Changing London. David Robinson
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to create ‘ready families, ready educators, ready systems and a ready city’.45 San Antonio has pursued a similar goal under its SA2020 plan,46 as has Hartford with its Mayor’s Cabinet for Young Children – a cross-sector group of public sector, charity and business leaders in the city, appointed by the mayor. They provide high-level policy recommendations for the mayor and oversee budgets for programmes that serve young children across the city.45
In Cincinnati, an ambitious programme called Strive brought together over 300 city departments, charities, businesses, universities and schools to improve all aspects of services for children from cradle to career. They re-imagined the system piece by piece; performance improved across a vast range of measures.47
Learning from this experience, the mayor should champion four vital issues for London’s children
Eradicate Illiteracy
The Evening Standard launched the Get London Reading campaign in 2011 with the news that one in four children left primary school unable to read properly.48 This campaign and others have gathered huge momentum since then but too many children still leave school unable to read and write well enough to thrive in adulthood. In West Dunbartonshire, renowned child psychologist Tommy Mackay has shown that it is possible not just to tackle illiteracy but to eradicate it.49 We should seize the opportunity and aim for the same in London, redoubling our efforts and, following Mackay’s lead, setting out to change attitudes as well as provide one-on-one support for those who need it most.
The ‘Read On. Get On.’ campaign is demanding that by 2025 all children leave primary school as confident readers. Led by a group of charities, teachers groups and publishers, it is avowedly a community campaign, arguing that this cannot be a job for government alone.50 The mayor’s high-profile support could propel it forward in London.
Every Child Mentored, Every Child a Mentor
Several contributors to Changing London outlined the enormous benefits of mentoring schemes for children who ‘do not know about their city or, even worse, are afraid of it’ and for mentors, who experience a whole new side to London. Gracia McGrath challenged the next mayor to become a mentor himself, to ‘see the city through the eyes of a child’.
Extending this theme, Ellie Robinson argued that ‘having a mentor can transform a childhood – building confidence, extending networks, eroding inequality’ and wondered whether we could extend these benefits across the capital through a voluntary mentoring scheme in every school. Crucially, children would have the opportunity to be trained as mentors and to be mentored themselves, because giving support is just as valuable as receiving it.
Some children will need far more than a mentor alone can provide, but establishing it as a right would guarantee every child a minimum of one supportive, trusted relationship, and a role providing the same for others when the time comes.
Shrink the Foster Care Waiting List to Zero
Mentoring could be for everyone but fostering is mercifully rare. How we care for children whose parents can’t or won’t care for them is a defining feature of a civilised society and yet, as Mandy Wilkins pointed out, there are over 1000 children in need of foster care in London and not enough willing carers.51
A concerted campaign could see the fostering waiting list reduced to zero by the end of the mayoralty. We should allow ourselves no leniency – in a city of 9 million people it is not unreasonable to believe we can find families for 1000 extremely vulnerable children.
Marjorie Fry once observed ‘You cannot give a child love by act of parliament’. Nor can you by mayoral decree, but Mandy’s piece concluded with some very practical ways in which City Hall – leading by example – could champion fostering amongst its own employees: active promotion, time off to go through the assessment and training, flexible working. Then she suggested that ‘the mayor should use his or her voice to encourage other public, private and third sector employers to follow suit, as has been done with the living wage campaign’.
Coordinate Child Protection
Even better would be to prevent children needing foster care in the first place. Matthew Downie outlined some of the specific challenges London faces in protecting our children: ‘gang violence and sexual abuse within gangs; abuse of children through belief in spirit possession and witchcraft; and the problem of mobile and transient families where children at risk of abuse move frequently and easily across the city.’
He goes on: ‘The prevalence and seriousness of the issue commands political attention across local and national government, but so far not from either of the two mayors of London. Why not?’
We could, he says, learn from successful programmes in other cities, like New York’s Blue Sky programme or Manchester’s co-commissioning of children’s services across multiple local authorities. It is a complex topic with no easy solutions, but throughout this rough guide we talk about the importance of influential leadership, about the mayoral super powers, the voice, the visibility and the capacity to convene. Nowhere could these be better applied than on this agenda, making the case over and over again that enabling every child to succeed means ‘every child’ from whatever beginning, with whatever it takes.
(4) For Every Child: The First Steps into a Good Career
A Youth Compact with Business
A ten-year-old in our children’s discussion group in east London suggested schools make better links with banks so he and his peers could better understand how to work in one.
It is sobering to learn that work experience and the worry of getting a good job should feature in a child’s concerns alongside the availability of fizzy drinks. But it is also a sign of just how important access to the right job can be for children and their families.
For a minority of our children, the path from school to college, perhaps to university, and then on to the first rung of a good career is well paved, assisted along the way by good schooling, inspiring work experience, family connections and perhaps an unpaid internship or two.
For others the transition into work is difficult and traumatic, often unfulfilling and sometimes impossible – unemployment amongst under-25s in London stands at 25 per cent.52 With young people arriving in London from all over the world, the competition for jobs at this level is fierce.
The first step is to discover what is out there. Sally Rogers described how, ‘When children from working class families in places like Newham grow up and – aged fifteen or sixteen – are sent off for a couple of weeks work experience … they end up spending two weeks stacking shelves in Shoe Zone. These kids – far more than their rich contemporaries – need experiences of work that inspire and excite. Two weeks shelf stacking won’t do that.’
Changing London contributor and local councillor Jamie Audsley, along with a group of young people in Croydon, has set up #FirstStepCroydon to campaign for better work experience. Working with Croydon Citizens and Teach First, the campaign has already won promises for 200 work experience placements, with expenses, from a huge range of local businesses, charities and public sector agencies.
Unpaid internships for many of the top professions exclude those who cannot afford to work for free. Informal advertising of entry-level jobs is a further bar to those who haven’t had access to the internships and don’t have the family connections where these crucial networks are built up.
Instead, too many find themselves stuck in insecure, temporary, badly paid jobs with no training and no path for promotion or advancement. Apprenticeships traditionally provided a sure-fire route for those who didn’t go to university, and there has been a recent revival in interest, but there is far more a dedicated mayor could do.
Public sector employers are already beginning to lead the way. Andrew Attfield reported on Barts NHS Trust, for example, which offers apprenticeships to local residents, including into new areas such as operating theatres, pathology labs and the outpatients department. He observes, ‘if the NHS can do this at a time of great pressure on its services, other sectors should be able to do so much more’.
Much of the responsibility for delivering on this