Having a Voice: An Exploration of Children's Rights and Advocacy by J. Dalrymple and Jan Hough, Venture Press, Birmingham, 1995, 158 pp. ISBN 1 873 878 206 (Pbk), £10.50
✍ Scribed by Kieran O'Hagan
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 84 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0952-9136
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Many childcare professionals have voiced concern about the increasing emphasis given to parental rights in recent years. They argue that this can only be at the expense of children who are vulnerable, and who have no means of expressing that vulnerability.
Consequently, a number of publications critical of this trend have recently appeared, and have attempted to refocus concern on the welfare of the child. This is one such publication, and a valuable and compact addition it is.
It is immensely accessible, simply yet soundly structured, and contains contributions from experienced practitioners, trainers, policy-makers, and, not least, former clients of welfare agencies.
The rather lengthy introduction of the book explains its origins, and reveals the conviction and the perspective of the authors. Adultism' may not be a term with which all professionals are familiar or comfortable, but its use seems logical, as its meaning is unmistakeable. It has the same power dimension as sexism and racism, and it is such a pervasive phenomenon as to be almost unrecognisable and taken for granted'.
Jan Hough critically examines some aspects of the Children Act, cleverly asking the obvious question: why is it not called Children's Act? One of her justi®able criticisms is that the Act is `proving to be of little bene®t to black people', as it has no commitment to a necessary increase in black sta, in social work, law and guardian-ad-litem services.
Peter Jenkins looks at advocacy within the context of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (this is most welcome: it is salutory to witness the narrowness of perspective revealed in much British childcare literature and training, as if British childcare law and practice was the most advanced, and practice and principle elsewhere irrelevant). A substantive chapter by one of the editors on the dilemmas of advocacy charts the development and progress of the Advice, Advocacy and Representation Services for Children and Young People (ASC). It is an honest and thought-provoking chapter, identifying the major resistances to advocacy services, yet seemingly underplaying obvious and signi®cant gains by the ASC. Dave Hodgson advocates selfadvocacy for young people with learning diculty. His chapter explores a research/practice initiative in a residential school. His opening clari®cation on the nature of, and the diering classi®cations of advocacy is illuminating. Suraya Patel writes powerfully from the advantageous perspective of someone who has experienced care, and who now provides an advocacy service for young people in Bolton. Her writing and her perceptions have an incisiveness which many professionals may ®nd discomforting.
The resistances to advocacy, participation and partnership with and on behalf of young people are numerous and complex. There are occasions in this text when a reader gets the impression that some of the authors have given up in the task of understanding those resistances. Criticism of them is sometimes crude and unwarranted. This is a minor criticism, however; crusaders of any