In response to a recent posting on futurework re Child Welfare in N.S./Cape Breton: Sandra, In the Ottawa community, some of us believe that the situation of children in Canada will be remedied only when the *status* of children is improved. We feel the problem needs to be at its root: the importance we give to children in our society. Improved services for children (and direct income transfers to families with children) are much less effective in improving children's welfare than they could be were children's *status* improved. We need to see children in fresh perspective. We need to see parenting as an important activity and to see services for children as investments and not merely costs. For this reason we have called for a Commission (or a Joint Parliamentary Committee) on the Status of Children. The Commission on the Status of Women, a generation ago, is the antecedent. Your comments on this idea would be welcomed. I attach a posting referring to the status of children in Europe and the United States. It is possible that Canada's children are in a slightly better position than those in the US but this is not the point: the present situation of children in Canada is adequate neither for their own well- being nor for our future. The need for action on their behalf is underlined by recent findings about the importance of a child's experience in the early years of childhood to their later development as adults. The question is what can be done about the situation. Our conclusion was that it needed to be addressed directly as an issue of *status* -- and in a major, national, consciousness-raising, televised enquiry. With best wishes for your efforts in Nova Scotia. Gail Stewart ================= Begin forwarded message ================= From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ("Kome") To: ..., [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (Fwd) Euro parent supports Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:45:04 +0000 Forwarded by a friend, from PNEWS I think. ======= by Valdas Anelauskas So far, the situation in Europe, as we all know, is still quite different from that in the United States. In Western European countries, comprehensive and aggressive social policies have compensated for family disintegration and created conditions that allow children to flourish. What most European nations share is a wider and deeper vision of collective responsibility for children. "In countries as diverse as France, the Netherlands and Sweden, governments intervene on behalf of families, reversing the tide of cumulative causation so that it spirals up instead of down, supporting rather than weakening fragile families, transforming the destinies of vulnerable children," says economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett. A wealth of evidence clearly show that state efforts to provide resources and time for parenting can markedly improve the life prospects of children growing up at risk. In France, for instance, in recent years, tax policy and income transfers have reduced poverty among the children significantly, falling from 21 to 5 percent. Similarly, in the Netherlands, family support policies have lowered the child poverty rate from 14 to 4 percent. Housing and health care are two important social policy areas where the allocation of generous amounts of public money can make a great deal of difference to the well-being of families with children. Unlike most European countries, the United States does not fund these social services at levels that guarantee universal access. In France all families with children receive an allowance to help pay for better housing and all workers have guaranteed four-week vacation in summer, as well as an annual vacation bonus, free preschools and medical care. Children in France are valued as the nation's future. Charles de Gaulle, the late President of France, once said that motherhood should be regarded as "a social function similar to military service for men, that has to be financially supported by whole community." For me this statement dramatizes the European view of children as precious national resources deserving the aid and attention of the community at large. Most civilized nations have a profound appreciation of today's little child as the worker and the citizen of the future. Today's infants are literally the nation's future. Thus, the health, wealth and security of the nation depend on ensuring that each baby gets a good start in life and that societal conditions permit children to flourish. This sense of collective responsibility for children is the source of the elaborate social supports that are still so common in European countries. But not so here in America... The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989 and ultimately ratified by 187 countries as of early 1997. It has broken all records as the most rapidly and widely ratified human rights treaty in history. This Convention is an important international agreement that defines and sets minimum legal and moral standards for the protection of children. Its uniqueness steams from the fact that it is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights - children's civil and political rights as well as their economic, social and cultural rights - thus giving all rights equal emphasis. As straightforward as the concept of children's rights might appear, the fact remains that the United States (along with such countries as Somalia, Cook Islands and Oman) is among the few nations that have not yet ratified the Convention. It stands as a reflection of this nation's attitude towards its children. Moreover, I think, it tells us something about the country that pretends to be the leader of the world... American government treats parenthood as some kind of expensive and expendable private hobby. Under the American extreme capitalist system, children are regarded merely as forms of private property, with each child's access or right to things such as health care or education depending solely on parents' ability to provide these essentials. Moreover, the American society itself is increasingly hostile to families with children. Many Americans would rather judge or punish poor parents than protect children. Many here applauded the passage of President Clinton's "welfare reform" bill... Millions of children here are "alienated from a society that turns a deaf ear to the basic human needs and longings of every child," points out Marian Wright Edelman of Children's Defense Fund. Therefore, poor children in the U.S. are much poorer and their living conditions are far worse than those of needy children in other Western industrial nations, according to a recent survey of eighteen developed countries conducted by the Luxembourg Income Study, a nonprofit group based in Luxembourg. Millions of American children are falling deeper and deeper into poverty. There really is no sense of security, no sense of safety or opportunity for these children today, and they do not believe they can have a better future... For most of them there is no way out of the nightmare that is the day-to-day existence of poverty... ---------------------------------- Penney Kome, author and journalist ---------------------------------- -- Gail Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] Enter Command: -- Gail Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]