This is our story: Children and young people on criminalisation in residential care

Earlier this week we published our fourth briefing, which tells the stories of four children and young people who have been criminalised in residential care in their own words.

Over the course of our programme of work we have interviewed many young people about their experiences and these interviews inform everything we do. In this briefing, however, we have sought to tell four stories in more depth so that we might paint a picture of the young person behind each story.

The young people’s testimonies illustrate how every aspect of the care system can impact on criminalisation and demonstrate that a whole system approach is needed to protect vulnerable children from this form of harm.

You can read the briefing and the press release and we will be blogging about each story in more detail in January.

Every aspect of the care system can impact on criminalisation

We also worked with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show to publicise the issues. You can watch the fantastic Ella and myself being interviewed from around the 37 minute mark.

This is our last post of 2018. It has been a great year for our programme of work and we are looking forward to carrying forward the momentum we’ve generated into 2019.

But for now…Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Andrew Neilson

Comments

• Trevor Ellis says:

  17 Jan 2019 at 11:45 am

  I recall being racially abused by a police officer back in 1981 after I had been arrested by an officer after being found asleep in a telephone box.

  I had run away from home because my father had been subjecting me to brutal beatings.

  I was just 14 years old at the time and I still recall the shock of being called a black bastard by the said officer and was also accused of burglary even though I was completely innocent but the officer made it clear that he assumed that I was a thief because of the color of my skin which is not just grossly unjust but is also unrealitic because dishonesty and greed is never determined by race or nationality and I am sure that the officer knew that he clearly chose to overlook that ”fact” in order to justify subjecting me to unrestrained racial abuse.

  I had kept that experience to myself until now
  but decided to make it public today because I believe that it is relevant to the issue in hand
  in terms of the ”criminalization” of young people.

  Reply