Looking ahead to the future

Issue 32

Photo of Andrew Beach

Andrew Beach

Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People speaks exclusively to Teaching Scotland about his new role.

Photo of Tam BaillieTam Baillie has spent his working life helping some of the country's most disadvantaged young people deal with homelessness, neglect and family breakdown.

Now, as Scotland's newly appointed Commissioner for Children and Young People, he is relishing the opportunity to drive forward policies and practices that will not just give those young people more help, but actually address the root causes of their plight.

Improving the lives of children and young people

To achieve this, he said he plans to work alongside everyone who is involved in caring for young people, and he sees a particularly important role for Scotland's teachers. "We have an army of teachers who can be working and advocating on behalf of children, and I will be spending a lot of time talking to educationalists and other professionals who are in daily contact with children.

"With this job, I really hope to be able to bring together my own experiences and those of other people working with young people to make sure we give better life chances to all of our children in Scotland"

"My main role is to try and improve the lives of children and young people in Scotland and to ensure that the Government and local agencies are providing the best for them. It's a very privileged position - I'm accountable to Parliament but I am not employed by any one organisation or agency so that gives me the freedom to speak freely on behalf of children and young people. For me, it's a dream job."

Ambitious plans

Tam took up his post in May, and he has ambitious plans for improving the communication links between his office and young people, including setting up a national consultation process which should start to roll out next year.

He says that electronic communication, such as the Glow national intranet for education, could play an important part in the consultation process, with schools and teachers having a big role in helping with those communications links.

"I am quite clear that schools will be a major feature in these activities. Inevitably there will issues about schools that come up from the consultation, but it will not all be about schools - we know that children have a very wide range of interests and concerns, from what they do in their leisure time to the quality of their family life to climate change, and that is the range of areas that we want to hear about."

Tam said this consultation process would give him the authority to speak on the views of children and young people. "As part of the consultation I plan to tour the country, and schools will play a big part in that. The logistics will be quite complicated, but my intention is to visit every local authority."

Photo of Tam Baillie

Increasing awareness

One of Tam's key tasks is to help increase awareness and understanding of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and he said development of the Curriculum for Excellence is a "wonderful opportunity, where awareness of the convention and children's rights can actually be woven into the curriculum. I want to work alongside teachers to do that, and help develop materials for that."

Article 12 of the convention states that young people have a right to have a say in decisions that affect them. "I think we can help develop a culture in Scotland where the voice of children and young people is more readily sought and listened to, and I think that will be to the betterment of life in schools. If we can make it much more commonplace to take the approach that there is due weight given to what children and young people say, and that they themselves recognise that there are other players and considerations that need to be considered in the school community, then I think that will be a useful contribution.

"There are already many very good things about the way children are treated in Scotland. Most of our children most of the time develop into well-adjusted adults and we need to remember that. But we can't be complacent about it because too many of our children do not enjoy good health, too many of our children experience stressful upbringings, too many of our children don't enter employment or training at the end of their schooling. While we are doing well, we are not doing half as well as we should do compared to the prosperity of the country."

Tackling poverty and inequality

Tam said the two policy areas that were most important to him were addressing poverty and inequality, and providing support to parents during the earliest years of a child's life. "Poverty and inequality are perhaps the most negative influences on children and young people, and unless we have a more equal society we will always experience some negative outcomes, such as high rates of teenage pregnancies, high rates of substance abuse, high rates of mental health problems, high rates of imprisonment. That is why I'll use every opportunity to call for a more equal society.

Early years

"The second key policy area is the importance of early years and the growing body of evidence that demonstrates the link between a child's experiences in the womb and immediately after birth and their cognitive and social development. I see a real urgency for us to shift our emphasis on services towards those early years. In the same way that we have routine health input through health visitors and such like we should have routine support for parents as soon as we know a baby is on the way. We want to get alongside parents to help them and I don't see it as interference. At the moment, the only reason parents get support is when there is a deficit, whereas we should have a more engaged and normalised way of providing support to parents because we could all do with some extra support."

Better life chances  

"What drives me are the experiences of youngsters who for one reason or another are losing out. I have worked with the results of failure to support parents and families and I've seen the impact on young people's lives that very traumatic and distressing circumstances can have.

"With this job, I really hope to be able to bring together my own experiences and those of other people working with young people to make sure we give better life chances to all of our children in Scotland."

A career in caring sets Tam up

Tam has spent 30 years working with children with significant problems. He started out in Glasgow working with young people who were returning from care into the community.

He then worked with young offenders in Nottingham and Liverpool, seeking to provide alternatives to custody.

Returning to Scotland, he managed the first direct access hostel for homeless young people in Glasgow, followed by four years working on the streets of central Glasgow. "By then I was quite experienced but even so I was shocked at the circumstances these young people were in, such as the levels of violence and substance abuse."

From there he moved into policy work and managed a social inclusion partnership in Glasgow before spending six years at Barnado's, where he had responsibility for developing policy on young people.

He was appointed Commissioner for Children and Young People in May.

Related websites

Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People

 

 

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would like to knowthe GTCS view on this scenario. I agree with Steve its a last option!