Dear Mr Miliband (or May I call you Ed?)
I really do appreciate the fact that it must be incredibly
hard to lead a political party that is seeking to win the next General Election
– particularly when you seem to have so many people sitting in ‘the wings’
merely waiting for you to make a less than perfect decision or say something
that might be scurrilously misinterpreted by the media. I am a social worker and I have lived with
this type of pressure for the last 40 years – less publicly certainly but
perhaps on even more critical issues than at times you find yourself talking
about.
You probably don’t even know that I have written to you a
couple of times and even – despite my rather aged fear of social media –
tweeted to you? I feel sure that given the pressure under which you work there
are other people who deal with your correspondence and as such I wonder if
perhaps this open letter might find it’s way into your busy schedule rather
more effectively than my previously and self evidently poor attempts to engage
you. Please don’t feel that I am targeting you for special attention or
criticism – I have written and tweeted to many of your Shadow Cabinet colleagues
too and haven’t heard from them either.
I need to say that I listened to your speech this week and I
thought it sounded rather splendid. I agreed with so much of what you said
about inequality in our society; how those who appear to need help most do at
times seem to be the ones who struggle to get it and how we seem at times to be
a society in which the chasm between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ appears to
be growing faster than the polar ice sheets are shrinking. Bravo!
I would though like to mention a group in our society who my
friends (or should I say like minded individuals in relation to the group I am
referring to? Luckily I seem to have well over 8000 who have formally declared
their allegiance) and I feel you really could do with thinking about.
This group are comprised of children and those approaching
adulthood - well, in chronological terms anyway – they have all had really bad
starts in life and have been brought up through at least some of their
childhood by you, me and the rest of our society, their Corporate Parents. ‘My
group’ are children in residential care. Great kids, wonderful individuals who now
and for the last two or three generations have been disadvantaged by our
society.
Regardless of how busy you must be I am certain that you
have been aware of the discussions around ‘staying put’. You may well not have
heard about Every Child Leaving Care Matters but that’s OK. Last December the
Government announced that children in foster care would be able to have the
option to stay with their foster carers
until they were twenty-one years of age – Great news we all thought and
waited for the rest of the announcement which would surely ( we wrongly
thought) extend that option to kids in residential care. It didn’t come, it
still hasn’t come. What do you think about that Mr M? We know many of your
colleagues in Labour's parliamentary group are shocked, disappointed or horrified
at this inequality as they have told us so, though it might be considered
invidious if we were to name them. We would, however, ask that if you do win
that General Election in May 2015 and are looking to fill your Cabinet that you
look toward Mr Bill Esterson as someone who seems to understand more than most
about children’s social care.
We have only one request to put to you. Will you please say
that you support the recommendations of the Education Select Committee ‘Into
independence, not out of care: 16 plus care options’ and specifically that the
option for ‘staying put’ in their placement should be available to all children
not just those in foster placements.
Obviously I could go on and there is so much more I would
like to tell you about children in care but I realise that you are busy. If you
do want to learn a little more about children in care I know many such children
and adults who have survived or worked with Care survivors who would be
delighted to talk to you.
If you could just take 30 seconds to do as I ask I would be
grateful to and respect you.
Best wishes
Ed Nixon
On behalf of the ECLCM Campaign
No comments:
Post a Comment