See the Child, Change the System

How many times has the Government initiated an inquiry following a death of a child known to social services?  Too many times is the answer.  Think Baby P, Victoria Climbie, Daniel Pelka and many others before them. At least 399 children have died since 2005 as a result of abuse or neglect!

Recommendations are made, people are blamed, a few practices are altered yet things haven't really changed.  Children are still suffering. A report out last Monday, by the Centre for Social Justice, found that child protection and mental health services were in crisis, with thousands of vulnerable children not getting the support they so desperately need.

Following this report, Kids Company, led by founder Camila Batmangelidgh, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at BritMums Live last Saturday, launched a campaign yesterday called 'See the Child, Change the System' to highlight this fundamental lack of support and call for major changes.  On Saturday Camila spoke of social services failing children on a 'catastrophic level', yet so many social workers feel they can't speak out for fear of reprisals.

Did you know that local authorities don't really know the true number of children at risk in their areas because to do so would mean they had a legal responsibility to help them?  There are so many more vulnerable children out there who need help - the NSPCC estimates that for every child granted a protection plan, another 8 are left unprotected.  That is a shocking figure.  Even to type those figures makes me angry. I know from hearing other adopters' experiences and a knowledge of what has since passed in my local authority that children have suffered terribly from a lack of support, a lack of care, a blind eye maybe, a lack of knowledge, an apathy, not our responsibility, a shift of blame.

Kids Company, through their campaign, want the public to sign a petition that calls for an independent task force to redesign the whole system.  This task force will devise a new in-depth child protection and social care model that will be trialled within a couple of local authorities and then rolled out nationally.

Something drastic needs to be done.

Please watch this video and show your support for these changes by signing the petition at www.seethechild.org or text I SEE to 63000.

My inspiring weekend at BritMums Live

I am inspired. I am invigorated. I am full of ideas. I am excited.  Why? Because I attended BritMums Live this weekend, a two day conference for the blogging community. This is good not only for my blogs but for my spirit in general.

As well as some wonderful keynote speakers, the days are split into lots of sessions with a variety of talks to attend on anything from podcasting to design, accounting to using your blog for change.  The latter session I attended on Saturday morning and, having already spent half an hour in tears, listening to Benjamin Brooks Dutton talk about Life As A Widower, I then spent another 40 minutes in tears listening to four speakers passionate about helping children. 

One of the speakers of whom I am a huge admirer was Camilla Batmangelidgh. Camila is the founder of Kids Company UK, a charity passionate about supporting vulnerable children in inner-city London. She's a larger than life figure, always dressed colourfully flamboyant.  I was a bit star struck when I was fortunate to speak with her afterwards. I told of of my blog and thanked her and her charity for the wonderful work they do and recounted the times when I worked in corporate when I arranged several volunteering days working with Kids Company.  A couple of the days involved painting murals on school buildings to bring some colour to the kids lives. We also painted a quiet room in one of the schools, with flowers and trees, whilst on another outing we helped organised art and cookery workshops. The people I worked for were privileged, most went to public school, they earnt a lot of money and lived in a bubble. I wanted to take them out that bubble and show them a different side of life. Half way through our volunteering days, a representative from Kids Company would explain what the charity was about and why these children needed their help. Some of  my colleagues were very moved; I honestly don't think they realised people lived like this in London, just a few miles from their bubbles. 

I was excited to hear Camila speak of a campaign to be launched next week called 'See The Child, Change The System' to bring about a change in children's services.  More about the campaign in a future blog.

Other highlights of BritMums Live included meeting Sarah from The Puffin Diaries and Vicki from The Boys Behaviour who together founded The Adoption Social. It's so lovely to meet people in real life, people who I 'know' well from SocialMedia Land.   The Adoption Social was up for a Brilliance in Blogging Award and although they didn't win, I think they should be extremely proud for being a Finalist. They have done an amazing job spreading the word about adoption.

I read a lot of adoption and fostering themed blogs but being at BritMums reminded me there are many other excellent blogs on other themes. I'm going to make time each week to get to know some of these other blogs and hopefully, in turn, I'll gain a few new readers who didn't previously know a great deal about adoption.

Another plus point from the weekend actually happened at home. I thought Missy may play up quite a lot with me not being there Friday and Saturday. I had talked to her about the weekend quite a bit, where I was going, what in was going, what time I'd be back so she was well prepared. I asked her to give me something of hers so I could think about her whilst at the event and she picked out a lovely photo of herself. I'm not a mum who has to give daddy a long list (or indeed any list at all), he's more than capable and it turns out they had a great time together. In fact I came home on Saturday to find they'd been strawberry and raspberry picking and had made two jars of strawberry jam! 

So, I now have a long to-do list filled with things to do for my blog and I can't wait to get going.  You'll find me at my desk tomorrow with a cup of tea and strawberry jam on toast.