Hilary Burrage2013-05-18T07:54:05-04:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=hilary-burrageCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Hilary BurrageGood old fashioned elbow grease.Needed Right Now: A 'Keep Safe' Phone-Line (KSL) to Stop Female Genital Mutilation in Britaintag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32636252013-05-14T19:00:00-04:002013-05-14T12:12:23-04:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/female genital mutilation (FGM). But somehow Britain has become the 'capital of FGM' in Europe.
Better news is that the UK Government has now pledged up to £35 million towards the global eradication of FGM. Curiously however few people so far seem to know how - other than it being administered largely via international agencies and in part directed at research and development - that money is likely to be spent.
So... here's an idea for a modest element of the £35m which addresses both the enormous problems in countries traditionally associated with FGM, and also aims to stop this horrendous and illegal 'practice' in the UK....
** We must have a free dedicated UK-wide telephone line. **
Let's call it the 'Keep Safe Line' (KSL); and let's be sure to get the prototype up and running before the grim 'vacation cutting season' begins, when the school summer holidays arrive in later July.
This is what would the KSL national call-line must do:
* The phone-line must be staffed 24/7 with properly trained professionals who will advise co-workers, general callers and people in emergency situations.
* The KSL phone-line should focus initially on FGM alone over the 'cutting season'; but once established it must become the first public point of call for all harm to children and vulnerable adults. (The Victoria Climbie and Baby Peter tragedies demonstrate only too clearly that child cruelty takes many forms; and women at risk of FGM are also 'vulnerable'. So are some older people, and all at risk of domestic violence. )
* The KSL phone-line must be just one simple, memorable number across the UK. But KSL will not compete with currently disperse providers such as the local statutory child protection services - all with different telephone numbers - or the NSPCC, FORWARD and ChildLine; phone calls to KSL will be directed on as appropriate.
* The KSL will record anonymous tip-offs, initiate immediate emergency action, and also offer in-depth advice to professionals and the public. The person making contact can if they wish choose anonymity when the call commences. (The anonymous FGM deterrence feature will help those currently frightened to speak out - a serious personal safety issue in some UK communities.)
* The multitude of Government Department FGM guidelines etc can be collated on a website with the single national KSL phone number as a main search term, thus bringing together all the various attempts at legal (criminal law) action, advice and information. This will help to make both hard-pressed professionals and the general public aware of these resources and how to use them.
* The KSL number can be co-ordinated with texting and an email address which will reach the same advisors, for anyone concerned about child abuse or FGM who cannot, or prefers not to, make a direct telephone call.
* The FGM 'Passport' for children at risk of being taken abroad for 'vacation cutting' must carry the KSL single national phone number, prominently displayed.
* Importantly, the KSL national phone-line can also be a prototype for use in other countries as well as Britain. Once the methodologies have been developed they can easily be transported (and adapted) for use elsewhere.
...
The KSL phone -ine provides a practical, real-time mode for developing integrated FGM services; and it puts FGM firmly in the category of criminal abuse.
A co-ordinated 24/7 national phone line also provides a rich seam for policy researchers - important, as the promised £35 million to stop FGM expressly includes research. Facilitating both anonymous reporting and a personal discussion service, it will offer opportunities to identify where certain types of crimes are most common, and at what ages / on whom they are inflicted. (And, although this cannot be a first priority when child abuse is concerned, in the longer run it will actually reduce required public spending.)
Given that FGM is not the 'only' traditional harmful practice which women and girls in some communities are forced to endure, the phone-line will help also to identify the extent to which these other grim practices exist in the UK. Over time all the research findings will help in assigning the right resources to the right places.
The temptation on-high to allocate blame ("It's teachers' / whoever's fault...") rather than address deeply-embedded problems is avoided when a simple and easily understood mechanism to deliver appropriate action is to hand.
There are those who suppose every aspect of public service is best administered and funded at local level. The total failure in the UK thus far to protect young girls from FGM provides tragic and compelling confirmation that this is belief is irremediably wrong. To continue in such a mode amounts to knowing, cruel neglect of children at risk of a barbaric, sometimes deadly 'traditional practice'.
We are promised £35 million towards the eradication of female genital mutilation world-wide. The KSL Keep Safe Phone-Line proposed here will take just a small fraction of that money, even after implementation and staff training and publicity.
The FGM high season almost upon us. Let's now focus intently on implementing a pilot KSL service before it begins.
~~~
Hilary Burrage is currently writing a book, Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: A UK Perspective. Read more by her about FGM here.
For updates on FGM in the UK and elsewhere you can subscribe (for free) to #NoFGM Daily News.
[Activists may find it helpful to know that any Tweet with the hashtag #FGM will appear in the following day's bulletin.]
If you suspect that a girl is at risk of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), or that she has already undergone this 'procedure' (in which case she needs support, and other girls in the family may be at risk also), report it immediately to Social Services, the police or the NSPCC and FORWARD. .... And then please demand that the single number national KSL Keep Safe PhoneLine is established as a matter of urgency, so that others will in future find it easier to make contact with the appropriate authorities and support services.]]>To Stop Female Genital Mutilation in the UK, Follow (and Invest) the Moneytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27721522013-02-27T19:00:00-05:002013-04-29T05:12:01-04:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/female genital mutilation (FGM) we have to move beyond the moralising - essential as it is - and follow the money. And we must understand the market.
Culture change is difficult
Yes, female genital mutilation is irreducibly a moral and cultural issue. But, absolutely correctly, no modern western state can leverage, or justify, much in the way of legally imposed moral and cultural determinism.
It's true that some, especially on the right of politics, attempt to dictate who may share their lives with whom, and how, for instance, women may control their own fertility; but these interventions are very high-cost both to legislators and to their targets. State control of intimate and personal matters is frequently contested territory and leaches energy and other scarce resources required to serve the wider public good.
A duty to protect
Different considerations apply however if we think about things which actively harm people who can't defend themselves. Prime amongst these is the genital mutilation of babies and girls: a grim act of physical abuse for which the victim cannot give meaningful consent, imposed within a community because 'tradition' and 'culture' demand it.
FGM is personal, cultural and moral, but it is also something which the state, acting to protect defenceless citizens, has a fundamental duty to stop.
Reaching the excluded
Evidence aplenty suggests that moral admonition or direct cultural challenge works no better for stopping FGM than for other private and personal matters.
Diasporas may be economically driven, but modern-day rationality - insofar as it exists anywhere - is another matter. UK efforts to overturn dangerous in-coming ex-pat traditions can have the counter-productive effect of reinforcing isolation and determination to continue with long-established cultural actions, however harmful others deem these acts. It's why some anti-FGM organisations use traditional euphemisms such as 'cutting' to refer to even grievous genital mutilation and assault.
This is where following the money and understanding the markets comes in. Different contexts require different responses.
Women as owned objects
The origins of FGM are disparate and unclear. FGM preceded modern-day global religions and was probably connected with controlling slaves specifically as well as women in general. Whatever, the practice developed in such a way that it has become even now in some communities a deeply ingrained tradition which will take a massive amount of effort to dislodge. In this logic FGM is not inflicted on young girls to harm them but rather - horrendously - as a way to make them marriageable ('pure' by means of infibulation) and able to participate in adult life. Without FGM an adult female might be anomic: socially outcaste, belonging to no-one, 'unclean', perhaps forbidden even to participate in preparing food.
This fundamental threat of unbelonging may have weakened in western diaspora communities, but customs and beliefs remain, long shadows over the expectations and fears for girls' futures. In that sense parents may continue to believe FGM is in their daughters' best interests.
Enabling women's economic independence
Ensuring girls from all our communities have bright futures as independent adults - unimpeded by the blight of FGM-invoked ill-health, and able to support themselves financially in meaningful employment - is critical to eradicating female genital mutilation in modern societies. This is a school and curriculum matter. If all children understand their bodies and can become economically self-sustaining, we challenge the 'rationale' for FGM head-on.
But young people and women are the two groups currently most at risk of involuntary unemployment in the UK. Work liberates those who could otherwise find themselves forced inwards, cut off in ex-pat diaspora communities where contact with mainstream society doesn't happen. Enough jobs for everyone is fundamental to harmonious inter-community life, and critical to enabling the independence of girls at risk of FGM.
Elders' status and livelihoods
Likewise, as in the traditional FGM communities of e.g. Africa, there needs to be alternative work and status for the older women who formerly conducted FGM procedures.
Yes, elders must be punished, along with other procurers of the 'service', if they mutilate young girls; but how much better if they have alternative, constructive, income-generating activities instead. What are we doing to attend to the education and employment needs of disempowered mature citizens (men and women) who could be ambassadors for a better way?
Segmenting the market and the message
Finally, let us segment our market for the NoFGM message.
In closed traditional communities coded euphemisms like 'cutting' may be helpful; but in our wider modern society they are not.
Let's unfailingly call FGM 'child abuse', so that everyone, parents, teachers, medics, lawyers and the police alike, know that we mean this seriously: female genital mutilation is a crime, always. It will not be tolerated. It will have unavoidable legal consequences.
Health and welfare, not 'culture'
Modern western societies are ill-equipped to be cultural arbiters. But they have an a priori obligation to attend to the health and welfare of, especially, their most vulnerable citizens.
FGM is a massive challenge for public health, education and the law. Facing up to that challenge requires investment in the modes which public agencies can best negotiate: the worlds of formal regulation and financial enabling.
'Segmented' work on behaviour change within FGM-oriented communities will help, but national investment to raise expectations is also essential.
Piece-meal intervention can do only so much. It's time to get a real grip on enforcing the law, and it's also time to recognise that people in isolated communities need to be brought into the economic mainstream.
Healthy, independent women
If we invest in education and jobs, people in all our communities - men and women - have hope. Everyone benefits.
No girl in the UK should be at risk, via FGM, abandoning school and enduring ill-health, of an early, enforced or oppressive marriage where she can't be her own, economically independent adult woman.
Is that really too much to ask, in the twenty-first century?
It's a question which may be explored in the UK FGM conferences due this week and next.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hilary Burrage is a sociologist currently researching female genital mutilation in the UK. More about her work is available here
Please support the H.M. Government e-petition No. 35313, to Stop FGM in Britain]]>The Sande Society, Sororities and Sex Education: Why PSHE is Importanttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26817032013-02-13T19:47:15-05:002013-04-15T05:12:01-04:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/sororities.
Initially unsure what a 'sorority' actually was, it took me a while to understand the significance of the invitation to join one. But once I'd grasped the essentials I realised that my luck was really in: the generous and lively girls in that sisterhood treated me as one of their own, and never in that year was I lost for friendship and support.
Happily, my sororal initiation involved nothing more than the presentation of a badge and consumption (as I recall) of nice cake. Later however I learned that some other communities of 'sisters' and 'brothers' conducted ceremonies of a much less pleasant nature - recalling tales recounted of the grim initiations experienced, especially by boys, when first attending private boarding schools in the UK. Heads pushed into unsavoury bathroom fittings are in some accounts just for starters.
The need to belong
Later on, reflecting, I gleaned from all this that many, many people are members of special or even secret societies and that 'belonging', despite the costs, is often a critical element in shaping who we think we are, and how we see the world.
This true for men and women, for boys and girls. Sometimes the organisations we align with are positive and constructive - like my sorority all those years ago - and sometimes, whilst they may seem attractive, perhaps even really desirable, their influence and power over members is pernicious.
Personal costs
Such unperceived perniciousness applies for instance to ancient organisations such as the Sande Society in parts of Africa such as Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where secret initiations into womanhood leave girls with new names and a passport to marriage, but also (provided they survive the 'surgery') with life-long damage deriving from female genital mutilation (FGM). Here are bonded centuries-old traditions and beliefs, the outcomes of which in profoundly unspoken alliance shackle men - who have their own secret society, the Poro - and women alike. With the knife will come marriage but also for the wife persistent pain, ill-health and future obstetric hazard. Without this rite of passage adult women will be unable to serve, abandoned and outcaste.
Horrifically, shadows of the Sande Society and similar ancient traditions can still be found in the UK today: FGM remains a dire hazard for around 24,000 girls in some British communities annually, right here and now.
Likewise, the stark reality of contemporary pernicious 'belonging' is illustrated all too tragically, in cities such as London, by highly localised and tight-knit gangs of young teenagers, children who may have begun as victims, but end up (sometimes fatally, also dying by the knife) as fully functioning and literally paid-up members of the group. In their hostile, anomic environment these children - increasingly girls as well as boys - make the judgement that it's better in than out, whatever the perils of that choice.
Nor do the modern challenges of converging personal cohesion and autonomy go away when we are adult. Some in western society choose to become members of secretive organisations, some do not. Either way, our responsibilities for ourselves and to our communities remain.
Where does this take us?
In the context of the massive movement which is One Billion Rising (14 February 2013), and the related call for every child in Britain to receive Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE), I think these observations take us here:
Whether girl or woman, boy or man, you need to 'belong'. You need to feel important to others and connected with them. What you don't need is to be controlled or used by anyone else. Support is very different from social suffocation; sharing is very different from being taken for a dangerous ride.
Learning how to choose
We all - 'victims' and 'perpetrators' - need to learn about appropriate boundaries, about negotiating to the best levels of distance or proximity, about how to be a part of, not a controlled, involuntary mechanism in, our social groupings and wider society. To do this we must learn to think about where we are, what we are doing, and how to be sure our choices are in our best longer-term interests.
School is, for almost everyone, the place where it's easiest and most natural to be involved in this quest for a personal balance between a spirit of belonging and an independence of mind. Well-trained, responsible, caring teachers are the people who can help us best as we mature to make the transition from gut reactions, fear, isolation and childish uncertainty to judgements which will serve us well for the future.
Making sense of our futures
It matters not where or who we are. In the concrete jungle, in the constrained communities of the diaspora, in the playground, even later on in the workplace, we need to learn how to stand back for the moment it takes to judge what's best all round for ourselves and others. And the basis for all these judgements is age-appropriate, sound knowledge, a level of empathy, and personal skills to negotiate to the right place.
We live in a complex, ever-modulating and inter-connected world. The hazards of such a context can be terrifying: the grooming of children of both sexes, pregnancy or even illicit marriage for young girls, FGM, adult domestic violence, workplace harassment... the list goes on and grotesquely on.
Whether potential victim or potential perpetrator, the more assured grasp of our present choices, the more likely it is that future harm to ourselves and others will be avoided and that sound decisions will be made.
Hilary Burrage is a sociologist currently researching FGM; she has written widely on PSHE.
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Please consider signing the HM Government e-petition to Stop FGM in Britain, and offering your support to the National Children's Bureau (which has led the call for better SRE).]]>The Momentum Increases: Leveson on Human Rights and the UN's FGM Announcement, All Within a Weektag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22408272012-12-04T19:30:12-05:002013-02-03T05:12:01-05:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/
Not often do we see massive steps towards gender equality coming thick and fast; but that's what's happening just now.
The first of these news items has struck home in Britain much harder than the second; but the second item is the globally momentous one.
To put things in proportion, the World Health Organisation says there are some 140 million women alive today who have been subjected to FGM - more than twice the total population (63 million) of the United Kingdom. That's rather a lot of people. And every single day some 6,000 more babies, girls and young women are added to this horrific total, as victims or at high risk. Of these, averaged out, perhaps 50 will be British children.
But just a week or so ago, for the very first time in history, the United Nations reached an accord on FGM. The members have at last signed up in principle to the notion that all female genital mutilation is unacceptable and that the 'practice' must stop forthwith.
In part the lamentable inaction in Britain on FGM must surely be because our own culture too often accepts a view of women as without entitlement. We are perhaps squeamish, perhaps sexist or patriarchal. We maybe don't want to know about what's done to girls 'down there'.
If Lord Justice Leveson helps us as a nation to understand that no-one has the 'right' to see others as less than individual human beings - not, for instance, as sexual objects to be determined by others, but with entitlement to our own minds and bodies - he will have delivered a massive step forward for girls and women, and thereby also for boys and men.
The position now adopted by the United Nations also requires that people are seen as.... well, people. In their own right. The new UN agreement reaches many corners of the globe where enquiries such as Lord Leveson's are probably unimaginable.
It is to be hoped that what follows from the Leveson Report here in our own little island will resonate with the achievement of the last week, after many years of hard work, by the United Nations.
The language so far has been formal and legal, but the real battle is for hearts and minds. We all need to understand that ignoring or dismissing the rights of others permits overbearing and sometimes downright nasty behaviour.
There must surely be a way for us in the UK to consolidate our shared, national view of human rights so that we perceive our own fellow citizens - not least girls and women - as people, not as puppets for the press.
That shift in perceptions will also help the global move towards freedom from the much more brutal oppressions, including the shameful cruelty of female genital mutilation, which some girls and women in our own land, and many others in places elsewhere, currently endure.
Hilary Burrage also blogs here.]]>Cynical Silo Thinking Is Not Policy for the Green Challenges Aheadtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20244882012-10-28T19:00:00-04:002012-12-28T05:12:01-05:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/deregulate farm workers' wages, permit support allowances for only two children in any family, and lower subsidy (?investment) levels for green power plants.
It's commonplace that the Coalition abandoned intentions to be the greenest government ever many moons ago. It seems however that they have also now jettisoned any intention even to give a nod to the serious greening agenda.
Money, or lack of it, is of course the unifying theme. What 'we' haven't got, it's said, we can't share out to others. But the 'we' of contemporary parlance is not the 'we' of the future who will pay dearly, in cash and in kind, for the present failure to join the dots which these can't pay, won't pay positions underpin.
Triangulating difficult issues
Farm workers' wages? Agricultural incomes are already amongst the lowest of any occupational group in Britain. Have we forgotten that the food production industry absolutely must attract and support people who will toil in farms and fields to feed a growing population? And that to do that there must be healthy, working age people (parents, young adults) who, resisting the call of the city, remain to work on the land?
Even the much-disliked factory farming requires people to keep it functioning; and an ever-more stifled low wage rural economy helps no-one, town or country. Food prices and sustainability are not issues which can be addressed simply by paying already impoverished folk even less.
Limited family (children's) allowances? Even aside from issues around the economic downturn catching people out - with parents' job opportunities becoming scarce as children already born grow into teenagers with little hope and few prospects - it must be startlingly obvious that the best way to reduce future family size is to have women in decent and rewarding employment.
Nurturing children is an essential part of any civilised society, important to men as much as women. There is never cogent reason to penalise children who have the misfortune to be born into larger, poorer families. Well educated, well occupied women who have fewer children are better placed to make additional, wider contributions to the economy and social life overall - a win, win when it comes to our future prospects. Good schools and good jobs are the strategic and decent way to keep future family sizes modest.
And green power plants? The UK, with established technical and industrial know-how, has huge potential to take a lead in this essential aspect of our global futures. We need to keep the investments and expertise in Britain, and we need even more to ensure that energy is produced in (comparatively) non-damaging ways.
Of course energy conservation is critical. Of course increasing population and 'demand' for energy is difficult. But simply failing as a government to engage in taking forward new green technologies is the way forward for no-one.
Silo policies betray electoral trust
The connecting theme in all this is investment in the most fundamental sense.
So will that investment be in people and in our shared futures? Or will it be in obdurately short-term political reputation and ambition? Is there realistic horizon-scanning leadership at the heart of government, or is there merely immediate and opportunistic omnishambles?
The current no money theme is what the government invites us to consider. The present-day, now 'we' is asked to accept that nothing can be done; that population, food and energy are separate, siloed issues, and a reductionist perspective is the only possible way to see things.
But that's not how the 'we' of the future will perceive matters. It will be no secret that evidence and knowledge was (currently is) there to devise positive forward-facing and sustainable policy pathways, had we chosen to do so. The future-'we' will condemn the silo narratives which silenced essential truths about conjoined and underlying realities.
The we-of-the-future will look back uncomprehendingly on the self-serving we-of-the-present and ask despairingly how it came to pass that our leaders were not challenged mightily by us, the electorate, about their failure to address the most pressing issues of our time.
The place of each of us in society, food and energy....
These are critically interconnected features of our everyday existence. What could be more fundamental?
And what could have more potential for future disaster, if the current recklessness continues?
~ ~ ~
Hilary Burrage was previously a member of the Defra Science Advisory Council, and Vice-Chair of the North-West (of England) Sustainable Development Group which advised the NW regional bodies. She writes in a personal capacity.]]>Female Genital Mutilation Is Child Abuse Too; So Why NO Enquiries About Ignoring It?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20103772012-10-25T19:00:00-04:002012-12-25T05:12:01-05:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/female genital mutilation (FGM) in Britain was submitted to the UK Government website. I was lead author of that petition, which can be viewed here.
Well over 20,000, perhaps 25,000, under-age British girls are thought to be subjected to, or at serious risk of, FGM every year, so we might expect that a petition seeking to stop it would be accepted by the government, as encouragement to action and greater awareness.
But no. The petition was, after a full week of waiting, rejected without explanation. It took another month or more of insistent emails to discover why.
No 'professional neglect'?
Then at last it transpired that apparently there was discomfort in high places about the specific part of the e-petition which said:
Criminal abuse of children must not be ignored because those who enforce the law are uncertain how to deal with perpetrators and their victims.
This scandalous professional neglect, with 20,000+ children in the UK at risk, must be remedied forthwith. Full enforcement of the law must be brought to bear immediately.
The advice I eventually received was this:
It appears that it may be the phrase 'professional neglect' that is problematic, as it is potentially accusing unnamed individuals of criminal activity and could be seen as defamatory.
Contrasting positions
Four months and hundreds of NoFGM e-petition supporting signatories later, many of us must be scratching our heads in bewilderment.
The sensitive souls in government required that a passing reference in the NoFGM e-petition to possible professional neglect, somewhere in a very crowded, non-person-specific field, be removed - even though there are many, many thousands of practitioners in health, social, legal and child safe-guarding roles in the UK and not even any particular occupation, let alone particular individual practitioners, was mentioned or named.
If found to be true, the allegations against Savile and anyone who shielded him in crime are indeed serious. It's thought that perhaps 200 underage girls were victims over a number of years, and sadly some of them may very well have been traumatised with long term consequences.
We can however fervently hope that no-one suffered extreme pain, grim life-long physical damage or actually died - unlike the very much larger number of young girl victims of FGM (perhaps a quarter million over the decade, in Britain), some of whom will certainly have done so.
Some laws are not enforced; some may be
Procuring or perpetuating FGM in Britain, or on British children, carries a maximum (but not obligatory) penalty of 14 years in prison. It is also legally obligatory to report even any suspicion that a child is at risk or has undergone FGM.
Yet still there have been no successful prosecutions at all concerning anything to do with FGM, anywhere in the UK. 'Too difficult...' say the authorities.
The alleged child abuse by Savile and the possible culpability of BBC personnel currently make daily headline news, amid open discussion about possible prosecution of those who may at some point in the future be found to have failed to report their concerns about Savile's activities to the authorities.
So why the coyness about people who fail to report or deal with suspicions about widespread and deadly breaches of the law on female genital mutilation?
A duty of child safe-guarding
If (in my view absolutely correctly) it's now important to investigate a possible failure by third parties to protect children from abuse by the 'entertainer' Jimmy Savile, why was the far more impersonal e-petition on FGM apparently not permitted even to refer to the possibility of state-employed professionals neglecting children at risk of barbaric bodily harm?
Indeed, why did the current coalition government actually, actively, remove the role of national 'NoFGM' co-ordinator, set up expressly to bring services together to stop this nightmarishly awful practice?
For the sake of all children, and specifically to halt the hurt to an estimated-average 50 children at risk or victims of female genital mutilation in Britain every day of the entire year, we must demand to know right now exactly who in child safe-guarding is responsible for what.
You can read more about FGM and efforts to stop it here: #NoFGM: A Listing For [UK] Action & References On Female Genital Mutilation; or visit #NoFGM Daily News.]]>Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Purpose: The Muddles of Multi-Agency Workingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19272932012-09-30T18:48:37-04:002012-11-30T05:12:02-05:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/
Perhaps though we can learn more about politicians and their parties than we first imagine, if we ask a few questions about the phrases they regularly trot out as they make their speeches and pronouncements to the faithful and the nation:
To those with energy and will to follow the plot/s, political patter may have meaning; but for most it probably does not. Not least this is because the same words and phrases evoke different understandings in people of different political persuasions or in different professional or practitioner roles.
'Multi-agency working' is a case in point. Is it cross-disciplinary, or simply cross-purpose?
This is a term is rarely heard outside the realm of public service, but in the current political climate multi-agency liaison between public and third sector organisations is frequently urged by politicians to reduce costs - an important, but not the primary, aim of most practitioners in the fields of education, health and other public-facing services.
For public servants, or at least those on the ground, the major incentive to multi-agency working is improved and more effective delivery; albeit what that actually means may well vary between practitioners in different disciplines.
The private sector instigates mergers, partnerships and take-overs, but it does not normally seek to establish multi-agency activity on the basis of instruction from some over-arching authority which expects to reap the financial reward for its own (or its punters') benefit.
So here is the conundrum: Multi-agency working is a mode of operation which holds contradictions at the level of delivery (teachers and nurses both want the best for the children in their care; but their priorities are probably different), and which also holds contradictions in respect of organisation goal (streamlined services or budget cuts?).
There is of course overlap in these considerations, some of it intentional and some of it less so. Mostly however those who are actually called upon to deliver the service are left to decide for themselves - or simply put aside - which is which.
And yet... this mode of operation is frequently adopted for the most pressing human problems. Sometimes the intention is clearly client ('customer') facing (child protection, public health), sometimes it is budget cutting (asset merger, housing...), sometimes muddled (vocational training, traffic route design). Not all these examples all the time, of course; but enough to make the point.
Rarely however is multi-agency working articulated from the practitioner up. It is handed down - along with the responsibility and the blame - via diktat, 'guidelines' posted on official websites, even legislation, to be implemented by managers in their disparate professional roles as though common understanding will somehow emerge from the instruction on-high.
It doesn't. Not without team-building, cross-disciplinary training and the consensual development of common aims.
Multi-agency working is only effective when intended outcomes are transparent, and resources have been invested so all agencies and practitioners share the same goals and have a good knowledge of the pathways used by organisations and colleagues in other disciplines to reach the common objective.
That's why 'targets' set by politicians are so often missed - they make little day-to-day sense to most of those who must implement them. And often the targets themselves are not coherent, each set down by particular authorities with little regard to what else is required.
Perhaps that's why the general public chooses to let the whole thing go over their heads. Easier not to attempt joining the dots.
Yes, make public services (especially whichever ones I personally use) better! Demand 100% from those who deliver! Save money!
Multi-agency working is in principle an excellent idea. But it's become a panacea, perhaps even a cover-up for much which is both difficult to deal with and seriously important to real human beings.
Jo(e) Public may not follow the machinations, but politicians of all persuasions who require multi-agency working have a responsibility - to electors in general and also to that subset of them known as 'public sector staff' - to explain what they intend this mode of working will deliver, and how.
Diktat or proper guidance? Chaos or collaboration? Cuts or credible delivery?
The party conference season, for all its apparent inanity, offers insights into the manoeuvres and motivations politicians which are much illuminated by what, precisely, they mean when they demand the multi-agency approach.
Observe and consider, whilst you can.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hilary Burrage is a consultant in health, social care and education / early years.]]>The Problem Isn't Badgers, It's (Politically Led?) Bad Sciencetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18915942012-09-19T19:00:00-04:002012-11-19T05:12:02-05:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/
This very week will, extraordinary intervention excepted, see the beginning of a massive badger cull authorised by DEFRA to eradicate Bovine (cattle) TB - aka bTB - across parts of the English countryside which some see as our enduring, unchanging birthright: a place where contented cows, cosy badger setts and comfortable farmers all happily co-exist.
In reality we know the English countryside is no such thing. Of necessity it changes, in its physical shape and in its function, all the time. 'Rural' is by no means essentially 'rustic', but that's not what we like to think.
A conservative response
The conservative (little 'c') response to the bovine tuberculosis problem is to start the hunt - a traditional way to extinguish vermin which also happens to be the strategy of choice of significant numbers of Conservative (big 'C') supporters. Sorting it all out in time-honoured mode is in this view the obvious manoeuvre.
Unfortunately it's not really going to work. The National Farmers' Union and the majority of farmers - but not all - may believe that badger culls will do the trick, and a lot of politicians want to keep the farmers onside. And it will probably pay electoral dividends for a while. But longer term this 'solution' is could even make things worse, not better, if by 'better' is meant permanently halting the spread of bovine TB in milk-producing cows.
The evidence-based debate about badger migration ('social perturbation'), natural ('badger impermeable') barriers to habitat, other sources of infection (e.g. deer) and so on rages still. It does not however point to massive cullings as the primary way forward. There's a lot more to it than that: short term 'saving' of public money by passing the buck to individuals (hunters) won't deliver long term.
Extended, expensive and elusive
Lessons more or less learnt from the disastrous 'Foot and Mouth' cow pyres of a while ago, DEFRA and large numbers of scientists have been in a grossly expensive huddle on bTB for several years; the cost (whether justified or not) by now must be incredible. And for a while it looked as though progress might be made. Vaccine development programmes have been scheduled, with the hope that TB would start to be eradicated, perhaps by blanket vaccination, without recurrent recourse to shotguns, gassing, snares or poison.
At least (and at last) it looked like the gold-plated veterinary-political pow-pows would come up with a good result for financially challenged farmers, cows and badgers, all.
Now most of the British trials have been abandoned. The Welsh Government has chosen to continue vaccine development, but overall diminished investment in research suggests conclusive clinical resolution of bTB will remain elusive.
Shunning the science
Most farmers, and most politicians, are not scientists. One might imagine that the production of food - which is surely the prime purpose (along with management of the total environment, and land husbandry) of farming - is a strong candidate for the application of science. Verified knowledge is however often trumped by tradition.
Reluctance to adopt the obvious strategy - a TB vaccine for cows - is rooted in costs, regulations and commercial interests around certified 'free from' herds and, say some, premium milk prices. But I, a human mammal, was given TB protection as a child; and so probably were you. The case at every level of governance for more scientific, less 'traditional-action' policies on protecting herds from tuberculosis is strong.
Complex, yes. Retro, why?
The veterinary epidemiology of bovine and badger TB is complex. It involves factors as varied as those already discussed (e.g. badger perturbation patterns) and wider issues such as biosecurity and how factory farmstressors influence infection in cows. And that's before we get to issues around deveoping vaccines: direct costs, timelines and who - very critically - should take the lead on this, whether for badgers or cows.
Nonetheless, acceding to farmers' incessant, voluble (though not unanimous), evidence-denying, 'traditional' demands for a big badger cull, with guns and individual licences, is a backward-looking response to the genuine and serious problem of bovine TB.
We should not be surprised that most farmers in Britain are not scientists and are not, it seems, much interested in what the research has to say.
But science in our food and eco-industries is at least as important as important as in other areas of production. It is worrying that the disinterest in research of farmers also apparently applies to DEFRA ministers - politicians who, with civil service advisers, are supposed to take shape policies and initiatives in accordance with the best evidence and resources they can procure.
If they they were doing so, the badger cull in England would surely not be progressing as currently proposed.
Not cuddly and not competent?
This isn't 'just' about cuddly badgers (actually, they aren't), nor is it 'only' a matter of respect for the natural environment and how these animals for some symbolise green issues (critical though these are).
This is at core about political judgement and leadership. It's about not playing to the gallery. It's about looking to use and enhance validated scientific knowledge, to find real answers and ways forward.
Government ministers may not have training in natural science or environmental studies, but we can reasonably expect them to develop policy underpinned by what, on balance, these disciplines tell us or could tell us. What hope for the future, as food and other natural resources become more stretched against climate change and rising population, if politicians fail to give rational leadership and realistic support even on bovine TB?
The Government's go-ahead for licenced firearm badger culling suggests that science is less important than nebulous notions of ruritania, by-passing state responsibility, and short term political advantage.
Hilary Burrage was previously a member of the DEFRA Science Advisory Council. She writes in a personal capacity.]]>Female Genital Mutilation: Why Does This 'Holiday' Horror Endure?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18500912012-09-16T19:00:00-04:002012-11-16T05:12:02-05:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/'Summer Holidays are for Fun not Pain' declared the (London) Metropolitan Police Force as school broke up for the Summer 2012 break... A strange but necessary message because, horrifically, thousands, of young British girls are forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) whilst school is out; and some will have died.
And still FGM continues.
In my original Huffington Post UK blog on FGM I asked why it continues in Britain without to date any successful legal action. We ask that question again here, in an attempt to understand the wider policy and sociological frameworks of efforts to abolish FGM.
Misconceptions
There are serious issues about UK FGM policy.
Guidelines on FGM for professional workers are not an adequate response.
Small grant-aid funding, spread between competing small organisations will not impact on this massive issue.
The UK 'softly, softly' approach to FGM is not the only way. Many other countries take a much more robust view of this crime.
But let us move beyond what (doesn't) work, to the specific contexts of female genital mutilation.
The MGM-FGM debate
An element of competition often colours debate about the parallels between male and female 'circumcision' (aka 'genital mutilation'). The greatest fury about male, usually infant, circumcision (also named male genital mutilation, or MGM) comes from the USA, where the majority of newborn boys undergo it, but there is also a growing consciousness in Britain and mainland Europe - hence e.g. the heated debate about Jewish and Muslim entitlements to this long-established custom.
The epidemiologies and risks to life of MGM and FGM are nonetheless factually different; but validated and mutually acknowledged details of these relative risks are difficult to obtain and more accurate epidemiological analyses alone would not secure completely common ground.
Commonality on MGM and FGM may be possible on human rights issues - e.g. the principle that invasive action to change a person's body should, unless medically necessary, occur only with that person's mature and informed consent - but the claims and counter-claims of MGM-FGM will probably continue.
[Those who wish to pursue this debate can do so in a separate, dedicated post here.]
Health, wealth and welfare
Preventing FGM therefore relieves demands on scarce public resources. It also helps curtail demographic pressure as the world population continues inexorably to grow.
Refusing FGM can result in adult destitution. In many traditional societies women are traded as chattels from fathers to husbands; and they cannot return to sender.
In denial
The facts of FGM are horrendous. How can anyone tackle these deeply embedded beliefs and practices about such an intimate issue? Neither modern science nor the western legal system seem adequate to challenge the contexts in which FGM continues to thrive.
And so many UK professionals continue in denial: Surely the figures (24,000 British children annually) are wrong? Isn't FGM dying out anyway? In any case, nothing can be done because no-one comes forward so it obviously not in our patch. Which is just as well, because quite how difficult would it be to talk about such things?
The excuses and avoidance tactics perfunctorily adopted by some child safe-keeping practitioners are many and various; but 'nothing to do with us', 'too complicated' and 'so embarrassing' must rate amongst the top let-outs.
FGM can be a crime equivalent to the lethal abuse of Baby Peter... a tragedy resulting in national media coverage and enquiries, as well as sanctioned social workers.
Yet still there is no formal, public action which ensures that child safe-keeping addresses FGM adequately.
It is the growing realisation everywhere that FGM must stop which will actually make that happen. There must be no more summer holidays which tragically for some are about pain, not fun.
A more detailed, fully referenced version of this post can be read here. (See also Facebook: NoFGM (UK), Twitter: #NoFGM and @NoFGM1.)
Hilary Burrage wrote the 'Health Education' chapter in Dufour (ed, CUP): The New Social Curriculum, has researched young people's health, and was formerly a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care.]]>Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), Britain's Foremost Black Classical Composer: The Centenary Legacytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18347592012-08-29T05:49:22-04:002012-10-29T05:12:04-04:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/Slavery Remembrance Day, on 23 August, we will mark also the centenary legacy of the black British music composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who died one hundred years ago, on 1 September 1912.
Only 37 years old at his death, Coleridge-Taylor was at the height of his career, in the midst of plans to visit musicians he admired in Europe (he was learning German) alongside his never-ending duties as a teacher, conductor, festival adjudicator and composer. He had already travelled to the USA three times; he had twelve years previously, aged only 25, become a founder-supporter in 1900 of the new London-based Pan-African Conference (later, Congress); and already he had some 100 full musical works, many of them substantial, to his credit.
To modern observers, taking antibiotics for granted, it feels particularly sad that the cause of Coleridge-Taylor's death was simply a chest infection: he was always over-worked, and it's said a heavy smoker, and he caught a chill awaiting a train in his hometown of Croydon. With better health this unique man of music might well have lived into contemporary living memory. It would have been fascinating to see how his thinking developed, both in music and in respect of equality, the other field in which in his short life Coleridge-Taylor made an outstanding and compassionate contribution.
Nonetheless, to most followers of classical music Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is known only as the creator of the Song of Hiawatha trilogy, that ever-present element of the annual calendar of the Royal Albert Hall and many other concert venues around Britain in the 1920s and 30s and well beyond. The image of native American squaws and head-dressed chieftains is embedded in our perception of Coleridge-Taylor the composer; and yet, whilst Hiawatha is indeed a fine addition to the repertoire, it is by no means his only potential contribution to the classical canon.
As we demonstrate on the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation website - where a full list of works and recordings, generously donated by Dr Dominique Rene de Lerma, may be found - there is beyond Hiawatha some significant early chamber music, a whole range of vocal scores (some of them substantial) and even a violin concerto and some full symphonic works: impressive by any standards as the output for someone still in his thirties when he died.
But there are also other aspects of the life of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor which make him special and deserve much greater acknowledgement.
Born in London in 1875, illegitimate and of mixed race, the boy Samuel took courage to make the most of every opportunity to take his formidable talents forward. His complex extended family supported him as best they could and by his early teens Coleridge-Taylor's musical gifts were recognised by others too. He gained sponsorship to attend the newly-established Royal College of Music aged only 17, and, produced his first few opus-listed works the following year. (How withering to repute is time; received to acclaim when initially presented, we discovered Coleridge-Taylor's Opus 1 Piano Quintet, probably unperformed since 1895, buried deep in the RCM archive a full century later.)
But to return to the chronology. Just before the end of Victoria's reign, Coleridge-Taylor's concern for fairness and decency led him to engage in the increasingly urgent calls for racial equality. Whilst Victorian London was more varied of skin colour than some imagine, Coleridge-Taylor nonetheless knew at first hand both of discrimination by 'race', and of the shared objective by others of a more even playing field for all; and he had by then formed a friendship with the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who became a major influence on the composer's thinking. Hence also Coleridge-Taylor's involvement in the Pan-African Conference of 1900, held in Westminster Town Hall, London from July 23rd to the 25th, and timed to take place just before the Paris Exposition in order to allow tourists of African descent to attend both events, and focused on persuading world power governments to introduce legislation to abolish racial discrimination.
It was also at the Pan-African Conference of 1900 that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (and his friend John Archer of Liverpool, who became the first black Mayor of Battersea) met the writer W.E.B. DuBois, who was during the next few years to prove a great influence on Samuel as his contacts with the United States developed. How, had Coleridge-Taylor lived longer, this collaboration would have influenced the later Pan-African Congresses we can only surmise.
And so, one hundred years after his death, the story and legacy of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the British child of mixed heritage born with little initial privilege but so much to offer, now unfolds.
There is much still to tell, as the AfriClassical website and other e-media report. This is a story told at all levels: local (Croydon and London), national (the UK), the USA and truly internationally. A considerable amount of Coleridge-Taylor's repertoire has recently become available, but much remains still to be explored. The legacy of his support for a fairer world will doubtless likewise continue to be a matter of interest for scholars and activists alike for decades to come.
For our part, having worked since the 1990s to bring unknown music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to public performance, the establishment two years ago of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation (a Community Interest Company of which I am the founding Executive Chair) has offered a new way forward. We have ensured there is room for exchange and debate between musicians, historians and scholars across the world, we seek always to achieve wider community engagement, and we have positioned to look forward as well as back - most recently by commissioning a new Nonet from the composer Richard Gordon-Smith (himself a son of Croydon) which embraces both the instrumentation and something of the essence of the work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
What comes next remains to be seen. September 1st 2012 will pass as a day to reflect and remember, but it is also a milestone in the journey to a better understanding of a young man who died a century ago but leaves still the gifts of talents and ambitions pursued, decency and hope. That is why, as well as looking backwards to the past, we must look forward to the future.
More information...
Website: The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation
Twitter: SColeridgeTaylorFdn
Facebook: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation
LinkedIn: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912): Britain's Greatest Black Classical Composer]]>Female Genital Mutilation in Britain: The Scandal About to Break...tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15738452012-06-06T19:00:00-04:002012-08-06T05:12:10-04:00Hilary Burragehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-burrage/20,000 young girls in Britain are at risk, or already victim, of female genital mutilation (FGM, or 'cutting'). Yet never has there been a successful court case in the UK against the perpetrators of this barbaric child abuse. Nor has there ever been any action against professionals have failed to protect the victims, whose fate, albeit with different intent, is sometimes as grave as that of the tragedy of Baby P.
What you are about to read is of necessity unpleasant and disturbing, but a wider awareness in the UK of FGM is one step towards eradicating it as soon as possible.
Imagine: you are a young girl, perhaps living in one of the UK's larger cities; and this is the summer when you are old enough to travel abroad, back 'home' for your long holiday, to spend it with the community in which your parents or their relatives grew up. It will be hot, and exciting, and perhaps there will be a big party to celebrate your approaching adulthood...
But in reality for you the festivities may involve very little personally to celebrate. Whilst your mother, grandmother, aunts and others may gain prestige from your rite of passage, and your father and brothers are pleased that you are now marriageable, for you the summer will bring deep psychological trauma, intense pain and probably life-long physical damage, possibly even death.
The real reason, it will transpire, that you are being taken away from Britain is that you are to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), the removal, often by female relatives, of some or all of your external sexual parts, followed in many cases by infibulation - sewing up the open wound so that only a tiny hole remains, and where before there were healthy, elastic passages, there is now only scarring and the daily evidence of the damage wrought on your most intimate person. The subtext of FGM is the subjugation of women, in cultures where they are seen only as adjuncts to men.
And this excruciating procedure during your 'holiday' will usually be inflicted by brute force, without pain relief and with no regard to hygiene or even (because you may be one of a batch of girls undergoing the procedure) cross-infection. You are also probably going to have your legs bound together for the duration as your body attempts to heal itself, and you are going to feel very ill.
Well, let us leave the graphic detail there. Specifics may change, sometimes the procedure is even carried out covertly in the UK, but the overall horror of FGM is a constant.
Yet quite possibly this child will not be aware that things could be so different, because hers is also the experience of the other girls and women with whom she shares her life. It may be the cultural norm in her community, even in the UK. There are globally about 140 million women now alive who have experienced FGM; and a growing number of them, perhaps 80,000, are in Britain.
But how we ask can this sort of cruel, sometimes lethal, child abuse be happening on such a scale, in the UK? Not only is the protection of children from harm formally a high priority, but there is established legislation both to forbid the practice of FGM in Britain, and also to forbid its procurement, or taking British children abroad for the procedure.
The answer is complex - an amalgam on the part of those with child safe-keeping responsibilities (doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers etc) of ignorance, lack of training, fear of being labelled racist, misplaced cultural concerns, sheer lack of resources and much else. Things are however changing.
In May 2012 the Sunday Timesran a big story about medically involved men in Birmingham who, it is alleged, were found to be willing in confidence to arrange FGM procedures. The police are now involved, arrests have been made and media interest is high.
This may at last be a turning point. The lid is lifting on the widespread misery and plain, criminal child abuse which FGM comprises. Recognition is growing that, assuming official UK estimates are correct, at least two children every hour, every day, may be at risk. To most of us, that is a statistic beyond belief.
Public horror and professional panic will probably rise in parallel, if the current FGM-related arrests lead to trial and perhaps conviction. Already, there are campaigns, and an international Avaaz petition to bring FGM in Britain to an end has secured approaching 80,000 signatures. What happens after that is a close call.
The failure so far of relevant safe-keeping professionals to secure even one conviction for FGM (a crime which in Britain carries a sentence of up to 14 years imprisonment) is in part because of cultural factors - both community and professional - and in part because the resources and training simply aren't at present available. But this may not protect people who should be protecting children at risk of FGM, any more than it has protected the children themselves.
The repercussions of the Baby P tragedy, fairly or not, included sackings of social workers and upheaval in a public service already under massive strain. In the case of FGM, not only social and health workers, but also the police, teachers and others may find themselves in the firing line. Yet nationally-led strategic planning and resources remain totally inadequate to the task of supporting those responsible for FGM child safe-keeping.
Added to this may be a serious social, perhaps even racist, backlash; the temptation in some quarters to blame entire communities for these barbaric acts will require skilled and careful handling, at a time when even the resources to cope with the crime itself are derisory.
There is some evidence that politicians are waking up to the increasing risk of FGM in Britain. Back in 2000 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health published a Hearings on FGM Report (the legislative recommendations of which were subsequently enacted), and a decade later, with numbers at risk of FGM apparently rising rapidly, has seen the inception in November 2011 of an All-Party Parliamentary Group on FGM; then in May 2012 another Early Day Motion on the subject was posted.
Warm words alone however are nothing. And it is very worrying that a carefully considered e-petition demanding more action on FGM which a number of us as UK citizens submitted to the HM Government No.10 website was summarily rejected by the Cabinet Office (May/June 2012).
Addressing FGM is about bringing communities together, men and women of all creeds and none, and providing decent services to protect children in every part of our country. But at present such services are patently ineffectual, and there are almost no agencies outside London dedicated to preventing FGM (even though there are a few against male circumcision), leaving about two thirds of girls at risk in Britain almost invisible.
And even greater cross-community integration, cultural adaptions and better educational and social prospects to empower previously subjugate women will not ensure that harmful traditional beliefs and practices are abandoned, unless the flights abroad for summer 'holidays' are brought to a halt, and the full weight of UK law is enacted to back up education and inclusion.
Those in the UK at risk or already victims of female genital mutilation are defenceless babies and small girls, in their thousands, in British towns and cities.
Anyone with half a heart would do everything possible to remediate and stop this criminal cruelty. And anyone with half a mind would understand that failure to stop FGM, now, is a route to massive demands on services and enormous damage to individuals and to society, tomorrow.