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By Brid Featherstone and Helen Evans (February 2004)
Children experiencing maltreatment: who do they turn to? A summary of research and findings (PDF, 31KB)
Who do children 'tell' about their troubles, including their experiences of maltreatment? Who listens to them? What stops them telling? How well are they being served by the formal systems set up to protect them?
Children experiencing maltreatment: who do they turn to? provides a revealing overview of recent research into children and young people 'telling' about their concerns. The report discusses the barriers children encounter when telling about the difficulties they are facing, from their feelings of shame to worries about their confidentiality being breached. Ideas are raised for improving children's provision, protection and participation when faced with difficulties in their lives, particularly maltreatment.
The report provides essential reading for teachers, the police, social services, academics and all other professionals working with children.
Children and young people experience a range of problems and worries in their lives, from concerns about school and their family to severe mental and physical maltreatment and neglect. Although children often use several avenues for dealing with these problems, including family, peer and professional support, it is a shocking fact that many children do not feel they have people they can turn to for support. In situations of maltreatment and abuse this problem is particularly acute. Only a quarter of the people who had experienced sexual abuse as a child told anyone at the time it occurred.
Keeping silent about child abuse can be isolating and stressful for the child. If children do not tell someone when they are being abused, not only do they suffer needlessly in silence but also others continue to be at risk and abuse is not prevented.
At the end of 2003, the NSPCC launched the Someone to turn to campaign which focuses on an issue that has been important to the NSPCC for many years: it encourages children and young people to talk about their problems. The premise of the campaign is that informal or formal 'telling' can help children to cope with their troubles, including maltreatment, and that children should not have to manage on their own.
This literature review demonstrates the need for the NSPCC's Someone to turn to campaign and gives an overview of recent research into children and young people 'telling' about their concerns. The paper addresses the following questions:
The paper raises ideas for children's provision, protection and participation when faced with difficulties in their lives, particularly maltreatment. It examines ideas for altering the informal and formal landscape in which children can be heard and are listened to. More specifically, the paper raises ideas for improving children's access to sources of support and assistance, including the formal child protection system.
Any strategy which emphasises that children should tell about their troubles needs to be located in an understanding of the social relations within which children operate.
There is a range of socially constructed ideas about what children are or should be; how they should behave towards adults; and how adults should behave towards them. These competing ideas about children and childhood inform legal, policy, social and research developments. Currently the idea that childhood is a period of protected development within the family and school appears dominant and taken for granted. However, it ignores the realities of how many children are not protected. Moreover allied assumptions about the importance of maintaining the family as a private space can render children particularly vulnerable. How children are viewed is a contributory factor in the harms they experience. The systems set up to deal with the protection of children may be premised on the same adult assumptions of children's incompetence and inferiority as those which led to their need for protection. This is a stark analysis, but it reminds us that our constructions of children should be explicit and underpin whatever initiatives we advance.
It is important to pay attention to the range of contexts in which children are able or not able to exercise voice, and the kind of relationships which aid or impede this. We need to go beyond children's own practices to the settings and relationships that can enable or disable the production of voice. We need to look at both children's relationships with adults and their relationships with other children.
Most studies in the UK and North America would indicate that the majority of children and young people are satisfied with their lives and it is only small, though significant, proportions (fewer than one in five) who report major unhappiness. Although adults regard bullying, drugs and handling pressure from other young people as more significant issues facing children and young people, research shows that problems concerning children and young people are far more wide reaching.
Young people report that the factors affecting their well being focus mainly on intimate relationships. These problems include:
Other worries include concerns about health, personal appearances, puberty and illegal activities. For females in particular there are concerns about sexual vulnerability including rape and sexual abuse. In recent years there has also been a marked rise in worry about school.
There are variations between children in terms of the subject of their worries and reported levels of worrying. Gender differences appear particularly marked, with girls reporting greater levels of anxiety than boys.
Talking about their problems is the most common coping strategy for children and young people. However, a significant minority say they would not turn to anyone. These children are more likely to use various forms of distraction or avoidance tactics such as listening to music, eating, sleeping, withdrawing and pretending things are fine. Some may become involved in physically aggressive behaviour, crime and substance abuse. Children's use of avoidance tactics is significant because these children are harder to identify and therefore less likely to receive any support.
Children telling about their worries may use informal avenues such as their peers or family, or formal avenues, including teachers, social workers and helplines. The most common people to tell are best friends, parents and siblings. Teachers tend to be the first non-relation cited as a source of support by children. However, whereas younger people are most likely to seek help from parents, other relatives and teachers, young people as they get older increasingly see peers as their main supports. Despite the fact their peers lack experience in problem-solving and have less capacity to actively solve problems, they value young people's empathy and mutual problem-solving abilities.
Any strategy which emphasises that children should tell about their troubles needs to be located in an understanding of the social relations within which children operate.
Barriers to telling are many and varied. They include:
Difficulties with telling may also be compounded by factors such as disability or ethnic and cultural background.
Young people identify three significant issues in relation to accessibility: being able to identify who might be able to help, having the confidence that this person would have the time and desire to help, and that they were appropriately qualified to do so. Children's awareness of formal support agencies seems to be less attuned than adults and children are deterred from contacting formal support agencies because they lack clarity about their roles and/or are aware of the negative image attached to them. Children appear to prefer to share their worries with someone they know very well because they can anticipate their reactions and consequently trust them. Without experience of credible and reliable assurances of confidentiality, many children and young people, it seems, will not trust adults sufficiently to confide in them. Across a range of studies young people feel that informal networks of support (especially friends) can usually be relied upon more than formal agencies to provide confidentiality.
A substantial number of young people feel that enlisting adult support of any kind is pointless. It is significant that less than half of children and young people and just over half of adults agree that adults listen to children and young people and act on what they hear. This brings up some important issues about children's perceptions of adults and the unequal power relationship between young people and adults. Lack of empathy from adults was remarked upon as a significant issue for some children, as children considered that adults could either minimise or over react to issues. Children need to feel they will be believed when they share their concerns. Trust in informal and formal sources of support is of utmost importance. Children want to be, and should be, listened to and treated with respect. They have a right to participate in decisions that affect them. This is particularly important when addressing cases of maltreatment. If children are to disclose, they must have confidence that their disclosures will be treated seriously and appropriately.
Children also worry that their confidentiality may be breached and that they may find themselves in circumstances beyond their control. The issue of confidentiality is complex and can encompass a range of possibilities from that what is told is to be kept a secret from anyone else, to that what is told should not be told to anyone who might be in a position to take life-changing action, such as removing the child or another family member. It would appear that many children and young people are particularly concerned about the latter. Furthermore, such worries are strongly connected with how such action is carried out. Central to the child protection system have been concerns that children are at risk if professionals do not communicate with each other about the child's/children's situation in order to build up a full picture of the strengths and risks in their environments and for these reasons it is considered that confidentiality acts as an impediment to the protection of children. However, without experience of credible and reliable assurances of confidentiality, many children and young people, it seems, will not trust adults sufficiently to confide in them.
A key factor deterring children and young people from reporting their problems through formal routes concerns their position in the child protection system, and their lack of control over defining and naming what happens to them and what they want to happen to them as a result of disclosing. It is evident from the research that children recollect problems and adverse experiences of their involvement in every stage of the child protection system. Many felt that they were given few choices and little information, and the child protection process was experienced as outside their control, with adults taking over. While the child's right to protection may be being acted upon, it can be at the expense of their right to participation and the child's ongoing support needs. Children see a need for improvement in how they are treated with their personal needs and wishes accorded attention, and are not sidelined by a professional preoccupation with processes and procedures. However, in spite of their many concerns it is important to note that nearly all children and young people involved in the system said that they had few regrets about speaking out.
Another factor that contributes to children telling or not telling about their problems is whether or not they recognise and define what they have experienced as abusive. Young people can experience severe neglect and physical and psychological abuse without recognising these as such. Recognition tends to happen in adolescence. This has implications for children and the abuse stopping, particularly for young children, unless someone else discovers it. The abuse itself potentially contributes further to children's isolation, compounding their inability to access help. Therefore, the very children who may need help most may be those who have the least resources to access it.
Public attitudes can also impede children telling, especially in situations of sexual abuse. For example, while awareness of sexual abuse has increased, it is still generally perceived as a female issue. Society needs to recognise that sexual abuse affects men and boys too. Dominant constructions of masculinity which prohibit the display of weakness or emotional vulnerability need to be addressed.
The research findings therefore point to the need for the following:
Featherstone, B. and Evans, H. (2004) Children experiencing maltreatment: who do they turn to? London: NSPCC.
ISBN: 1842280457
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