to develop the skills to get a job.
Chairman: This is becoming quite a long
question, Martin.
Q497 Martin Salter: Two hours of
pent-up thought.
Mr Davis: One of the earliest
experiences I had of working with young people was in Aylesbury
Prison, a young offenders' institution, and I remember working
with a group of young people in there and the statistics at that
time were 17-18% of young offenders would re-offend before they
were 18. I had a group of 10 and I was saying, "Seven or
eight of you are going to be back in here within two years"
and every single one of them said, "No, I'm not coming back.
This is my last time". But when we began to explore what
that meant in reality, they were going back into communities,
they had made their resolutions they were not going to go back
and they may have had a GCSE O level certificate that they had
got whilst they were inside which made them feel great, made them
feel "I've got real life choices when I come out of here,
I'm going to get a job. I didn't get this in formal education
but I got this inside", but they go out and any employer
would then say, "Where have you been? What have you been
doing?" You can see those young people being crushed and
when they come back into those communities, those communities
have not moved on, they are still very much the same communities
supporting their experiences that led them to commit those offences.
They may have made those choices but the support for them to maintain
that at the point when they come out is not often there and it
is not there in a form that makes a difference. This was one of
the reasons why when we established our mentoring programme, our
mentoring programme works with young people for two to three years
because in the work that I do I think it is very easy to help
young people to feel uncomfortable with themselves or maybe even
feel guilty about things they have done but to get them to change,
to move from that to be different, the cost of that is often to
move away from their friends and the environment that has often
supported that, and that is extremely difficult.
Q498 Chairman: Can I take this a
bit further because we have talked a lot in one way or another
about professional and funded support for parenting skills, for
families and young people. To what extent should we be putting
down a challenge to the communities from which these young people
come to take more responsibility, to show leadership towards young
people? I am probably misinterpreting what you were saying but
I get this almost negative message that things in communities
are so bad this is going to have to be done through the voluntary
sector, through social services, but not through communities themselves.
Mr Davis: I certainly think that
communities have a role to play but we also have to look at the
place of those communities within society, who has the power and
who has the accountability at the end of the day. Most of the
communities that are vulnerable and overrepresented do not have
the leadership, the resources or the infrastructure to actually
make those changes and they need a lot of support in order to
make those things happen. Some of the things that I am alluding
to do not actually cost a lot of money; it is the structure. There
is a lot of money that is given towards supporting vulnerable
families in communities but I would be very interested to know
how much of that is in real terms geared towards or actually making
an impact in the black community. Most of the programmes that
we get called in to work with are asked to engage with hard-to-reach
communities. For me a black community is not a hard-to-reach community
because I am from there but for another organisation that is coming
from outside of that area, they may have been successful in obtaining
that funding but they then have a big bridge to cross in terms
of how to engage with those communities. That is why we place
the emphasis on voluntary organisations or community organisations
being better resourced and given the infrastructure and maybe
supported or mentored by other organisations so that they can
tackle problems because ultimately I believe it is the black community
itself that could and should solve this problem.
Q499 Chairman: Brief answers from
both of you following on from that because it may be in your written
evidence; can you just describe how you measure the effectiveness
of the work that each of your organisations does. This is a difficult
issue so how would you want to be measured or assessed on the
effectiveness of your work? Mr Solo?
Mr Solo: In terms of the work
that we do and in terms of the work that we are trying to do—and
that is to change the value base of for example a father so that
he can be more responsible and more consistent in his parenting—it
is very difficult to measure. However, the success in what we
have done we can measure in a number of ways. The usual feedback
sheets at the end of our sessions from the fathers themselves
say it has been helpful in informing them. The fact that fathers—and
I think this is the beauty of the voluntary sector—come
back week after week or month after month and there is no compulsion.
I feel that there is something in what Barnardo's Babyfather is
offering fathers and the community that is valued and is authentic
and fathers are voting with their feet. In terms of further evaluation
of our work, we have had Manchester and Liverpool adopt our model
of working with African Caribbean men, this hard-to-reach group,
and they have been quite successful and are now working with fathers
in their own communities themselves, which links back to your
previous point about responsibility.
|
