It is the first week back at school for children and their parents after a summer holiday that has been dominated by one news story.
The murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman is that much more distressing because the adults arrested had been trusted members of school staff - Maxine Carr had worked as a teaching assistant in the girls' school; Ian Huntley was school caretaker at the village comprehensive when the girls disappeared. As children return to their own schools, heads and class teachers may well be facing tough questions about their own systems for ensuring children's safety.
Of course, school staff should deal respectfully with any concerns expressed by parents and be ready to explain through conversation, and if it seems appropriate through a letter to all families, the process of how they check all their staff. However, everyone needs to hold on to the fact that an event of this kind is very rare, and should not forget that we still do not know exactly what happened.
During the media coverage, we have had a shifting focus on abduction and stranger danger, the risks of internet chat rooms, paedophiles and now the possibility of inadequate checks on school staff. There are inevitably some calls for new legislation or guidelines. But schools, as well as the Government, would do well to avoid knee-jerk reactions. We have strong child protection legislation and associated guidance. The problem identified in some public inquiries has been bad practice, rather than gaps in child protection legislation.
The chaos over checks through the Criminal Records Bureau is unacceptable, and the level of the problem has been described in Nursery World (see 'Gridlock', Nursery World, 25 July, p10). But we do not know whether there were any faults in the checking process in Soham and, as hard as it is to accept, the most rigorous system will never be 100 per cent.
Talking with the children
Parents are already likely to have dealt with questions and comments from their children, given the saturation coverage in the media. But teachers also need to be ready to deal with comments from individual children as they return to their own school.
When faced with a distressing event, it is best to answer children's questions and respond to their comments as these arise. This event is not the first (as the forthcoming anniversary of September 11 will soon remind us) and will not be the last, to provoke children's concerns.
Familiar adults should respond to children through ordinary conversations.
We hear that the community of Soham has access to helplines and counsellors. Such a facility can be valuable, but it is important not to give the message to teachers or parents that difficult issues are best passed over to the 'experts'. Distressed adults may think, 'I'm so worried I shall say the wrong thing', but there is no perfect answer.
* Children need adults who will listen and follow their lead. If children voice a question, they want and deserve an honest answer. Respond to some children's comments with, 'What makes you say that?' as a starting point to help both you and them understand their concerns.
* Adults should not overwhelm children with their own distress, fear or anger, but it is still preferable that adults admit, 'I feel upset too', rather making everything appear all right for the child.
* We need to admit that some adults do mean harm to children and, yes, in some cases these are people that the children know well. But we need to get the strong message across that most adults are caring. We cannot have children taking on board the message beloved of some of the tabloids that 'nobody is safe nowadays'.
* Caring and familiar adults need to help children get some perspective, but it is no use saying to children, 'something like that will never happen here'. The media coverage has ensured that some, perhaps many, children will make personal links to their own school and neighbourhood.
* Adults, teachers and parents alike, can be concerned about making children aware of events or issues that will worry them. Parts of the media regularly dust off the 'loss of innocence' theme. But children are not innocent in the sentimental way that such headlines promote. Children are ignorant in the positive sense of the word; there is so much they do not know.
* Children need information that they can understand. They are learning about the world and we need to ensure they have an accurate framework in which to make sense of events. They need to understand, through parents'
and teachers' careful explanation, that this kind of event does happen, that it is very unusual, and that that is one reason there has been so much news coverage.
Keeping a perspective
To support children, school teams as well as families need to hold a realistic perspective. Adults, as well as children, need to be reminded that murders of children are rare, and abductions by complete strangers even rarer. When children do not survive their childhood, it is far more likely that they have died from accidents, road or domestic, or the diseases that, despite medical advances, still sometimes kill children. To acknowledge these facts does not reduce the tragic nature of the families'
loss in Soham. But there are serious consequences for children if familiar adults try to build rules for everyday life on the basis of rare events.
Every reader will have heard of the murder of Sarah Payne in summer 2000, but who has heard of Daniella Hurst or of Keiran and Jade Austin? These children died within the same fortnight but were murdered by their fathers.
From June to November 2000, around 50 children in the UK died under circumstances which required special investigation. In most cases, where there was a basis for criminal prosecution, the violence had been perpetrated by people well known to the children, most often within their own family.
Of course, we do not want safety campaigns to make children afraid of their own fathers, or anyone else in their family. The vast majority of parents, early years and school practitioners will protect children, even to the point of putting themselves at physical risk. Most strangers who harm children are behind the wheel of a vehicle, and many of them will have made strenuous efforts to avoid running into the child. The real dangers to children on the roads are best met by steadily teaching children about road safety. The genuine dangers to children from people are best met by steadily coaching them in personal safety and life skills.
Promoting safety
General safety for children cannot be supported by a 'let's ban it!'
reaction to every unacceptable adult action, every accident or even the fear of an accident. Indeed, it can put children at even greater risk.
Instead, parents and teachers must help children develop skills to ensure their personal safety (see 'More information').
Children are not protected by a climate of fear: the 'you can't trust anyone nowadays' approach. The possible consequences of this over-reaction are to place early years and school practitioners in an impossible situation. One area of risk and injustice is shown by the case of Dawn Reed and Christopher Lillie (see 'Lost innocence', Nursery World, 8 August 2002, p10).
An equally negative consequence for children arises when anxious practitioners withdraw from physical contact and affection, or are pressured into following no-touch guidelines. Young children can only make sense of this behaviour by feeling, 'They don't want to be close to me; they don't like me'. Such a situation can emotionally damage children. They are denied experience of how trustworthy adults behave: the good and respectful touch. Paradoxically, insisting on this emotional distance also increases the risk for children, who may become emotionally needy and more vulnerable to the approach of dubious adults.
Responsible adults have to find a balanced approach to raising children as safely as possible. Wall-to-wall media coverage can make that task more problematic.
If next summer is free of newsworthy tragedy, it is very possible that people like myself will take calls from newspaper journalists who want pithy quotes to go with headlines like, 'The dangers of a generation wrapped in cotton wool' and 'Why, oh, why are parents so paranoid?'
I fear that my explanation of how adults have become so very anxious will meet with the same incomprehension from at least some callers as last time around.
More information
* Helpful leaflets about child safety are available from Kidscape, tel: 020 7730 3300 or download them from www.kidscape.org.uk
* Managing risk in play provision is a balanced discussion about acceptable and unacceptable risk, published by the Play Safety Forum and available from the Children's Play Information Service, tel: 020 7843 6303 or download from www.ncb.org.uk
* Jennie Lindon (1998) Child protection and early years work Hodder and Stoughton
* Jennie Lindon (1999) Too safe for their own good? Helping children learn about risk and life skills National Early Years Network
