All Of Our Dignity

I will never forget Antonio. His abandonment and isolation was so complete, nobody knew how old he was. We guessed 8 or 9. He lay in a cot, lifeless and listless in a dark corner. The lack of animation wasn’t an outcome of severe disability and blindness but of extreme neglect. The institution “housed” around 150 adults and children. It wreaked of human waste and human disregard.

I gently brushed my index finger against his palm and he responded with a tight grip as his face broke into a toothless smile. His entire life had been lived adrift from love, attention or even basic human acknowledgment .

Antonio was one of many children who inspired a campaign to end placement of children in large scale institutions in North Macedonia. Children like Antonio could be cared for within family settings in foster care or small group homes providing family-based care, connection and stimulation in community settings.

The plan was knocked off script when locals in the town of Timjanik protested a mayor’s request to accommodate a small group home . When we travelled to Timjanik, along with the minister of social welfare, to find out why, we were confronted with a three hour volley of abuse and hostility from several hundred protesters. There was violence in the air. People watching this back in the capital on live news were horrified. Urban influencers began lambasting the protesters as primitive, callous and hillbilly.

But we listened carefully to the protesters. Timjanik was a small town in decline. It could have been in Oklahoma or South Yorkshire. Locals had once been been dependent on industry and agriculture. Abandoned plant a forlorn testimony to that loss. For generations their income and opportunities had been on a modest, upward trajectory. They feared their children would have a more precarious future and a lower quality of life than the one they had enjoyed. Their list of unfulfilled promises was longer and more depressing than a Radiohead song: unfixed roads, collapsing schools and no pre-school. They longed for a voice for their plight , alongside all the campaigns that came from the capital for migrants, sexual minorities and people with disability. Like Antonio, in their own way, they felt abandoned.

But why did these two different forms of deprivation and abandonment compete with each other? Besides humanitarian crisis, there are three catastrophic burdens in childhood that drive lifelong inequality:

Discrimination or Exclusion based on race, gender or disability for example. It creates barriers that exclude one from opportunities, justice and often the basic safety that others take for granted.
Income Poverty through a lack of the basic means to survive, thrive and access opportunities to reach one’s potential.
Emotional Poverty through the absence of the basic nurturing and protective parental relationships due to violence, neglect or other forms of dysfunctional parenting (also known as childhood adversity). This is often transmitted inter-generationally and unintentionally.

If you look at Black Lives Matter, Hillbilly Ellergy and Good Will Hunting through the lens of identity, they seem so different to each other. When we look at them through the lens of fairness and dignity for all, they seem the same. It feels like we lost a sense of ourselves as a whole, we are looking for the differences and barriers. This fragmentation polarises us into differing sides in a counter-productive culture war.

People in places like Timjanik perceive human rights champions as selective. But human rights are supposed to be universal. Those living with rural and town poverty feel politically and economically abandoned. They get the bum deal in a painful transition from an industrial to a knowledge economy. This transition has concentrated opportunity in large cities at the expense of everywhere else. Human rights champions scratch their heads as populists have hoovered up support away from these knowledge economy hubs . Despite the best intentions, we human rights proponents bear some responsibility for the growth in populism and polarisation

At an unrelated press conference the day after our visit, a journalist asked the Minister and I about Timjanik. We were expected to echo public condemnation of the protesters behaviour. Instead we articulated their local grievances with empathy and said we understood why they protested though did not agree with them.

Within two hours our inboxes were flowing with warm messages from Timjanik. They had never expected to be listened to or for their story to be relayed across news channels. They needed to be acknowledged and heard. To understand that we think they matter too. From a collective refusal to host the small group home just 24 hours prior, it was now back on.

From that moment on, we numerically balanced our public facing advocacy. We gave equal attention to the situation of the overall population and to those living with one or more of the three catastrophic burdens . If we did a public event on exclusion of Roma minority or children with disability one month, we made sure we also had an event on poverty or a population-wide issue like education or health the next. This struck us as fair, just and effective and rebuilt public ownership of human rights as a universal principle.

A few weeks after the protest, the government agreed a strategy to transfer all children out of large scale institutions through family re-unification, foster care and small group homes. The strategy “Timjanik” in testimony to what we had all learnt from those events.

On October 15th last year, the last remaining children were removed from large scale institutions. The situation has improved for children in state care in North Macedonia, but there is still so much to do to prevent exclusion, poverty and adversity in the lives of children the world over. We can only do this when everyone finds their place in a shared story of universal,and not selective, human rights. We need to “re-universalize” our human rights story.

And the child in the story? Antonio is out of the cot, living in a small group home with adequate care and stimulation and for the first time in his life, he is enrolled in school. Today in Timjanik, the locals visit with cakes and play with the children at the small group home. Just ordinary people in an ordinary place with the extraordinary courage to reimagine a better tomorrow in a world that protects all of our dignity.

COVID-19, Violence & The Need To Act with Urgency

Amidst the fear and uncertainty of the Covid19 lockdown in China, 26 year old Lele experienced something more terrifying than the virus itself. Her husband fashioned a weapon from a kitchen stool and beat her semi-conscious as she held her 11 month old baby in her arms. There was nowhere to go, no services to support, no possibility to flee. She had to spend several more weeks with her abuser before she could reach safety.

On the other side of the world in Greenland, the capital city banned alcohol sales to prevent growing child abuse during lockdown. In India the were 92,000 calls to a child abuse helpline in the first 11 days of lockdown. France experienced a 34% increase in abuse helpline calls by children and an even bigger increase in the number of peers and school mates calling on behalf of friends. . As closed schools and stay at home orders spread, so did the risk of abuse.This pattern played out across the world, in three ways:

The first is the way that lockdown piles pressure on households . Even the calmest, securely attached and ‘child development-aware’ parents are being tested by ‘pandemic-parenting’. Often they are working in uncertain jobs while teaching ‘cabin fever kids’ while adapting to loss of space and privacy. But most will not suddenly become abusive or neglectful. In more volatile families however, this stress can spill over into violence or exacerbate existing abuse patterns. The biggest beneficiaries of #StayAtHome are the serial abusers who practice coercive control and other forms of psychological aggression. the lockdown increase the likelihood of adverse childhood experiences.

Secondly, the means of reporting severe child abuse or neglect have been dramatically reduced. According to the US Department of Health & Human Services child protection interventions are initiated by reports from teachers, social workers or nurses. Social distancing measures have reduced reporting. From the 1980s onwards increased reporting of family violence was a major mark of success and progress in protecting the rights of women and children. Momentarily, reporting is in decline.

The third issue, is complex but equally serious. In normal circumstances less than 1 or 2 % of children are subject to interventions by social workers. Yet Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) research across populations suggests between 15 and 20% of children are affected by chronic, multiple forms of abuse, neglect or dysfunctional parenting at home. This 15 to 20% of children are now in a state of isolation. Children have a biological imperative to have protective, soothing relationships with an adult and are simply not built to be isolated. When a positive relationship at home is absent, the child interprets it at risk. It over-activates their stress response system which wreaks havoc on all aspects of healthy development. Unaddressed it can lead to catastrophic health and wellbeing outcomes throughout life. But when the stress is buffered and soothed by a healthy relationship with a teacher, grandparent or friend and the child is made to feel they matter on an individual level-then the recovery can begin. Right now around the world, hundreds of millions of children have been cut off from those relationships.

This is deeply distressing. Accounts of childhood maltreatment often recall a despairing loneliness and unbearable slowness. Loneliness when the parent who should soothe the pain, is actually the source of that pain. Slowness during long pauses of waiting for a violent outburst or scarce moments of maybe feeling loved. The isolation of the pandemic amplifies this pain exponentially. It is malleable with no end in sight. Relationships with teachers, grandparents and friends were cut off suddenly with no date for restoration.

We need to act with urgency on all three issues. Governments and communities could appoint ministers or local leaders to coordinate child wellbeing during lockdown. A priority must be engagement with parents on managing stress, home schooling and positive discipline, tailored to lockdown conditions. Online and media platforms could be adapted to facilitate a conversation with families and disseminate pandemic-specific parenting tips, similar to the global UNICEF parenting hub. Social protection and housing support must be adapted to reduce the stress on vulnerable families. Behavioural insights and technology innovations should be used to understand how we can best support parents and protect children.

Expanded helplines and channels that enable neighbours and friends to report maltreatment anonymously need to be provided . Equally we need to encourage extended family and friends to maintain regular communication with children in lockdown with abusive or neglectful parents. One of the most moving stories of the pandemic so far is the upsurge in calls by friends of victims reporting maltreatment in France.

Innovation and adaptation could help teachers and social workers restore normal levels of communication with children, despite lockdown. If they are not giving lessons, can they call each child for five minutes? These measures need to be population-wide and not just targeted to 1-2% of children who are child protection cases.

Decades ago, it became normal to ensure every child was immunised against deadly disease with a vaccine. In the future we could hope for a world were every child is buffeted from trauma by a calm and predictable adult connection. A world in which we improve prospects for parenting in every family at the earliest possible stage and maltreatment is managed and prevented as a part of routine public health . All we can do now is demand protection for Lele, her baby and millions of abused children and women locked down, unreported and isolated around the world as part of our immediate and shared struggle to defeat Covid19

The Networking of Trauma

Preventing Organised Crime and Other Exploitation Groups Preying on Vulnerable Children

Violent extremists, gangsters and groomers have a simple recruitment strategy. They network trauma. They can spot a vulnerable teenager from 1000 yards. It can be easy to pull them in by sating a desire for belonging or through initial kindness. But the intention eventually is always exploitation.

An Irish security expert once shared three observations about the Northern Ireland conflict. Firstly that at any given moment during the conflict, there were only ever a few dozen people who could actually kill someone. Secondly that they usually came from traumatic homes with fathers who had also killed. He concluded that it seemed political extremists and organised criminals knew exactly how to identify and recruit such people. I have seen similar recruitment strategies in lawless or conflict-affected countries from Afghanistan to Bosnia. It always has devastating consequences.

It’s not black and white. There are economic and structural determinants of violence too. Most people affected by childhood trauma do not turn to crime or violence. But the world is waking up to the impact of childhood trauma as a driver of recurring violence. It occurs in cycles. Data from Wales show that adults affected by chronic childhood trauma were respectively 14, 15 and 16 times more likely to be a victim or perpetrator of violence or use crack cocaine than others. Data on consequences of chronic childhood trauma is similar across continents

There is an underpinning neurobiology to this cycle. Children are dependent on a strong attachment with a parent. If the attachment is absent due to neglect or violence, a child will see it as a serious threat. That threat chronically activates the stress response system. It distorts the way they perceive danger, they way they see themselves as well as their attachments to others. If families, schools or communities cannot provide soothing connections to heal the trauma, the child enters adolescence and adulthood with unresolved chronic trauma. This leaves them extremely vulnerable to exploitation and with limited prospects for learning or finding a lifeline to a better future.

All of this leads to an obvious question for anyone reading this blog. In my neighbourhood are there more forces trying to exploit or trying to prevent the inter-generational cycle of violence? Prevention services, usually delivered through the health system help new parents develop a secure attachment with their child. That attachment is the best weapon against neglect and violence. it can help heal the parent at the same time as protecting the child. In an ideal world these services would be provided globally. As noted elsewhere this type of prevention provides the greatest return on investment for the public purse. No other intervention does more to prevent poor life outcomes including in mental and physical health, crime and productivity.

Response services provide a second chance to children who have already been traumatised. In Trauma-informed schools for example, the teacher creates a calming environment and a caring connection. This ensures every child in school is safe, seen, secure….and most importantly soothed. The four Ss feature in the excellent “The Whole Brained Child” by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. In a Trauma-informed school, the teacher makes the child feel they matter as an individual. Many who come from traumatic childhoods have been rescued by a teacher who did exactly that. Positive relationships and connections build resilience that help teenagers navigate away from poor decisions that bring bad life outcomes. And if a child is approached by a Fagin type exploitation group, they feel they can tell the teacher

A second important question is what is being done in my neighbourhood to prevent the cynical “networking of trauma” by exploitation groups.

Both in the UK and the US, Trauma-informed practice is also being adapted to policing and justice sectors. One of my favourite champions of this is Detective Superintendent Stan Gilmore of Thames Valley Police in the UK. He observed those arrested for “County-Lines” drug trafficking were almost always in their mid teens. He started to see them as much as exploited and vulnerable youngsters as offenders . Instead of pursuing a custodial sentence, the emphasis was placed upon diversion from a potential life-cycle of crime. This included curfews and supervision orders that stopped the gangsters reaching the child . It cut off their source. It also referred the child to services to help address the underlying trauma. The whole approach switches the question to the child from “What did you do?” to “What happened to you?

To me this is intelligent and effective policing. It recognises that the foundations of organised crime are built on networking trauma and vulnerability and if you prevent that networking, you can break the cycle. Childhood trauma is not an excuse for crime, but to effectively reduce crime we need to be trauma-informed.

Just imagine how societies would flourish if we not only prevented the networking of trauma by exploitation groups, but also prevented or mitigated the trauma itself. We now have enough evidence and knowledge to work towards this goal. We just need the political will and the resources

“What You Have Been and Still are for Me”

The Power of Teaching

I have a favourite teacher story and it goes like this. As a child, Albert Camus was asked by his impoverished single mother to quit school and start work. Camus’s teacher visited the family home and convinced her to let young Albert continue his education. The teacher’s name was Louis Germain.

Albert Camus went on to become one of the 20th centuries most important novelists. Many decades after leaving school and upon being awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature, Albert Camus wrote a letter to Mr Germain entitled “What You Have Been and Still are for Me”. He wrote “Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.”

How many of us have life journeys that are profoundly enriched and transformed by the hand of a teacher? Sometimes as children we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders through poverty, abuse or neglect. In all of that fragility and wrenching pain, it often takes a teacher to make us believe we matter and to unlock the opportunities to exercise curiosity, collaboration and cultivate character

Two thirds of us have had teachers who made a difference in our lives, according to research from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Yet the research also shows that these teachers are outliers in their own school settings. Even the university professors who produce the most impactful teachers are outliers in their faculties. Our education systems do not incentivise modern-day Mr Germains at all

The research now shows what common sense should have always told us. children only learn from teachers they love. We once saw reasoning as being the opposite to emotion, but neuroscience tells us something different. It is only through a deep network of relationships, belonging and collaboration in school and life that we can have an ecosystem for learning. To motivate and organise ourselves for learning, we have to engage the emotions. Emotions are not compartmentalised in a different part of our brain while we deploy rationality and reason to absorb facts.

In any given classroom of 25 children, at least 4 or 5 may experience multiple forms of severe trauma at home. Such trauma chronically activates their stress response system. This doesn’t switch off when they enter the classroom. An attuned teacher in a trauma-informed classroom can soothe the stress response system. They can help the child to learn, trust, connect and build resilience and attachment. And here is where the healing, and therefore the ability to learn, begins. Trauma-informed schooling is potentially one of the most impactful strategies for reducing child trauma in general.

A few years ago attended a lecture by Harvard Professor Tony Wagner on outlier teachers who help kids recover from a broken start . It inspired me to track down a teacher who had transformed my life. At 15 I lived in state care in an inner-city area blighted by drugs and crime. I had been kicked out of three schools and had wound up in an education centre for those at the very end of the line. In every sense, my life prospects were incredibly bleak.

Jan Rapport was an idealistic teacher working in the most difficult of education settings. She gave me a chance. She is the only adult I could remember having a real conversation with during my entire childhood. She instilled in me a lifelong passion for learning and particularly for literature. My imagination soared and I began to see a different path forward. I now know, it was probably the calming attachment and connection, the relationship itself that made the most difference.

When I the school at 16, I lost contact with her. When I finally found Ms Rapport over 25 years later there was so much to talk about that we didn’t really know where to begin. She was now a pensioner and I was well….er…middle aged. We caught up on what we had done with our lives. Nobody expects someone from my background to have a job in the UN, though somehow she thought I would turn out okay. I needed to tell her that she saved me-that I would not be here and I wouldn’t have done all of this without her. I didn’t have any words in my vocabulary that could adequately convey how grateful I am. I was in awe to look into the eyes of this person who saw things in me that I did not see in myself and helped me beat a pathway to places I could have never imagined. A teacher. The power of a teacher.

It is often said that when you are teacher you don’t know where you legacy will end. Louis German commitment stayed with Albert Camus through his life. A part of it passed onto to others through his work, friendships and family. Imagine if we could deliver a global legacy on teaching. If we could take what inspirational, life-changing teachers have and dispense it through entire teaching workforces. Every teacher emotionally present for children. Every child made to feel like they belong and matter as an individual. Every school dedicated to learning, curiosity and trauma-informed healing. We could and we should celebrate the power of teaching and harness it to touch the lives of every child.