Tread softly because you tread on my dreams’ - childhood realities and experience

idence of inequalities for children in health, educational opportunities and other life chances is extensive. Despite this, many policies and services have been based on an assumption that families generally have the resources needed to promote children’s well-being. Extreme cases of harm have had an undue influence on policy, focusing attention on individual situations and obscuring the links between disadvantage and a range of harm to children.
Accounts of the experience of children and young people in contact with health and welfare services suggest that they do not always find responses to their needs and problems effective. Some have felt interventions to be insensitive, intrusive and damaging.
Whilst it may not be possible from an adult perspective to comprehend fully the realities and experience of individual children, it is possible to give space and encouragement to them to communicate and to participate in plans for their own and other young people’s futures. Unique experience can be related to wider realities such as living in an area with high crime rates, many child protection referrals, housing problems. Connections can be made between economic, social, cultural and interpersonal influences. Current government emphasis on combating social exclusion, alongside the duty of local authorities to develop comprehensive children’s services plans, provides a unique opportunity to review understandings of childhood and try to ensure that these inform future policies and services.

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