Open our hearts to the suffering children, appeals ex head

Fifty years ago Vatican II laid an obligation on our Catholic schools to serve “especially… those who are poor in the goods of this world or who are deprived of the assistance and affection of a family or who are strangers to the gift of Faith.”  (Declaration on Christian Education Gravissimus Educationis paragraph 30.)  The evidence, sadly, suggests that we are not matching up to this challenge, at least in regard to children who have no loving family to support them; and our failure really hurts young people. 

The latest Catholic Education Service statistics tell us that 0.53 per cent of the pupils in state funded Catholic schools in England are “children looked after” by a local authority (CLA). Yet CLA make up 0.64 per cent of children, and while a difference of 0.11 per cent may seem small, it means there are almost 900 vulnerable children we might expect to find in our Catholic schools who are not there.

Children are removed from their families for all sorts of reasons. Neglect, physical or sexual abuse – more than one child I know has suffered the anguish of finding a parent unconscious after a suicide attempt, and almost forty years ago a boy I taught was held at gunpoint by his father in a stand-off with police. But whatever the immediate trigger, it is always distressing, never the child’s fault, and for some what comes next can be almost as bad.

On Christmas Eve, as our thoughts turned to a little child for whom there was no room at the inn, Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, published “Pass The Parcel”  a report on the experiences of the 30,000 CLA in England, 41 per cent of the total, who are placed outside the area “they would call home”.  Heart-rendingly, some of them think their time in care is a punishment.

11,000 CLA are more than 20 miles from their former homes and 2,000 are a hundred miles.  There are good reasons why some children have to be placed in care “out of area”.  For example, there are children who have to go for their own safety as they are being targeted by others locally; and a fresh start can sometimes seem in the child’s best interests, but often it is simply cheaper for a local authority to export many of the children in its care.  As the Children’s Society declared, in its report "No Place At Home" published in September 2019, placement at a distance can add to childrens’ distress and brings with it huge dangers.  “It is a national scandal that already vulnerable children are suffering additional trauma because local authorities – the very people tasked with keeping them safe – are sending them away.”

One measure that indicates the system is failing children is the number of young people going missing from care. Last year there were 73,470 “missing incidents” and these came about because children were unhappy. Often they tried to run home or were enticed away to be exploited. 

Of the CLA placed out of their area, 52 per cent have special educational needs and almost half of these have social, emotional and mental health identified as their primary need, but moving area compromises both educational chances and treatment on the NHS.

These highly vulnerable young people are often left without a school place for months on end, and while children’s mental health services nationally are notorious for the long waiting times for appointments, youngsters who move district go to the back of the queue every time. The Children’s Commissioner’s report comments: “We heard teens casually talking about having to move home 10, 11 or even 15 times (numbers which we know can go much higher).  We found that over half of children placed out of area have 2 or more moves within 2 years.”  The wait for therapy which was already far too long at months, becomes years, and sometimes never.

As for schools, in theory the law insists that looked after children are the highest priority for school admission. In practice, many children in care are left without a school place because no-one seems to have the power or the will to make schools take them.  Ms Longfield’s report urges that local authorities should be given “powers to direct academy schools to admit children placed away from their home areas.”

In education, data never tells the whole story, but the raw numbers suggest that Catholic schools on the whole are less willing to admit these highly vulnerable youngsters than our community school counterparts. If this is true, we are failing in our mission.

So let’s make it our resolution in 2020 to open our hearts and our arms.  Without anyone needing to force us.  “Let the children come to me... the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)

John Cosgrove retired last summer as head of Christ the King Catholic Primary School, Reading, after almost forty years teaching in both primary and secondary schools. He now lives in West Cornwall with his wife, Madeleine, who before she retired was executive head of two Catholic primary schools.