On 4th April 2011 it will be two years since the occasion when two young brothers, aged 10 and 11, caused grievous bodily harm with intent to two other boys of a similar age in Edlington, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, a crime that was headlining for some time.
Continuing the question, what are our prisons for, Wendy Marshall, co-founder of Hope Mountain, (www.hopemountain.org.uk) a not-for-profit organisation, offers a reflective thought following those events.
The need to blame
“The media coverage of the Doncaster boys who abused two other children drew vast and varied comment – but most of it had one thing in common - the need to blame. It had to be someone’s fault, the reasoning goes, so let’s find who it is and then we can all rest. Some were blaming the social workers, some the parents, others the politicians - they must have had something to do with it. Maybe it was the Mayor for appointing a pie-man to run its children’s services.
In this case, as in many before, when the blood-letting is over, when the anger has subsided, are we left with a sustained desire to really understand the problem and, in doing so, find a solution? Thankfully the media did move on from simply demonising the two perpetrators of these appalling crimes to a willingness to ask, ‘why did these boys turn out like that?’
Research (Positive Psychology) is revealing that neglected children have not had the nurturing experiences needed for areas of the brain to develop, so enable them to control their emotions and behaviour. Doesn’t it make sense that if a child is brought up with little care or respect, they may not know how to care or respect others. If they have been treated more like a thing than a human being, it seems fairly obvious that they may have learned to treat others as things rather than human beings. And if they are shouted at, abused, and their feelings ignored, they may become adept at shouting, fighting, abusing and disregarding the feelings of others. A little reflection and a desire to understand will lead most anyone to these conclusions.
So we trace the problem back one generation, and find that the parents of these anti-social children were neglectful. How did the parents become so dysfunctional? Using the same reasoning, we find they too may well have been damaged from their own neglected childhood.
It seems to me that if your aim is just to find someone to blame, you will always get the satisfaction you seek. However, you may not find the solution. The solution lies in our willingness to understand, and to exercise one or our greatest human assets – empathy.
An Empathetic Approach
When I worked with children in care 30 years ago, as a residential care worker, at first, try as I might, I couldn’t stop being judgemental of the children’s bad behaviour …. until I came to know the home life they had come from! Then, I couldn’t help wondering how I would have turned out if I had been through these young peoples experience of life. If you were to reflect on this same question, if you were to imagine yourself brought up in a chaotic, neglectful and violent household, how do you think you might have turned out?
Look at the pattern. Children who suffer abuse or neglect in childhood are more likely to become offenders. As a group, offenders have lower literacy levels than the rest of the population and poor mood control, leading to problems with anger. Neglectful upbringing commonly leads to impaired brain functioning which results in poor mood control that, in turn, adversely affects concentration ability in school, behaviour modification and ability to develop empathy. The ability to do well in life and have good relationships is severely compromised. Some believe that early neglect and abuse damages a child permanently.
Yes, there are windows of time in our development that are primed for us to absorb deeply and become imprinted by our environment – for good or bad. But research also suggests the brain is much more plastic than we ever thought and has vast capacity to learn, unlearn and move on. Some may need more patience and support than others but people can move on and grow. It all depends how far we are prepared to go to understand and help those whose life experience has been so much less fortunate than our own. At any point we can fall back on the short-lived satisfaction of judging others or we can take time to reflect a little, try to understand, put ourselves in another’s shoes.
And where will all this compassion lead? There is always the worry that if we reduce in any way the punishment meted out for criminal behaviour there won’t be any discouragement for crime. But if we really want to cure the problem, perhaps its time to look around and see the exceptional resources we already have!
The Solutions Are Already Out There
People like Camilla Batmanghelidjh, founder of the Kids Company, Maura Jackson, who has worked to create turn-around environments to help women reduce re-offending through Home Office initiatives, or Dan Hughes who has done so much to create successful therapeutic approaches for neglected children. Grass roots workers in Youth Offending teams, Parent Support Advisors self organising to set up innovative groups to help failing children, or staff in Family Intervention Projects around the UK. Not to mention the innovative prison workers, social workers, chaplains and volunteers who are quietly doing amazing work unknown to the majority, day after day helping to turn people’s lives around. There is a tremendous amount of commitment and compassion out there already making a difference. There may not presently be enough of these people, but they are there!
If politicians and media focussed their attention on seeking out these innovators in social care and therapeutic interventions, it wouldn’t take too long to find what works and how best to train practitioners in these approaches. Many solutions are already out there. Granted, the scale of the problem is large and has probably been steadily building for generations. But the very existence of innovative workers, who know how to effect lasting change in people who have been given up on by the rest of society, gives us reason to be very optimistic.”
