Month: July 2019

Joshua* was 17 when he was arrested. He is autistic and had threatened two carers who lived with him in a flat provided by Suffolk County Council. Despite his age, the Crown Prosecution Service wanted Joshua sentenced to three and a half years in an adult prison, but the judge used his discretion and tried him in a youth court. He was sentenced on Thursday 13 June to six months in youth custody and ordered to pay a £30 victim surcharge.

Joshua’s life so far has been marked by the state consistently denying him the support to which he has been entitled. His experiences are far from unique. In England and Wales alone nearly 1,000 children are, like Joshua, in custody (or immigration detention). Some 125,000 children are, as he was, officially homeless, in temporary accommodation or on the streets. Brutal restraints are being used on children in prisons, special educational needs schools and within the NHS. Nearly 50,000 children have been taken off rolls by schools and the government does not know why. Suffering, appalling inequality, and injustice have become part of the fabric of childhood in this country.

Did those who are now homeless or locked up have mental health problems like Joshua? Were they ‘looked after’ children —the euphemism for being taken into care and the custody of the state? How do race and ethnicity shape their lives at a time when a child is racially abused every hour in the UK? And what if you live, as Joshua did, in one of the deeply deprived areas which dot the serene upper middle-class face of the home counties?

Joshua's story

Joshua lived in a small town in Buckinghamshire in the south east of England. Where he lived was one of those deprived pockets, a sharp contrast to more affluent parts of Buckinghamshire like Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield. Rich and poor parts of the county all come under the remit of one local authority, which has been Tory for as long as one can remember. According to Saqib Deshmukh, who has lived in the area for 20 years and worked there as a youth worker and senior practitioner for 11 of those, racism is rampant, whether on the streets or in encounters with the police. “Buckingham County Council continues to fail racialised minorities largely by pretending that they and the real pockets of deprivation don’t exist," Deshmukh said. "The arrangements for children from African, African-Caribbean and South Asian heritage backgrounds and their parents/carers and extended families are simply not fit for purpose in 2019."

And what of local support and services for children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)?

Sarah Templeton is a therapist and counsellor with more than 20 years' experience who works both nationally and in Buckinghamshire. She said:

Templeton has worked with prisoners at Aylesbury Young Offender Institution, notorious for harsh punishments. She says some 60% of inmates are black or minority ethnic — an even higher proportion than the shocking national average. “There is a pathway,” she says, which leads from neurological conditions to prison, “and yet it is all so avoidable”.

In Buckinghamshire, the safeguarding of children has so far focussed on child sexual exploitation (CSE), and that through a racialised lens. Feminist activist Yasmin Rehman worked on Bucks County Council’s Serious Case Review CSE 1998-2016. She said: “There was a focus on High Wycombe and Aylesbury and Asian grooming gangs and this was of concern as the areas are not far from Stoke Mandeville Hospital where Jimmy Savile had perpetrated many of his crimes.”

It is against this background that Joshua’s mother, Mariam*, a community activist of African Caribbean and white Irish heritage, has tried to bring up her two children, Joshua and his younger sister. All three are autistic.

Over and over authorities failed to help Joshua

As a child Joshua had trouble sleeping and was extremely obsessive. The first school he attended, in 2005, refused to arrange a mental health assessment. They blamed his behaviour on poor parenting and the fact that Mariam had had another child—old racist tropes of women of colour from the 1970s, which are stronger than ever today. Racism was a constant in Joshua’s life — from racist bullying in his first school to suspicion because he was a practising Muslim and had once brought a Quran to school.

When Joshua was nine, his grandmother died. Overcome with grief, his behaviour deteriorated further, but he was denied bereavement counselling. However, after requests from Mariam and her GP, Joshua’s school arranged a psychiatric assessment and he was found to be suffering from a high level of autistic spectrum disorder with associated challenging behaviours and severe sensory problems. His GP and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services recommended that Joshua be supported and Mariam be offered respite care. But Bucks County Council provided no support at all.

By the time he was 11 Joshua was an academically able student. He enjoyed cooking and playing chess with the boys in the neighbourhood and he loved working on, and building, his own BMX bikes pretty much from scratch. However, he had become prone to rages and violent outbursts and other challenging behaviour.

“Challenging behaviour," says Helen Ash, an expert on autistic spectrum disorder, “happens when a child [with ASD] is suffering. It should be called ‘suffering behaviour’ and treated as such.” This has been recognised in a recent legal ruling according to which “all disabled children are afforded the same safeguards, protections and rights under the law regardless of whether their disability gives rise to challenging behaviour”.

Bucks council appear to have simply ignored the needs of children with ASD and ADHD. In one shocking case from 2012 the council was ordered to pay out £14,500 and apologise because they failed to provide the right care for a young autistic boy after he stopped attending school aged 13. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services told the council that the boy wouldn't cope in a mainstream school, but still the council failed to assess his educational needs and he went without proper schooling for almost a year.

Bucks County Council had frequently been made aware of Joshua’s situation too. In a letter sent in July 2012, Mariam’s solicitor noted that a senior social worker had reported Joshua's “aggressive and violent behaviour towards his mother, step-father and sister… constantly running away… constant suicidal feeling.” The social worker made these observations in August 2010 and recommended a “comprehensive assessment to identify his psychological and cognitive behavioural needs”.

Months later in April 2011, Joshua’s school stated that there was a “risk of death” without support. The council’s response was that these were matters for the education department and social services were not able to be involved unless there were concerns about parenting.

Another referral was made in November 2011. This time an initial assessment was completed but concluded that Joshua “did not fit the criteria for children with disabilities team support.” No further action was taken. The council’s policy at the time stated that “children with Attention Deficit and High Functioning Autism/Aspergers do not meet the criteria of the Children with Disabilities Team”.

In July 2012, after Joshua attacked another child, Mariam agreed to his being placed in specialist foster care under section 20 of the Children Act 1989. She was desperately upset. She told me: “This was a last resort, if only Joshua had been given appropriate support he would not have had to leave his family home. I asked them once again for a care plan which set out provisions for him to be safely returned.”

Holding the state to account

Later that month Mariam, together with other parents in the area, decided to challenge Bucks County Council over its treatment of disabled children. She instigated a Judicial Review regarding the council’s failure to undertake an assessment of Joshua’s needs and provide appropriate care and support to meet those needs. The claim rested on challenging the council's failure to carry out its duties as set out in national, European and international human and children's rights law including:

• Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act,
• Sections 17 and 20 of the Children Act 1989 and schedule 2 para 6, s20(1) (c) CA 1989,
• Section 11 of the Children Act 2004,
• and obligations under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights read with Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Mariam also challenged the council over Joshua’s school placement and appealed to a special education needs (SEN) tribunal.

Bucks responded by starting care proceedings on the basis that Mariam was not an adequate parent. This stayed the Judicial Review and SEN tribunal hearings.

Mariam challenged the care proceedings and won. In July 2013 her solicitor Barbara Hopkin of Hopkin Murray Beskine wrote to her:

Following the case Bucks changed their official policy. Although as Templeton says, their treatment of ASD and ADHD children is still hugely problematic, and of course the lives of the children they chose to ignore cannot be repaired.

I asked Julia Wassell, who was Mariam’s local councillor at the time of the proceedings and a social worker herself, what she thought of the way Joshua had been treated. She refused to comment, citing confidentiality.

After the court case Joshua was returned to his mother’s care and, in what seemed to be a positive move, the council placed him in Swalcliffe Park, a boarding school for boys with autistic spectrum disorder.

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But the council refused to provide Mariam with respite care in the holidays, which had been widely recommended, making it impossible for her to hold down a job. And the council passed the papers relating to Joshua’s care proceedings (which had been withdrawn in 2013 after Mariam won her case) to her ex-partner, who used them to gain custody of her daughter.

From mental ill health to expulsion to homelessness to prison

Unable to get a job in her town, Mariam relocated to Suffolk in September 2014. Joshua was expelled from Swalcliffe Park in 2015 for smoking cannabis. Was expulsion for disruptive behaviour normal policy at the school? “No,” said headteacher Kiran Hingorani. “We do not admit pupils with ‘challenging behaviour’ and therefore do not need to use any restraints or expel anyone.”

He declined to comment on Joshua’s expulsion. I asked Helen Ash, the autism spectrum disorder expert, what Swalcliffe Park’s policy might mean for ASD children. “I don’t know the school," she said, "but it seems they have a selective policy which excludes many children who need their help most.”

Back in the family home in Suffolk, Joshua learnt that his sister had gone to live with her dad and had a massive meltdown. The police were called by a neighbour. Mariam claims the police assaulted Joshua and then charged him with assaulting two police officers. He refused to accept a caution, preferring to go to court to explain his side of what had occurred, not only during this episode, but throughout his life — coping with disabilities unsupported, and being alienated from his family by the state.

Shortly after, Mariam, under enormous pressure, had an altercation with a neighbour who, she claims, was racially abusing her. The police were called and she was sectioned briefly. Following this, she was evicted from her Housing Association property.

Joshua, now also homeless, was sent to live in various unsuitable placements and when these broke down, with his mother still homeless, he put himself in the care of Suffolk local authority. In this period, Mariam says, he became dependent on drugs, although his Suffolk Social worker has only recently admitted, rather casually, in an email, that he is dependent at all.

Joshua was moved to Ipswich, a town in Suffolk, where racial abuse in schools is on the rise and gang-violence is a problem. Last year, an autistic black teenager from Ipswich was stabbed to death. In Suffolk itself, hate crime against young people nearly doubled between 2015 and 2018. In April this year Joshua was attacked in Ipswich, though his mother was not informed.

As this child, whom the state has ignored except to punish him for his disability, turns 18 he will have followed the trajectory which Sarah Templeton outlined from neurological condition to prison. It could, and should, have been avoided but the racism and callousness of austerity dictated otherwise.

^{*To protect the children’s identities “Joshua” and “Mariam” are pseudonyms. All images copyright “Mariam”.}

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^{Edited by Clare Sambrook and Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi for Shine A Light.}

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Shine A Light contacted Buckinghamshire County Council for comment. A spokesperson sent the following joint statement on behalf of the council and Buckinghamshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services:

Ours is an age of crisis. Britain faces a crisis of inequality, with the Tories’ brutal austerity programme leaving schoolchildren eating from bins and 14 million people living in poverty, whilst the obscene riches of the 1% accumulate yet further. At the same time, we face planetary collapse, with just 11 years left to stop runaway warming.

For too long we have seen these crises as distinct. No longer. The new roadmap to a Green New Deal from the think tank Common Wealth builds on the emerging understanding that it is an unjust and exploitative economic system driving all this. It’s an economy run for the profits of the few which slashes public services while handing out corporate giveaways, including to the fossil fuel industry. And it’s an economic system structured by racist, neo-colonial exploitation which mines the Global South before abandoning it to the resulting crisis.

Hope for a fairer, more prosperous and more sustainable society is inextricably bound up with a radical project to reshape our economy. It’s not about tinkering, and it’s not about personal habit changes – it’s about total transformation. As Mathew Lawrence, Common Wealth’s founder, recently argued: “bravery is our safest choice, radicalism our best hope.”

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Common Wealth and groups such as Labour for a Green New Deal, which I co-founded, are coalescing behind a radical Green New Deal: a massive programme of investment and regulation to tackle the climate crisis and eliminate inequality at the same time. As we effect a total economic mobilisation to reach zero carbon by 2030, we can redesign our economy to serve the many, not the few: green unionised jobs for all; energy, housing and food as new human rights; a shorter working week; and a society of communal luxury.

To reshape society, we need a vision for a new world, a plan for how to get there, and a movement to make it happen. Common Wealth’s upcoming reports provide the plan. Spanning every aspect of society, they offer a roadmap for green transformation. They lay out how we can scale down private car travel and provide fleets of luxurious public transport spanning every corner of Britain; invest in green industry to revitalise regions of the country decimated by neoliberalism; build a natural and digital commons; repurpose finance to serve the common good; and reshape international institutions in the service of universal emancipation, not neo-colonial plunder.

To bring this vision to life, though, we need a movement. Only collective action can transform our society in the service of the many. Drawing inspiration from the workers’ movement, anti-colonial independence struggle and others, we know that visions for a better world must be rooted in mass action on the part of the oppressed. If we want to change things for the many, we need them to be involved. The roots are already there with thousands of schoolchildren taking to the streets demanding a Green New Deal and a future they want to live in.

The Green New Deal must be about empowering the working-class to control its future democratically. It’s not just a grand vision for a different world, it’s a practical plan to improve the lives of each and every person. Community wealth building can create revitalised towns and cities; local and national investment can build cheap and luxurious transit for the many; and municipal renewable programmes can provide free energy as a human right. This could be a new era of democracy and prosperity.

What’s more, the transition to a green economy must be led by workers themselves. After all, workers know their industry better than anyone else. A Green New Deal must give trade unions a framework to power a just transition themselves, supported by a radical Labour government committed to public ownership and procurement – whether that’s wind power in Fife or a new Honda electric car plant in Swindon.

Without such a worker-led strategy, we risk inadvertently repeating the brutality of Thatcherism, cutting off the only livelihoods left to hundreds of thousands of working people and thus entrenching the myth that class politics and climate politics can be pitted against each other.

That is why Labour must lead the way as the only party with an organic base in trade unions and communities across the country. Already the Party’s Community Organising Unit and Shadow BEIS Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey are going around the country, bringing people together in post-industrial areas to reimagine their towns.

Meanwhile, we at Labour for a Green New Deal are building local groups across the UK, from Brighton to Glasgow, to organise in their communities, formulate local Green New Deals in conjunction with Labour councils and build this vision from the ground up. At the same time, we are organising for Party conference, ensuring that the ideas of today become the policy of tomorrow.

While Brexit traps us in political paralysis and the climate crisis worsens daily, the movement for a Green New Deal offers a path to emancipation. By marrying a radical plan with a movement rooted in the lives of ordinary people across the country, we can build a society that works for people and planet alike. Together, we’re building the future we need.

Inspired by the late American activist Rosa Parks, Muslim women in France staged a protest on Sunday, defending their right to wear whatever they choose to go swimming.

Seven Muslim women were cheered on by Muslim community members as they entered the Jean Bron swimming pool in Grenoble, along with 30 non-Muslim supporters, despite being told that their modest swimsuits — often referred to as burkinis — were not permitted. They soaked in the water for approximately one hour, as part of “Operation Burkini,” a demonstration organized by the Citizen Alliance of Grenoble to challenge the burkini ban.

The word “burkini” is a slang term used to refer to modest swimsuits worn by Muslim women. The garment, which reveals only women’s face, hands, and feet, allows them to take part in water activities while still maintaining a state of “hijab” and observing their faith as they choose. 

While the traditional headscarf has come to be known as a “hijab,” the word actually refers to the physical and internal characteristics of being “covered.” “Hijab” itself means covering the body in accordance to Islamic guidelines, but also includes the way Muslims conduct themselves in public and interact with others. Muslim men are also expected to maintain internal and external “hijab.”

“Operation Burkini” is part of a larger campaign to urge Grenoble’s mayor, Éric Piolle, to revise the public swimming pool dress code prohibiting burkinis, which was instated in 2016. The movement to overturn the rule started last year with a petition signed by 600 Muslim women.

“We have a dream: to have fun in public swimming pools like all other citizens, to accompany our children whenever they want to have a swim while it is very hot in the summer here in Grenoble,” two of the women, Hasiba and Latifa, told the BBC. 

“We must fight against discriminatory policies and prejudice in France, as we are actually deprived of our civil rights of access to public services and city-owned infrastructures.”

Police questioned each of the seven women after the protest and fined them each €35 ($40) for the dress code violation.

For many years, burkini bans and other similar bans on religious coverings have been widely debated. Many French officials like Matthieu Chamussy, a member of a political party known as “The Republicans,” have voiced their belief that the burkini represents the oppression of women under Islam’s tenets.

“Political Islam is moving forward step-by-step and the cause of women receding,” Chamussy tweeted.

French politicians have also argued that wearing burkinis is against the country’s strict code of secularism. 

On Monday, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen tweeted in response to the protest, writing, “It’s time to say loud and clear that the burkini has no place in France.”

In 2016, the burkini was banned in 15 French cities, before being overturned by the country’s top administrative court a few months later due to backlash. France was also the first European country to ban the full-face veil, worn by some Muslim women, in 2010. The country has prohibited the donning of the hijab and other religious symbols in public schools since 2004. 

The United Nations, however, has been critical of France’s policies, categorizing them as intolerant, discriminatory violations of Muslim women’s human rights.

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Stephanie Grisham, communications director for Melania Trump, will replace Sarah Huckabee Sanders as White House press secretary. Sanders’ controversial tenure will end June 30.

Critics claim Sanders rejected the public service aspect of her position by misinforming the public and refusing to renounce the president’s “enemy of the people” label of the press.

Sanders held fewer daily press briefings than any of her predecessors and effectively stopped briefings altogether in March of this year. Analysts say her legacy will be the death of the press briefing, a decades-old tradition used to inform the press, and by extension, the American public.

We are media scholars. At a time when the office of White House press secretary is the focus of controversy, we believe the first person to hold the position, journalist Ray Stannard Baker, could be a role model for Grisham and future press secretaries.

‘He is absolutely honest’

Baker was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 to handle publicity for the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, which traveled to Paris to craft an agreement at the end of World War I. In those days of progressive journalism, the word publicity had a positive connotation of enlightening citizens about government activity.

Good press relations has been recognized as an integral part of presidential leadership since the William McKinley administration. The McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson administrations each developed new techniques to manage publicity, including the use of press releases and presidential press conferences. One of these innovations was White House secretaries who dealt with the press as part of larger portfolios.

Even though Stephen Early of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration was the first presidential press secretary in both title and function, our research shows Baker was the first person to serve as a president’s full-time, personal intermediary with the press.

When Wilson tapped him for the publicity job, Baker was concluding a nearly yearlong mission as a special assistant to the Department of State. He had traveled to Europe to assess the outlook of liberal and labor groups, whose support Wilson needed for a cooperative peace.

Wilson described Baker as “a man of ability, vision and ideals.” He believed the journalist’s “esteemed” reputation among the news correspondents would be “most advantageous” to the success of the commission’s publicity work.

Baker was well qualified for the publicity role. A study of his personal papers shows he was judicious in his opinions and self-reflective. He had credibility: At his peak, he “was considered the greatest reporter in America” by his readers and peers, according to historian Louis Filler. He had integrity: He wrote a pathbreaking book on race relations. He was principled: He supported individuals, not political parties, depending on their ideas.

“[Baker] is distinctly the ablest man we have had in charge of news dispensing since the war began,” one correspondent wrote in an unsigned note found among Baker’s papers. “He is absolutely honest and he works in our behalf until very late.”

Baker also had a democratic understanding of the role of press secretary. He articulated this in 1921 when he looked back on his experience in Paris.

“I honestly endeavored at Paris to do the real work of publicity, getting out the facts & the background, as well as to report exactly what was being done, so far as I was permitted to do,” he wrote.

A new diplomacy

The Paris Peace Conference was a high historical moment. It marked the end to the most devastating war up to that time and the beginning of negotiations for a first-ever plan for permanent world peace.

Some 500 journalists – including 150 Americans – traveled to Paris to cover the conference.

Baker believed the American peace commission was a “great public undertaking” that required open communication with the people of the world. He believed publicity would be the heartbeat of American diplomacy.

With the end of wartime censorship, many journalists shared Baker’s hope for a “new diplomacy” that was transparent and reflective of public opinion.

Instead, the leaders of France, Britain, Italy and the U.S. agreed to closed-door negotiations.

The American correspondents felt betrayed by Wilson, who had called for “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at,” in his famous Fourteen Points speech in January 1918.

Baker did his best to help the correspondents get news.

One of Baker’s innovative ideas was for experts to draft briefing papers on “various highly complex situations” for the correspondents, many of whom had little experience covering foreign affairs. He arranged press interviews with the experts as well. Baker also played a lead role in preparing a 14,000-word summary of the treaty that was released around the world.

After lobbying Wilson, Baker successfully gained American correspondents access to Versailles to witness the first meeting between the Allied powers and Germany.

Baker believed that the success of his position depended on positive, friendly relations with reporters. In a show of mutual respect and cooperation, Baker helped form the American Press Delegation, a press association that acted as an intermediary between Baker’s office and the correspondents.

‘Not going to lie to you’

Reporters trooped to Baker’s Paris office in such large numbers they wore its aged, red carpet to shreds.

For Baker, truth and publicity were the guiding principles of press relations. In one of his first meetings with correspondents, Baker said, “I am not going to lie to you. If I am entrusted with information that I am required not to pass along I am going to say frankly that I cannot tell… as far as possible I will make reports of facts I have to give uncolored by my own opinions or desires.”

Baker met with the president each evening. Afterwards, he briefed reporters on what transpired during the day, to the extent the president allowed.

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While Baker was never accused by reporters of lying or withholding information, correspondents became frustrated with Wilson’s secrecy. Baker, who “did not sanction the desire for secrecy that underlay the decision to bar reporters” from conference proceedings, repeatedly urged the president to meet with the correspondents. According to Baker, Wilson met with the press only three or four times.

Of course, Baker did not make every correspondent happy. But he took reporters’ expectations seriously. He accepted that journalists, as part of their jobs, were skeptical. He knew that some of the correspondents were bitterly opposed to the president. As a former journalist himself, he understood that reporters’ primary loyalty was to facts, not the administration.

“I knew well… the dread felt by every really able writer, and we had some of the best from America, of being used by propagandists for their own ends,” Baker wrote in his diary.

The most significant barrier to realizing Baker’s vision of serving the public interest was the absence of the President Wilson’s earnest engagement. Baker believed the “greatest failure” of the peace conference was the “failure to take the people into our confidence.”

Wilson’s preference for keeping the press at arm’s length contributed to his failure to convince the U.S. Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and join the League of Nations.

Wilson’s defeats are a warning to presidents and their press secretaries. Public servants can leave no better legacy than respect for democracy – and a crucial element in that respect is transparency.

As Baker put it: “Publicity is indeed the test for democracy.”

 

When you’re a kid, you hate hearing your parents nag. “Clean your room! Do your homework! Take out the trash!” But parents hate having to nag just as much. 

Alice Velásquez from Indiana couldn’t stand having to tell her daughter to clean her room, so she took the nuclear option. She packed everything in her room into trash bags and made her work her way towards getting them back by doing chores. For each bag, she charged $25. 

The kicker? The bags were packed randomly so she didn’t know what was in each one. Looking for your curling iron? Could be in this bag … or this bag?

Velásquez posted a picture of her devilish deed on Facebook where it was shared over 12,000 times. 

The caption reads:

While just about everyone loved Velásquez’s solution to her daughter’s unkempt living room, she also got a lot of vicious messages from the Mommy blogger crowd.

One of them even threatened to report her to the police. Velásquez stood up for her parenting decisions with another Facebook post. “All of my parenting choices are just that, mine!” she wrote. 

“My children are all loved, treasured, very well cared for, social, active in band, choir, church youth group, soccer, track, swimming, scouts, study buddies, amongst many other family activities,” she continued. “So before you judge me, come spend a day with children who have been raised with respect, who have chores and responsibilities and who have parents that take an active role in parenting and then form your own informed opinion.”

So the big question is: Did her daughter earn her things back? “YES!” wrote Velasquez. “She has, and her super siblings all volunteered for extra chores to help her earn faster too… So not only was it a lesson for my oldest daughter, but a great… family building exercise as well.”

 

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