Tackling crimes in their infancy
With Stormont’s Executive still in absentia and public discourse focussing on its resurrection, policy proposals and discussions have fallen by the wayside. One of few calls for change has come from the DUP’s Ards and North Down Borough councillor Peter Martin, whose Hope for Every Child report calls for a renewed focus on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their prevention.
Writing in his introduction to the report, Martin says that the next Executive “need to ensure we avoid responding with a ‘quick fix’ approach, in contrast for corrective interventions to work properly they must be delivered over the medium/long term and implemented both strategically and regionally”.
ACEs are defined as “negative environmental experiences or influences on a child as they grow up, very often in the family home” that are said to have a profound effect on a child’s mental health. There are 10 types of ACE, split into three groupings: Abuse (physical, emotional and sexual); neglect (physical and emotional); and household dysfunctions (mental illness, incarcerated relative, a mother treated violently, substance abuse and divorce in the household).
Martin points to a Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health report from 2017 entitled the ‘State of Child Health’ that found that 50 per cent of adult mental health problems were estimated to have started before age 14.
“It is my opinion that what Northern Ireland really requires is the coordinated and sustained approach of the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly,” Martin writes, saying that Northern Ireland must make extra funding available in order to become a “Trauma Informed Country” like its UK counterparts. Trauma Informed Practice involves “creating care plans and service delivery that uses childhood trauma as a lens to better understand the range of cognitive, emotional, physical, and behavioural symptoms when ACE effected children and adults present”.
It is said that Early Years Intervention is key, and Martin states his belief that the implementation of ACE-specific measures could have a “significant impact” within five to 10 years. He stresses that the old way of doing things will not serve in the long run: “If we want to make Northern Ireland a safer place, we don’t require bigger prisons, instead we need to look at the children in our society and ask how can we better support them?”
Early intervention is said to be important not just from a crime prevention viewpoint; research has found a persistent link between ACEs and negative behavioural and health outcomes in later life such as obesity, alcoholism and depression. Suffering ACEs in multiples (MACEs) severely impacts children and “can have devastating results for the entirety of their lives”.
Martin’s report collated PSNI data that showed the numbers of young people (ages 10 – 17) detained per year in recent years, ranging from a high of 3,720 in 2013-14 to a low of 3,347 in 2014-15. The figure rose to 3,640 in 2015-16 before falling again to 3,387 in 2016-17. Included also are the numbers of children in Northern Ireland’s differing levels of care, ranging from 435,567 in level one (mainstream services that are available to everyone, e.g. healthcare and education) to 2,983 in level four (child or young person in the care of social services, in youth custody or prison, or in‐patient treatment due to disability or mental health problems).
Pointing to Campbell Christie’s report in 2011 for the Scottish Government that found that 40 per cent of public spending was done based on a failure to intervene early, Martin points out that late intervention cost Northern Ireland’s public purse over £536 million in 2017-18. These figures include over £165 million on 29,166 cases of domestic abuse and over £204 million on 27,866 child protection cases.
To address these issues, Martin’s report calls for the next Executive to ensure that future policy is developed to make Northern Ireland a “Trauma Informed Country” by including a commitment from all departments in the next Programme for Government recognising that a child’s first three years of development are essential. Alongside this commitment, he calls for the overall investment of £5 million per year over 10 years to directly tackle the impact of ACEs.
“If we want to make Northern Ireland a safer place, we don’t require bigger prisons, instead we need to look at the children in our society and ask how can we better support them?”
In terms of infrastructure, the report concludes by proposing an immediate review of the numbers of educational psychologists and health visitors currently in schools, with a view to increasing them, and it recommends the doubling of the number of nurture units within schools, taking the overall total to 50. Finally, it calls for the Northern Ireland-wide rollout of the Domestic Violence Perpetrators’ Programme, should its trial in Derry prove successful.
