Next week, more than 200,000 children and young people will take part in the "Big Ballot", an exercise organised by the Ombudsman for Children. The Big Ballot is the last phase of a major three-part initiative - the Voice Project. The first part involved a literature search by Dr Ursula Kilkelly, resulting in the report Obstacles to the Realisation of Children's Rights in Ireland. Published in August 2007, one might occasionally quibble with Dr Kilkelly's analysis, but overall, it is a comprehensive and valuable catalogue of issues affecting children. Dr Kilkelly identified major areas of concern
Phase two of the project involved these areas being shortlisted by a panel of 150 young people. The five areas chosen were education; having a voice; play and recreation; family and care; and health, wealth and material wellbeing.
Phase three involves more than 1,000 schools, Youthreach centres, Traveller training centres, Fás students and home-educated young people. There are five sets of teaching materials prepared by teachers and other education stakeholders, and while I have only looked closely at the ones aimed at second-level Civil Social and Political Eduction students, they are well-designed and innovative.
All of this is designed to culminate in the ballot, a poll that will allow children from four to 18 to vote in a referendum style event. Results will be announced on November 20th. Each child or young person will tick one of the five areas as his or her preference for what the Ombudsman for Children, Emily Logan, should prioritise in her work for the next three years.
God knows that anything that provides a voice for children is to be welcomed in this society. The past few weeks have provided plenty of depressing reading on children's issues. There has been a massive debate this week, for example, on the ending of some subvention for childcare. It is claimed that many parents, mostly mothers, will not be able to continue to work outside the home.
The loss of an income will be a very serious matter for many children who live either in poverty or on the borderline. However, there is another uncomfortable reality, that the debate about childcare is conducted almost entirely in terms of increasing adults' participation in the paid workforce. The fact is that no child, if consulted, would wish to spend her baby or toddler years from 8am to 6.30pm in the company of paid carers, no matter how kind. Yet the child's perspective almost never enters the frame. And I speak as someone who has used paid childcare.
Not to mention information gained under the Freedom of Information Act that shows that from 2005-2006, many serious complaints were lodged with the HSE about childcare facilities, including one mother who found her child wandering outside unsupervised and wearing only a T-shirt when she arrived early to collect him.
For some children in the care of the State, things are even worse. A Health Information and Quality Authority report on the placement of children under 12 in residential care would make you wonder if we are capable of learning anything from the past. Not that these children are in the equivalent of industrial schools, but many children, including some as young as five, end up in care unnecessarily for long periods due to a lack of active care planning or searching for alternatives by social workers or managers.
This week, too, it was reported that asylum-seeking children separated from their families are being housed in accommodation centres that fail to meet legal minimum standards of care or safety. Some 328 children have disappeared over the past five years from hostels and residential centres, and no-one in authority seems to know where they are, or in what conditions they are living.
There is no doubt that many children in this country endure dire conditions. Listening to Children: Children's stories of Domestic Violence, by Fergus Hogan and Máire O'Reilly, contains interviews with 22 children aged between five and 21. Children tell of coming downstairs to find their mother's blood and clumps of hair all over the place, or seeing their mother hit with a car jack or, in one case, a mother hitting a father who never hit back.
There is a drastic lack of child-centred domestic violence services. Even women's refuges, which do sterling work, add to the trauma of young adolescent boys by barring those aged over 13 on the grounds that it might be difficult for women to be faced with a male of that age. Imagine being already scarred from witnessing domestic violence, and then being firmly identified as the enemy once you seek refuge, to the extent that you will not be accommodated with your family.
These are just a few of the issues facing Irish and foreign-born children. The Ombudsman for Children's Office (OCO) has an honourable record of both listening to and providing a voice for children. The Ombudsman was interviewed for her position by children and young people, and there is an active advisory panel comprised of children from all sectors of society.
There is a great buzz and excitement around the Big Ballot. At second level, there is an emphasis on the young people running the ballot themselves. However, in the final vote each child chooses just one of five areas which are so broad one wonders how meaningful the exercise is. Suppose the children of the country decide that family and care should be the ombudsman's priority.
Does that mean that Emily Logan should spend her energy on trying to influence policy on some of the dreadful situations faced by children, or on trying to ensure that children in less awful situations get to spend more time with their parents?
It would have been great if each of the five areas had had sub-sections, so that there would have been a clearer idea where young people's concerns are really focused. Having said that, this ballot is but one small part of efforts by the OCO to facilitate children's participation in decisions that affect their lives, and should be judged as such. If it makes us wake up even a little to children's legitimate right to be heard, it will have been a worthwhile exercise.