Children, Spirituality, Religion and Social Work

Margaret Crompton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351952309
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Attention to children's spiritual and religious well-being is required by legislation, Government guidelines and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989. Margaret Crompton has worked with and on behalf of children as a social worker, lecturer and writer. Her recent publications include Children and Counselling and a training pack, Children, Spirituality and Religion. This jargon-free book develops and adds to those ideas and materials, focusing on everyday practice in social work, education and health care. Reference is made to several religions and to ideas about spirituality, which is not necessarily associated with religious belief and observance. Practitioners' experience is also cited. Topics include, spiritual and religious rights, spiritual development, needs and well-being, implications of religious beliefs and observances for daily life and care, abuse and neglect, death, including suicide and abortion and communication, including stories and play.

Part 1
Spiritual and religious rights

1 Spiritual and religious rights

Rhetoric or reality?

The way a society treats children reflects not only its qualities of compassion and protective caring but also its sense of justice, its commitment to the future and its urge to enhance the human condition for coming generations.

Javier Pérez de Cuellar (Secretary-general of the UN) made this statement in 1987 during the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 1989, after adoption of the Convention, he said: 'the UN has given the global community an international instrument of high quality protecting the dignity, equality and basic human rights of the world's children' (quoted in UNICEF, 1995). In 1990 the World Summit on Children was attended by 71 heads of state and government (including the UK) who pledged: 'The wellbeing of children requires political action at the highest level. We are determined to take that action. We ourselves make a solemn commitment to give high priority to the rights of children' (quoted in CRDU, 1994, p.xi). However, seven years later, Caroline Hamilton (Director of the Children's Legal Centre) found that 'Much of the rhetoric on children's rights is just that, rhetoric' (Hamilton 1996, p.l).

Although the Convention was ratified by the UK in 1991, in 1994 the Children's Rights Development Unit (CRDU) commented:

It would be good to report that in the UK the obligations of ratification were being taken seriously, that there was an open commitment to giving high priority to the best interests of children throughout the political agenda. Such a priority would require a careful audit of the state of UK children and the law, policy and practice which affects them, and energetic implementation of the duty to the Convention to make its contents widely known, 'by appropriate and active means', to adults and children alike. Discrimination in children's access to basic social, economic, health, and education rights would be openly acknowledged and properly considered when decisions that affect them are made. Sadly, none of this has happened.

(p.xi)

For example, Article 42 requires States Parties 'to make the principles arid provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike'. However, as the CRDU (1994) notes:

In relation to the duty to disseminate the Convention, it has been put on sale in government bookshops, circulated to local authorities, and a few hundred leaflets distributed. Nothing has been directed at the UK's 13 million under 18 year-olds.

(p.xi)

Moreover:

There has been no attempt to place Government policy as it affects children (and most of it does) within the context of the Convention. In a growing number of countries, governments have moved logically to appoint ministers for children and independent ombudspeople or commissioners with statutory powers. In the UK, such proposals have been rejected by the Government as entirely unnecessary.

(p.xii)

While acknowledging positive contributions of the Children Act 1989, this review finds that 'It has no influence at all on many services and many aspects of most children's lives' (CRDU 1994, pp.xi and xii).

This analysis of the UK's responses to the Convention found, in relation to the social and economic rights:

a very clear dissonance between a professed commitment to children's welfare, and the effective implementation of that commitment. There is evidence that in some very fundamental ways things are getting worse, not better, for many children. Article 2 ... insists that the rights ... must be implemented for all children without discrimination on any ground. Yet it is clear that whether for reasons of poverty, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, immigration status or geography, many children are denied fundamental rights in the Convention ... [Black children] are more likely to experience difficulties in gaining access to health and social services ... [which] often fail to address their particular cultural and religious needs.

(CRDU 1994, p.xiii)

A number of Articles refer to religious or spiritual rights (but not to both in one Article), and others are informed by concern for religious/spiritual welfare (Bradford 1995, pp.5-8 and 16-20). Key provisions can be summarised under four headings, all of which may be seen as relating to spiritual and religious rights:

• survival rights, from the child's right to life through the most basic needs, including food, shelter, and access to health care.
• development rights, or all those things that children require in order to reach their fullest potential, from education and play to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
• protection rights, requiring that children be safeguarded against all forms of abuse, neglect and exploitation.
• participation rights, including the right to free expression, which allow children to take an active role in their communities and nations (UNICEF 1995, p.2).

This chapter focuses on the concept of rights in relation to children, religion and spirituality in the context of the Convention under eight headings, most of which are taken from the relevant Article headings in the Convention.

Attention can be given here to only a few of the 54 Articles (of which 1-42 relate directly to children; the remaining Articles define the responsibilities of governments). The text of the Convention, together with 'Know your rights! Children's rights in plain English' (1995) a leaflet by Alexander Nurnberg (age 9) is available from UNICEF (see 'Useful Organisations').

The rights of the child

The Convention defines 'child' as: 'every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier'. The UK applies this only following a live birth.

The concept of 'children's rights' was formulated by Eglantine Jebb (British founder of Save the Children) and formalised in the first Declaration of the Rights of the Child drafted by the League of Nations in 1924. The 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child asserts that 'mankind owes to the child the best it has to give'. Work on the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child was initiated by a proposal from the government of Poland in 1979, the International Year of the Child (UNICEF 1995, p.l).

A 'right' is defined (Oxford English Dictionary) as: 'what is just, fair treatment; justification, fair claim, being entitled to, privilege or immunity, thing one is entitled to; authority to act in a specified way'.

Not only 'the rights but also the responsibilities of the child to respect the rights of others, especially the rights of their parents' are defined (UNICEF 1995, p.2). The Preamble to the convention states that 'the child should be fully prepared to live an individual life in society ... in particular in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity'.

This is summarised by Alexander Nurnberg (1995) thus: 'Your rights are about what you are allowed to do, arid what the people responsible for you have to do for you to make sure you are happy, healthy and safe. Of course you have responsibilities towards other children and adults to make sure they get their rights.'

On Article 42 (above), he comments: 'All adults and children should know about this Convention. You have a right to learn about your rights and adults should learn about them too.'

However, it may be difficult for adults to learn about and understand not only the letter but also the spirit and practical implications of the rights (and responsibilities) described in the Convention. Although the concept of 'rights' is (apparently) easy to define, it is less easy to apply in everyday life. It may be even less easy for individual practitioners to develop their own responses to and ideas about the linked concepts of 'rights' and 'children'.

People concerned with the care and welfare of children are inevitably involved in the paradox of 'child-as-vulnerable-citizen' and as 'citizen-with-unenforceable-rights' (Harris 1995, pp.34-5). If children's rights are defined as unenforceable, the whole concept and structure of 'rights' is undermined and must collapse. If, as seems likely, that is the case, what rights have children to redress, and what responsibilities have adults to repair the damage?

Questions

• What do you think about the concept of rights?
• Do you think it is appropriate to design rights especially for children?
• Do you agree that 'mankind owes to the child the best it has to give'?
• Do you think children are 'citizens-with-unenforceable-rights'?
• Do you think children's rights can be respected and fulfilled?

Suggestions

With colleagues and children:

• Discuss one another's ideas about the questions above.
• Define children's rights.
• Compile a list of children's rights for your own agency/ establishment and discuss how these could be fulfilled.
• Compile a list of adults' responsibilities.
• Compile a list of children's responsibilities.

Article 27: Standard of living

1. States Parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.

You have the right to a good enough 'standard of living'. This means that parents have the responsibility to make sure you have food, clothes, a place to live, etc. If parents cannot afford this, the government should help.

(Nurrtberg 1995)

This wide-ranging, umbrella Article is numbered 27, half way through the convention. Articles 28 and 29 (education) do not mention spiritual development at all, although personality, talents, mental and physical abilities are to be developed to their fullest potential. Article 19 (protection from abuse and neglect) refers only to physical and mental assault. Reference to spiritual development or well-being is found in only three other Articles: 17 (Access to appropriate information), 23 (Disability) and 32 (Child labour).

The vagueness of this Article, not least in referring to largely indefinable concepts of development, leads to questions about approved standards of adequacy in spiritual development. How, and by whom, is this defined? Do children contribute to such standard-setting and definition?

It can be argued that spiritual development (or well-being) cannot be considered as separate from all and any other aspects of life. The child whose physical and/or mental well-being is neglected is disadvantaged spiritually.

Questions

• Do you think it appropriate that spiritual development/ well-being is included only in Articles on disability, standard of living, labour and the media?
• Do you consider that the standard of living of children known to you is adequate for spiritual development and well-being?
• If so, what does this mean?
• If not, what changes are needed?
• Do children known to you consider that their standard of living is adequate for spiritual development and well-being?
• If so, what does this mean?
• If any aspects of the standard of living are not adequate, how does this affect children's spiritual well-being?

Suggestions

With colleagues an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Part 1: Spiritual and religious rights
• Part 2: Children and spirituality
• Part 3: Children and religion
• Part 4: Spirituality, religion, abuse and neglect
• Part 5: Children and death
• Part 6: Communicating with children
• Spiritual and religious well-being
• Useful organisations
• Bibliography
• Further reading
• Resources
• Author index
• Subject index