'I lost my job because I was a man playing with children'
Philip Bennison, 55, from Cambridge, has been married for 33 years to Jane and has six children and eight grandchildren. He ran a printing business for 20 years, did youth work for 25 years and completed nine courses in caring for children. Here he tells Gill Swain why he believes men are right to avoid working with children
Sunday June 19, 2005
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1509786,00.html
I find Ruth Kelly's plans to open hundreds of after-school clubs and the government's pleas for more men to work in them a complete joke. What happened to me when I was a playleader demonstrates why men steer clear of these jobs and why they are right to do so.
There could have been few men better qualified for the part-time job I took at an after-school club for four-to-11-year-olds. I was always a very active father and, when mine grew up, I missed that involvement.
I adored the job, but the restrictions imposed on me became unbearable. I have never been accused of abusing a child, but I was judged to be "too tactile". I lost my job, in effect, for being a man playing with children.
I started in September 2002 and the first year was wonderful. I taught skipping, roller-skating, balancing along the tops of walls and playing the electric organ. Parents appreciated the presence of a male playleader because children relate to you differently.
I learnt in training about "inappropriate touching", being told that piggybacks were all right, but men shouldn't take children on their laps. Children would want to climb on my knee but I'd immediately stand up and push them away.
Last spring the committee told me I was "getting too close" to some of the children. They said I must stop holding children around the waist and only take their hands. It wasn't easy teaching children to skate that way and it was unpleasant to feel I was being watched and under suspicion.
One day a girl of nine ran up crying, saying she had been bullied by two boys. She leant her head on my chest and I put a comforting arm around her. For that I was given a written warning. Apparently, when she put her head on my chest it was "child-led touching", which was acceptable, but when I responded it was "adult-led touching", which was not. I was told that if it happened again I should fetch a female playworker.
Piggybacks were banned. I was not allowed to tickle children, pick them up or swing them around, no matter how much they pleaded. When I pointed out that women colleagues often sat with children on their laps, I was told it was a fact of life that males were seen as more of a risk to children.
I felt I was being victimised for being a man. I didn't think it inappropriate to hold children around the waist, but I agreed to adopt a "no touch" policy and withdrew from the children to concentrate on office work.
One day last June, I was suspended. Someone had allegedly overheard two children talking about me and had made a report to the police. I have never been told who it was, who the children were, or what they said.
The police never contacted me and when I rang them after six weeks they said they had no record of any investigation. It's impossible to defend yourself when you don't know what the charge is or who is accusing you.
But the fact a report was said to have been made led Ofsted to tell the committee to ensure I was always supervised when I returned to work last September.
I was asked to resign but refused. They produced a document citing "causes for dismissal", containing statements from eight people relating to incidents which they said supported their case.
Some of them were true, such as when I cheered up a girl of five who was miserable on her first day by holding her hands and helping her jump. One statement said the girl's skirt was flying up, "clearly displaying her underwear". The mother had given me a "look", but I didn't stop.
Other incidents were equally minor or could not have happened. A boy told his mother he'd seen me with a girl on my knee and my fingers in her trouser waist-band. I had never taken a child on my lap.
I was devastated and wanted to fight, but my union told me it was impossible to prove a negative. Very reluctantly, I agreed to resign with compensation of £1,390 and was given a reference which said I had "difficulty in complying with the club's child-protection policy".
I feel very angry and stigmatised, but also helpless because a man in this situation gets no support.
In training I was often the only man among 20 women, but now there is one more man lost to childcare because I will never work with children again. You don't have to do anything wrong or be near children. Being a man in that job makes you vulnerable.
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Schools call on more men to be childcarers
Amelia Hill, education correspondent
Sunday June 19, 2005
Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1509785,00.html
The government plans a fivefold increase in the number of male childcare workers to help realise its plans for 'dawn-to-dusk' schooling. National advertising campaigns tailored to men and male-only training courses will be used to recruit the extra staff needed for the move announced last week by the Secretary of State for Education, Ruth Kelly, that will enable schools to open from 8am to 6pm by 2010.
Around 163,000 new childcare workers will be required to provide pre- and after-school supervision, but some warn there will have to be a massive shift in public attitudes towards men working with children to encourage more men to apply.
'Once men have joined the childcare workforce, they tend to stay just as long as women. It is persuading them to make the step of joining in the first place that is the massive hurdle,' said Charlie Owen from the Thomas Coram Research Unit, co-author of Men In Childcare. 'The image of the profession as women's work is the biggest hurdle, compounded by the failure of careers advisers to suggest it to young men and the fear of accusations of abuse.'
Many local authorities are already planning to attract men through imaginative campaigning, such as advertising at football matches and by organising free, men-only seminars, mentoring sessions and road shows with slogans such as 'Men who dare, childcare' and 'Cool2Care'.
Some of the campaigns already attempted, however, have proved unsuccessful: fewer than five men contacted the authorities in Hereford recently after the council placed advertisements for male childcare workshops around the local football club.
'At present there are nearly 300,000 people working in childcare and 98 per cent are women,' said a spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills. 'Even in the most progressive childcare countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, men only make up around 10 per cent of the childcare workforce. Nevertheless, this is a figure which we aspire to.
'We will run a campaign to attract more staff into childcare and we will be especially appealing to men. It will be emphasising how much men have to offer.
'The sector needs to draw on a wider pool of talent if it is to ensure that children receive the best quality early-years provision. A diverse workforce enhances children's experiences and raises their awareness of others as role models. This is especially important given that many children are living in a family home without their father.'
The target has, however, been rejected by some politicians for not being ambitious enough. 'The extended schools are an excellent opportunity to involve more men, and having quotas is a great way of achieving that,' said Keith Vaz, MP for Leicester East. 'An excellent target would be 50 per cent, but we should not accept less than one third.'
Jack O'Sullivan, co-founder of Fathers Direct, points to the failure of the previous government target of tripling the number of male childcare workers by 2004.
'When they failed to reach that target, people realised how massively we are going to have to rethink our employment policies if this is to become a reality,' he said. 'But it is definitely possible to achieve this target. With men being more involved in bringing up their children, many are realising that a career in childcare is something they could enjoy.'
Daniel Brand, 25, works as a nursery assistant at the Play Pit nursery in Felixstowe, Suffolk. He believes many more men would come forward if they were approached in the right way.
'More men would be interested in it than currently dare to come forward if they could be persuaded it isn't a girls' profession their mates will laugh at,' he said. 'I couldn't be happier though: I recommend this career to all my mates every chance I get.'
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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