In response to a recent posting on futurework
re Child Welfare in N.S./Cape Breton:
Sandra,
In the Ottawa community, some of us believe that the
situation of children in Canada will be remedied only when
the *status* of children is improved. We feel the problem
needs to be at its root: the importance we give to children
in our society. Improved services for children (and direct
income transfers to families with children) are much less
effective in improving children's welfare than they could be
were children's *status* improved.
We need to see children in fresh perspective. We need to see
parenting as an important activity and to see services for
children as investments and not merely costs.
For this reason we have called for a Commission (or a Joint
Parliamentary Committee) on the Status of Children. The
Commission on the Status of Women, a generation ago, is the
antecedent. Your comments on this idea would be welcomed.
I attach a posting referring to the status of children in
Europe and the United States. It is possible that Canada's
children are in a slightly better position than those in
the US but this is not the point: the present situation of
children in Canada is adequate neither for their own well-
being nor for our future. The need for action on their
behalf is underlined by recent findings about the importance
of a child's experience in the early years of childhood to
their later development as adults.
The question is what can be done about the situation.
Our conclusion was that it needed to be addressed directly
as an issue of *status* -- and in a major, national,
consciousness-raising, televised enquiry.
With best wishes for your efforts in Nova Scotia.
Gail Stewart
================= Begin forwarded message =================
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ("Kome")
To: ..., [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: (Fwd) Euro parent supports
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:45:04 +0000
Forwarded by a friend, from PNEWS I think.
=======
by Valdas Anelauskas
So far, the situation in Europe, as we all know, is still
quite different from that in the United States. In Western
European countries, comprehensive and aggressive social
policies have compensated for family disintegration and
created conditions that allow children to flourish. What
most European nations share is a wider and deeper vision of
collective responsibility for children. "In countries as
diverse as France, the Netherlands and Sweden, governments
intervene on behalf of families, reversing the tide of
cumulative causation so that it spirals up instead of down,
supporting rather than weakening fragile families,
transforming the destinies of vulnerable children," says
economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett.
A wealth of evidence clearly show that state efforts to
provide resources and time for parenting can markedly
improve the life prospects of children growing up at risk.
In France, for instance, in recent years, tax policy and
income transfers have reduced poverty among the children
significantly, falling from 21 to 5 percent. Similarly, in
the Netherlands, family support policies have lowered the
child poverty rate from 14 to 4 percent. Housing and health
care are two important social policy areas where the
allocation of generous amounts of public money can make a
great deal of difference to the well-being of families with
children. Unlike most European countries, the United States
does not fund these social services at levels that guarantee
universal access.
In France all families with children receive an allowance to
help pay for better housing and all workers have guaranteed
four-week vacation in summer, as well as an annual vacation
bonus, free preschools and medical care. Children in France
are valued as the nation's future. Charles de Gaulle, the
late President of France, once said that motherhood should
be regarded as "a social function similar to military
service for men, that has to be financially supported by
whole community." For me this statement dramatizes the
European view of children as precious national resources
deserving the aid and attention of the community at large.
Most civilized nations have a profound appreciation of
today's little child as the worker and the citizen of the
future. Today's infants are literally the nation's future.
Thus, the health, wealth and security of the nation depend
on ensuring that each baby gets a good start in life and
that societal conditions permit children to flourish. This
sense of collective responsibility for children is the
source of the elaborate social supports that are still so
common in European countries. But not so here in America...
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was
adopted in 1989 and ultimately ratified by 187 countries as
of early 1997. It has broken all records as the most rapidly
and widely ratified human rights treaty in history. This
Convention is an important international agreement that
defines and sets minimum legal and moral standards for the
protection of children. Its uniqueness steams from the fact
that it is the first legally binding international
instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights -
children's civil and political rights as well as their
economic, social and cultural rights - thus giving all
rights equal emphasis. As straightforward as the concept of
children's rights might appear, the fact remains that the
United States (along with such countries as Somalia, Cook
Islands and Oman) is among the few nations that have not yet
ratified the Convention. It stands as a reflection of this
nation's attitude towards its children. Moreover, I think,
it tells us something about the country that pretends to be
the leader of the world...
American government treats parenthood as some kind of
expensive and expendable private hobby. Under the American
extreme capitalist system, children are regarded merely as
forms of private property, with each child's access or right
to things such as health care or education depending solely
on parents' ability to provide these essentials. Moreover,
the American society itself is increasingly hostile to
families with children. Many Americans would rather judge or
punish poor parents than protect children. Many here
applauded the passage of President Clinton's "welfare
reform" bill... Millions of children here are "alienated
from a society that turns a deaf ear to the basic human
needs and longings of every child," points out Marian Wright
Edelman of Children's Defense Fund.
Therefore, poor children in the U.S. are much poorer and
their living conditions are far worse than those of needy
children in other Western industrial nations, according to a
recent survey of eighteen developed countries conducted by
the Luxembourg Income Study, a nonprofit group based in
Luxembourg. Millions of American children are falling deeper
and deeper into poverty. There really is no sense of
security, no sense of safety or opportunity for these
children today, and they do not believe they can have a
better future... For most of them there is no way out of the
nightmare that is the day-to-day existence of poverty...
----------------------------------
Penney Kome, author and journalist
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--
Gail Stewart
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Enter Command:
--
Gail Stewart
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
