Professor Elspeth Webb is a retired community paediatrician and Professor in Child Health at Cardiff University who has worked for decades in children’s rights, child protection, health inequalities, and building a human rights approach to medical training in Wales and beyond.
As children continue to fall through the cracks of the Covid-19 economy, the debate on re-opening schools sees marginalised children used as props, and renewed calls for prison abolition push us to address the systemic causes of crime and violence, it has never been more urgent for the left to – finally – think of the children.
This public lecture was given online on Saturday 20th June 2020.
Hi Helpless,
Until 7 years ago , I was Chair of Hendre Housing Association it occurred to me that your lecture should be repeated at a Welsh Social Housing conference.
Community Housing Cymru is the organisation that coordinates conferences and deals directly with LA’S and Government,
My experience is that we did not apply ourselves well in considering the specific needs of children e.g play and recreation, support etc., General needs Housing and Care provision is generally focussed on adults,but not exclusively. I’m sure individual associations would, value your presentation.
I could write more but an area you did not touch on was ” Children as Carers”. I became aware of this area as Chair of Governers at Windsor Clive Primary in Ely. There were some horrific cases of child abuse amongst this group of children and others who were not parented in the normal sense, at all. I remember one child who was ostensibly in his grandmother’s care but she was a drug trafficker/dealer and mam was on the game upstairs.
As a former Customs man, I too was horrified by the smoke and mirrors and lies of Brexit particularly in the areas you are interested like child trafficking and hard core pork smuggling.
Maybe we can speak again,further.
Elgar