Every Child Matters and children’s spiritual rights: does the new holistic approach to children’s care address children’s spiritual well‐being?

Abstract

Every Child Matters is a major change programme aimed at integrating all services for children and young people in England. It seeks to enable a new holistic approach to their care and so improve a number of outcomes for children, thus improving their overall well‐being. Every Child Matters seeks to address the rights of the child to improved life chances but also their right to a voice in decisions made about their care. Although Every Child Matters seeks to improve a number of outcomes for children, it makes no mention of their spiritual well‐being. This article examines Every Child Matters’ holistic approach and discusses in some detail its attempt to put into practice the right of children and young people to have their voices listened to and their opinions valued. The article points to the absence of any specific reference to children’s spirituality in Every Child Matters, and asks whether its holistic approach and its recognition of children’s right to be heard are sufficient to address children’s and young people’s spiritual rights, particularly in education.

Keywords:

• Spirituality
• Every Child Matters
• Children's rights

Every Child Matters: the Children Act and change for children

Everyone involved in children’s ¹ services in England, whether in education, social services, health, the voluntary sector or the police, will be aware of the massive change programme underway to improve the well‐being of all children and young people in England. Originally laid out in the Every Child Matters Green Paper (DfES, 2003), and developed in Every Child Matters: next steps (DfES, 2004a) and Every Child Matters: change for children (DfES, 2004b), government policy became law with the 2004 Children Act.

Every Child Matters was partly a response to concerns about child protection and in particular the recommendations of Lord Laming (2003) following his examination of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Victoria Climbié. Every Child Matters does not merely concern social services, however, but aims ‘for every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the support they need’ (DfES, 2005a; emphasis added):

This means that the organisations involved with providing services to children—from hospitals and schools, to police and voluntary groups—will be teaming up in new ways, sharing information and working together, to protect children and young people from harm and help them achieve what they want in life. Children and young people will have far more say about issues that affect them as individuals and collectively. (ibid.)

Every Child Matters seeks to improve children’s well‐being in five domains:

a.	physical and mental health and emotional well‐being;
b.	protection from harm and neglect;
c.	education, training and recreation;
d.	the contribution made by them to society;
e.	social and economic well‐being.

(Children Act, 2004, 10.2)

Every Child Matters also responds to broader social and political agendas. In particular it is a response to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, enshrined in the 1989 and 2004 Children Acts and the 2002 Education Act. It also responds to a growth of interest in citizenship and to increased attention to users’ perspectives in the design of services.

Every Child Matters and spirituality

Every Child Matters seeks to improve outcomes for all children in England and includes an Outcomes Framework which explains the mechanisms for achieving this goal (DfES, 2005b). Every Child Matters and the Outcomes Framework make no mention of children’s spiritual well‐being. In other words, and like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Every Child Matters makes no reference to children’s spiritual rights.

However, at the heart of the Every Child Matters initiative are values which will resonate with many educationalists and teachers interested in spirituality in education. The Government wishes to encourage a holistic approach to children by developing partnership between professionals, and between professionals and children and their families. It says it ‘puts improving children’s well‐being at the heart of our policies’ (DfES, 2004, 2.3) by focusing on the whole child and by ensuring ‘children and young people’s voices are heard’ (ibid., 1.6).

Despite the lack of an explicit reference to spirituality, Every Child Matters recognises values often equated with children’s spirituality: well‐being, holism, the whole child, and listening to children’s voices. So, although spirituality is not specifically mentioned, Every Child Matters could nonetheless be seen as addressing the spiritual because, as John Hull said about the UN Convention’s concern with children’s rights to a good standard of living, ‘Spirituality, we are thus reminded, is not only to do with the “spirit” but with the physical well‐being of the child’ (Hull, 1998, p. 59).

In the field of education specifically, many educationalists and teachers interested in the development of children’s spirituality in schools have been concerned that education since the National Curriculum has demonstrated an unbalanced emphasis on economic and utilitarian aims, leading to an over‐emphasis on school as a competitive market where the child is unable to flourish and grow as a person, or to be listened to (Watson, 2003). And across the literature on spirituality in schools, spiritual development is routinely presented as being about protecting a set of educational values seen as vital for holistic human development, and perceived as having been devalued or ignored in the National Curriculum’s ‘unconstitutional, illiberal, and anti‐humane’ approach to education (White, 1988, p. 118). The Every Child Matters project seems finally to offer hope that schools can rebalance away from the crippling emphasis on examination targets and toward a child‐centred approach, concerned for the development of the child as a whole person. So could it be that Every Child Matters addresses children’s spiritual development even though it makes no specific reference to the spiritual? Of course, this all depends on what is meant by the spiritual in education.

The word ‘spirituality’, in its more general usage, is not merely about well‐being and voice, important though these are. Spirituality also refers to the beliefs and values that human beings develop in response to the human condition. Yet this significant understanding of spirituality has been reduced to only an element of the broad secular conceptualisation of spirituality that has been used for spiritual development in education in England since the 1988 and 1992 Education Acts. Spiritual development, as Terence Copley has said, was ‘cut adrift from spirituality as understood by world religions’ (2000, p. 9) because ‘the secular humanist common denominator … arises in any attempt to find linguistic expression for the spiritual dimension that is universally acceptable within the communities of education … [and this] implies that spirituality is not in its essence religious’ (ibid., p.139). Stewart Sutherland, theologian and first Chief Inspector of OFSTED, acknowledged retrospectively that the inspection of spiritual development must be ‘evaluated under what for shorthand reasons I shall refer to as the secular inspection teams’ (1996, p. 34). Andrew Wright has pointed to a ‘ “contemporary consensus” ’ (Wright, 1999, p. 11, and see Wright, 1997) on what is meant by spirituality for education, arguing that, ‘the recent history of spirituality in education has been almost unanimous in insisting on a universal anthropological notion of spirituality which transcends any specific religious belief system’ (Wright, 1999, p. 17).

In my view, the shift of emphasis brought by Every Child Matters highlights the problem of what we want from spirituality in education. If spirituality is, indeed, largely about changing pedagogical values to attend to the well‐being of the whole child, then Every Child Matters could be seen as addressing children’s spiritual rights. If, however, we believe that addressing children’s spiritual rights is about more than this, then we might want to give Every Child Matters a more cautious welcome.

The aims of this article

This article, then, has two main aims. The article was prompted by my involvement in the work of the National Evaluation of Children’s Trusts (NECT) and the article makes some use of the published findings from that evaluation (NECT, 2005). ² The article’s main focus is on an examination of Every Child Matters’ early progress in addressing the rights of children to improved well‐being and life chances, and to a voice in their care. It describes the holistic approach to children’s care and its focus on the whole child. It then turns to Every Child Matters’ ambitious aim to enable children and young people to have a voice in their care, whether, for instance, in schools, hospitals, family centres or with youth offending teams, and it examines in some detail issues raised by putting this ambition into practice.

The article’s emphasis on these subjects is based on an assumption that these aspects of Every Child Matters may be of interest in their own right. However, the article is also concerned to draw attention to the absence of any direct reference to children’s spiritual well‐being and, ultimately, seeks to ask whether this matters. The article is primarily interested in spirituality in the context of school education and returns to a discussion of that issue in the conclusions.

Taking a holistic approach to children’s services and the whole child

The scale of change to a holistic approach is huge. It involves the reconfiguration of service sectors and co‐ordination of diverse professional groups and organisations working with children with a wide variety of needs. It involves breaking down long‐standing cultural barriers to cross‐sector working and the building up of trust to develop a new professional culture and language. The holistic approach also involves new processes such as cross‐sector information sharing and common assessment and the use of multi‐agency teams of practitioners, sometimes working peripatetically and sometimes based in newly developing co‐located sites such as children’s centres or extended schools. The overall aim is to provide a holistic service which will address the needs of the whole child, either by providing a wide range of services on one site and/or by having a lead professional to co‐ordinate a care plan for the individual child. This is a challenging task, however, because, although these ideas are welcomed in principle, there are cultural barriers to overcome to do with professional openness and trust around issues such as data security, delegation and supervision. The NECT team found that the move to greater integration presents formidable challenges to the professionals involved, including anxieties about the policy’s implications for jobs and professional paths. Nonetheless, professionals and families interviewed for the evaluation were all enthusiastic about the Every Child Matters vision because they believed the new holistic approach could improve children’s well‐being (NECT, 2005, para. 3–6).

There will be those who argue that the new integrated approach has more to do with efficiency savings and cost cutting than with holism as such. However, greater integration does have real potential for a holistic approach that could improve individual children’s overall physical and emotional well‐being. It is also the case that there has been an increasing commitment to child‐centred, ecological and developmental approaches to children’s care in social and health care, and the transfer of these values to education will constitute a challenge to the emphasis on the target’s approach to education since the National Curriculum. In these senses, Every Child Matters could be said to address the spiritual needs of children and young people in education if ‘the aim for spiritual development in a school is to provide those conditions in which individuals as well as the whole school community might flourish’ (Gent, 2002, p. 6). As Stewart Sutherland said in his introduction to the Charis series of text books for spiritual development:

We talk of accountability and appraisal, SAT’s scores and measurable outcomes, league tables and competition between schools. Somewhere, the pupil as a whole person is in danger of getting lost beneath the demands of all these outside constraints. (Charis, 1996, p. v)

Every Child Matters should re‐introduce holistic values: it is certainly set to challenge the current status quo.

Giving children and young people a voice

The Government also expects that children, young people and their families will be given a voice in the services provided for them and anticipates, ‘Community participation … will be critical to the success of future arrangements’ (DfES, 2004b, p. 14). The necessity to listen to children and young people’s voices has been a significant concern for many of those involved in the discussion of spiritual development and spiritual pedagogy and particularly, of course, by Clive and Jane Erricker (see for instance, Erricker & Erricker, 2000).

The professionals interviewed for the NECT felt children’s participation would result in improved outcomes for both service users and their communities but, at this early stage of development, the NECT researchers found the mechanisms for engaging children and young people could vary considerably across trusts and take different forms (ibid., para. 91–96). Children, young people and families might be actively involved in decision making with adults about the nature, organisation and delivery of social and health care services. In other cases children were represented through school and youth councils, and most local authorities had websites aimed at informing children and young people and sometimes soliciting their views. Sometimes children were consulted directly through questionnaires. However, children and young people tended to be involved in low‐level decision making in statutory services, although Connexions, the Children’s Fund and voluntary organisations had stronger and longer‐standing involvement.

The NECT conclusion, that ‘there have been a number of small, successful activities involving children and young people but there has not been an approach that represents a systematic framework for participation’ (ibid., para. 94) echoes other investigations into children’s involvement in services, showing that these are still early days (see for instance, The National Evaluation of the Children Fund, 2004; Franklin & Sloper, 2004; Oldfield & Fowler, 2004). There is a commitment to listening to children, but progress is slow because engaging them proves challenging in practice.

What do we expect from listening to children and young people?

One of the biggest challenges to putting participation into practice is that listening to children is not enough; adults must provide responsive mechanisms so that listening results in action. The NECT is also working with the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) in order to listen to the views of children and young people, as well as those of their parents and carers. ³ Already the evaluation has found that children and young people have a number of clear demands, suggesting that one of the biggest challenges across, for instance, schools, hospitals, family centres and the police will be working out how to respond to children’s and young people’s high expectations.

A number of the issues highlighted by the children and young people and reported by the NECT and NCB, such as safety, transport and improved sports and recreation provision, are similar to those in the Government’s recently published Green Paper, Youth Matters (DfES, 2005c). This is encouraging because it is crucial that consultation leads to a serious recognition and acknowledgement of children’s and young people’s perspectives. The evidence demonstrates that children and young people can be wisely observant and vocal about their needs (NECT, 2005, Sections 2.8 and 2.9). However, without action there is a risk that consultation will merely produce a ‘wish list’ followed by disillusionment. There is already evidence of young people developing cynicism in social care (Danso et al., 2003) and research has also identified a particular need to more seriously address feedback to children in the social and health care contexts (Franklin & Sloper, 2005, p. 12). In education, Kerr and Cleaver’s work on citizenship education notes the lack of progress in involving children through active citizenship in schools and raises the question ‘whether schools and other institutions in society are ready to provide “real” active citizenship opportunities for all young people, given prevailing cultures and structures that are largely hierarchical and undemocratic’ (Kerr & Cleaver, 2004, p. 33).

Every Child Matters’ attempt to give children and young people a voice will be counterproductive if they are not meaningfully included as partners, since ‘participation can also have negative consequences if children and young people are not listened to or their views are not taken into account’ (Franklin & Sloper, 2005, p. 3). Rather than ‘managing’ children’s expectations, it may be more productive to be open and honest from the start about what children and young people can realistically expect, particularly if we are concerned for their spiritual development.

What is meant by ‘participation’ for children’s well‐being?

Before such expectations can be addressed, however, greater clarity is needed, not only about what is meant conceptually by listening and responding to children but also by engaging them. Every Child Matters tends to use the umbrella term ‘participation’, but the meaning, use and development of this term itself is unclear, and appears to include a continuum of activities from allowing children greater opportunity to speak in lessons, to consulting them about service development and quality, through involvement in decisions which affect the nature of those services, to genuine participation in shaping the way local government responds to the challenges facing young people. The Every Child Matters project as a whole faces major challenges with confusion over language, since professionals in different sectors understand key words, such as ‘assessment’ or ‘need’, in different ways. The same cross‐sector language problem also surrounds the word ‘participation’.

Boyden and Ennew have put forward two interpretations of ‘participation’: ‘taking part’ and, rather differently, knowing that one’s actions are taken note of and may be acted upon, sometimes called ‘empowerment’ (1997, p. 33). This distinction fits with the notion of a ‘ladder of participation’, associated with the work of Roger Hart (1997), where participation is presented as a power struggle, with children needing to climb a hierarchical ladder to increased levels of power and autonomy which they must wrest from adults. More recently, however, and perhaps as a result of increased use of participation in practice, other researchers have challenged Hart’s hierarchical model and argued instead for what Ruth Sinclair has called a ‘multi‐dimensional’ understanding of participation (2004, p. 108). Sinclair and Kirby et al. (Kirby et al., 2003; Sinclair, 2004) have put forward a model which describes children’s participation in practice as having a variety of levels which are context dependent. In some contexts, they argue, it may only be appropriate for adults to take children’s views into account when they make decisions. In different contexts, however, children might be involved in decision‐making with adults, or children could share power and responsibility with adults. In certain contexts, children could make autonomous decisions (Sinclair, 2004, p. 109).

Sinclair has also pointed to the need to distinguish between ‘private and public’ forms of participation (ibid.). In social and health care since the 1975 Children Act participation has tended to be about involving children in private decisions about their personal care. It is only more recently that social and health care have adopted a public form of participation, consulting children and young people about services with a view to improving quality. In schools, particularly since the introduction of Citizenship Education with the 2002 Education Act, participation has been understood as public, involving representation of children’s views via school councils and Youth Parliaments.

Participation discourse and children’s rights in social and health care and in education

The discourse of participation also varies across sectors. A comparison of the way in which the word ‘participation’ is used in social and health care policy documents by contrast with education policy documents shows the word tends to be understood differently in these two domains. The variation in use suggests cross‐sector historical differences in expectations of participation activity and outcomes. The variation also suggests differences in response across and within the sectors linked to three different types of rights: consumer rights, equal rights and democratic rights.

In social and health care there is greater evidence of consumer rights, of children being invited to participate in the design and delivery of services. Here they are characterised as users or consumers, valuable for ensuring services are properly designed to meet their needs and satisfy their consumer rights. The 1989 Children Act raised an expectation that disabled children should have their views taken into account in determining their care. Since 1998, the Quality Protects programme, through its Objective 8, has required local authorities working with looked‐after children and young people ‘to actively involve users and carers in planning services and in tailoring individual packages of care’ (quoted in Franklin & Sloper, 2005, p. 2; and see DfES, 2005d). Since the 1999 Local Government Act, local authorities have been required to carry out Best Value reviews of all services which must include listening to the wishes and concerns of children and young people. In Health, the children’s National Service Framework has emphasised the need for a systematic approach to consulting and involving children and young people in their own care and treatment (DH/DfES, 2004).

In education, the word ‘participation’ is used differently. Most frequently it is used in connection with inclusion, referring to children and young people with disabilities, mental health or social problems, or those who are disaffected achieving their equal right to an education. Conventionally in education policy terms, ‘participation’ has been used to refer to the enrolment of young people in post‐compulsory education and training in a competitive global market:

Participation among 16–19 year olds remains very low by international standards. We are close to the bottom of the OECD league table for participation among 17 year‐olds. That is now the burning problem facing our education service. The system for 14–19 education curriculum, assessment and the range of opportunities on offer needs radical modernisation to meet contemporary and future demands. (DfES, 2005e, 1.3)

Emphasis has also been placed by some on ‘consulting’ young people about teaching and learning, with striking developments in the relationship between teachers and learners as a result (Rudduck, 1996). However, the relation between ‘consultation’ and ‘participation’ is unclear. In education policy (although less in practice) user participation in the design and delivery of schools has generally been reserved for parents, who are invited ‘to shape the education their children receive and the progress of their school’ (DfES, 2005f, 5.4). One earlier education document, interestingly from the National Healthy School Standard, a body which has a strong commitment to children and young people’s participation, has suggested that ‘pupils’ views [should] influence teaching and learning in PSHE and citizenship’ (DfEE, 1999, p. 13), but there is no suggestion yet in education that children or young people should have a direct influence on the teaching (design and delivery) of any other curriculum subject.

Since the 2002 Education Act, the term ‘participation’ has also been closely linked in education with active citizenship. Children and young people should learn about citizenship in Citizenship Education but schools should also encourage them to take part in active citizenship, including benefiting from a democratic right of representation to school councils and youth parliaments. School councils offer pupils the opportunity to ‘have a real say in how they learn and achieve and can be much more involved in how the school is run, for example helping to interview new members of staff or contributing to decisions on school meals’ (DfES, 2005f, 5.24). Here again, ‘participation’ appears to refer to ‘involvement’ rather than to the effective engagement of pupil voice. It remains unclear how far children can realistically influence schools through school councils. Kerr and Cleaver’s examination of Citizenship Education reports that active citizenship and school councils show little real impact as yet, and that OFSTED has acknowledged difficulties here (reported in Kerr & Cleaver, 2004, p. 41).

In education there is greater evidence of democratic rights, of children being invited to participate through elected representatives on school and youth councils. In Every Child Matters, where the different sectors converge, the difference between these understandings of participation is blurred, making it less obvious what is meant by and expected of the participation of children and young people. There is also room for further confusion where participation is used in education to simply mean achieving access to the service provided.

Is spirituality a missing link?

To ensure children’s well‐being, and perhaps particularly their spiritual well‐being, there is room then for the Every Child Matters project to clarify what is meant by the word ‘participation’ and what is expected from this new engagement with children, so that children and young people are at least engaged with more honestly.

What is crucial is that those involved have an understanding of these complexities so that they can match appropriately the nature of their activity to its purpose and to the decision‐making context and the appropriate level of power‐sharing—only when the adults have thought this through are they going to be in a position to engage honestly with children. (Sinclair, 2004, p. 110)

There is also room for greater honesty from government about its commitment to children’s involvement because, although much has been achieved, without substantial funding for the training and support of children, young people and professionals, children’s voices will continue to be silenced and the project seriously flawed:

The resource implications of participation should not be underestimated, and without adequate funding or long‐term planning what can be achieved is greatly reduced. (Franklin & Sloper, 2005, p. 15)

It must be recognised, however, that these are early days in what is a demanding change programme for children’s services and, if we are concerned about children and young people’s well‐being, then we can celebrate the new emphasis on a holistic approach to the well‐being of the whole child, and to the national and local recognition that children and young people have a right to have their voices heard and their concerns addressed.

However, as has been said, Every Child Matters and the 2004 Children Act, like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, make no explicit reference to children and young people’s spirituality (or religion) or to their rights in this regard (Schweitzer, 2005). Likewise, the Every Child Matters Outcomes Framework gives extensive coverage to various aspects of children’s physical, emotional and economic well‐being but nowhere mentions children’s spiritual well‐being (DfES, 2005b). Not only do the Children’s Act and Every Child Matters ignore children’s spiritual rights, recent education white papers also made no mention of spiritual development, placing emphasis instead on the development of social skills and citizenship, and the Government’s White Paper 14–19 Education and Skills also hinted at whittling down Religious Education (RE) by integrating it with Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE):

There are clear links between RE, PE, sex education, citizenship and PSHE, and learners benefit when the links are emphasised in the way in which they are taught. Teaching the subjects in a co‐ordinated way can also help to free up time within the curriculum. (DfES, 2005e, para. 5.21; emphasis added)

It certainly remains the case that schools are under a legal obligation to provide all pupils with opportunities for spiritual development (Education Act, 1988 2(a); Education Act, 1992 2:1 (d) and 9:4 (d)), and, in recent advice, OFSTED ‘confirms the importance of pupils’ SMSC development’ and that ‘schools are required by law to promote pupils’ SMSC development and inspectors are required to inspect it’ (OFSTED, 2004, p. 4). However, stating that spirituality is important is not the same as stating what spirituality is; and this is an educational concept that has been notoriously vague and characterised, for instance, as ‘conceptually adrift’ (White, 1994, p. 369) and an ‘ill‐defined holdall’ (Copley, 2000, p. 9).

If in education we understand spirituality to mean the kinds of things described in this article, then we may feel that Every Child Matters is well placed to, at last, challenge the spiritless pedagogy of the National Curriculum and bring in real and valuable change for children. However, to limit our understanding of spirituality to things like the well‐being and voice of the whole child is to limit the richness of what can be meant by spirituality: those transcendent beliefs and values which give deepest meaning to our lives. While Every Child Matters may help reintroduce the former, there is a danger that meanwhile the latter, richer understanding of spirituality may be marginalised yet further by other aspects of educational policy. Spiritual pedagogy must address the knowledge base and critical thinking needed for addressing this richer sense of spirituality, to enable children and young people, as Andrew Wright would argue, to be ‘spiritually educated … informed, articulate, [and] literate’ (Wright, 1996, p. 148).

So, while Every Child Matters is to be welcomed for its holistic vision for improving children’s well‐being and for giving them voice, it does, I think, raise concerns about future attentiveness to children and young people’s spirituality. Not only are the spiritual rights of the child not explicitly recognised by Every Child Matters, because of the way in which spirituality has largely been conceptualised for education since the National Curriculum, there is a risk that educationalists and practitioners may nonetheless think that they are.

Notes on contributor

Jacqueline Watson is a research associate with the National Evaluation of Children’s Trusts at the University of East Anglia. She is also an associate of the Keswick Hall RE Centre in the School of Education. Her longer‐term research interests are in spiritual development and Religious Education, and in particular the discourse around spiritual development. Until recently she was a secondary school Religious Education teacher.

Notes

1. The words ‘child’ and ‘children’ are used in this article as shorthand for both children and young people. Likewise the word ‘parent’ refers to both parents and carers of children and young people.

2. The NECT is being undertaken by an interdisciplinary team at the University of East Anglia in partnership with the National Children’s Bureau (NCB). It was jointly commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Department of Health (DH). Reports of the evaluation’s work and findings can be found via the Every Child Matters website (NECT, 2005). The author is a research associate with the NECT and is grateful to the project’s co‐directors, Professor Chris Husbands, Professor Max Bachmann and Professor Margaret O’Brien, for their support and indebted to the team researchers, Dr Yuelia Lu and Ann Shreeve, and particularly to Dr Natalia Jones, for their contributions. However, the author takes sole responsibility for the views expressed in this article, and for any errors.

3. This work is being carried out for the NECT by the NCB. Detailed findings of the first round of their panel interviews can be found in the NECT’s Phase I Report (NECT, 2005, Sections 2.8 and 2.9).