:00:13. > :00:18.Now on BBC News, it's time for These are tough times to be young.
:00:18. > :00:22.Record unemployment in many countries, frustration is building
:00:22. > :00:25.and they are spilling onto the streets. If you are young and
:00:25. > :00:30.vulnerable, you can often fall through the cracks and descending
:00:30. > :00:33.to a spiral of suffering and exploitation. My guests today is
:00:33. > :00:38.British psychotherapist Camila Batmanghelidjh. She said up the
:00:38. > :00:42.Kids Company in 1996. A network of dropping centres in London where
:00:42. > :00:52.thousands of deprived and needy young people receive love, care and
:00:52. > :01:16.
:01:16. > :01:20.shoulder. She says she has some of Camilla Welcome to Hard -- Camila
:01:20. > :01:25.Batmanghelidjh, Welcome to Hard Talk. Do you think governments who
:01:25. > :01:29.have the right approach when it comes to young people? 99.9 % of
:01:29. > :01:35.young people internationally are law-abiding and contribute
:01:35. > :01:38.enormously to society. But there is about 1% to experience difficulties.
:01:38. > :01:43.Some of them because their environments are challenging, for
:01:43. > :01:49.example street children who do not have any carers exhibit criminal
:01:49. > :01:53.the habeas as a means of survival. Others have got some significant
:01:53. > :01:57.psychological difficulties. What governments have tended to do his
:01:57. > :02:02.deal with the difficulties of children who exhibit
:02:02. > :02:06.vulnerabilities in pretty much the same way, which is to use a method
:02:07. > :02:11.of punishment and reward. You punish bad behaviour, reward good
:02:11. > :02:17.behaviour and, in that way, it is thought to keep the children within
:02:17. > :02:21.a law-abiding framework. However, you need an additional model, which
:02:21. > :02:27.is to consider that there are some children who cannot actually manage
:02:27. > :02:31.their own behaviour because they have had injuries to their
:02:31. > :02:34.development. Basically what you are saying is that governments
:02:34. > :02:39.everywhere are criminalising the problem and looking at it that way.
:02:39. > :02:43.But is that the case, if you look at the UK, which is where you
:02:43. > :02:46.operator centres, you look at Iain Duncan Smith who says our
:02:46. > :02:50.Government believes that investing in support to stabilise and
:02:50. > :02:56.vulnerable families is the best starting point for tackling
:02:56. > :03:00.disadvantage and poverty, which can give rise to some of the problems
:03:00. > :03:05.you have to will the bout. They are not actually blaming, are they?
:03:05. > :03:10.There is a discrepancy between government rhetoric and actual
:03:10. > :03:18.delivery. The bottom line is still too many children... And Britain
:03:18. > :03:23.docks up more children than any European country and 85% of them
:03:23. > :03:26.reoffending two years. If you look at all the Criminal Justice
:03:26. > :03:31.programmes around the world involving children, there is an 80%
:03:31. > :03:35.reoffending rate. We are operating a model currently across the world
:03:35. > :03:40.of dealing with vulnerable children, which is not very efficient, except
:03:40. > :03:45.the Scandinavians. Scandinavians perceived children who exhibit
:03:45. > :03:50.extreme and dangerous behaviours as having mental health difficulties,
:03:50. > :03:57.and I believe that is correct. they have a more sympathetic
:03:57. > :04:00.approach, which is basically the kind of line that you adopt. But is
:04:00. > :04:04.that child-centred approach enough? Than to have to look at the problem
:04:04. > :04:08.families, as that is where the problem originates, and tried to
:04:09. > :04:14.help them at that level and not isolate the trialled? I agree.
:04:14. > :04:17.do need to deal with problem families. -- isolate the child.
:04:17. > :04:21.if you have limited resources, it is imperative you reach the
:04:21. > :04:26.children above all else. When you look at problem families, parents
:04:26. > :04:31.unable to care for their children, and you look at their history is,
:04:31. > :04:35.what you find is that they are predominantly adults who have been
:04:35. > :04:41.experiencing childhood maltreatment. They have been abused and neglected
:04:41. > :04:45.as children. You do not get a parent being randomly incapable of
:04:45. > :04:50.bonding all attaching to their child and taking care of their
:04:50. > :04:54.child. Parental instinct is so powerful and primitive, that if it
:04:54. > :05:00.goes wrong, they must be good reasons why it has gone wrong. I
:05:00. > :05:05.would argue that the damage begins invariably in childhood. So child
:05:05. > :05:09.would mental-health and well being is the primary driver that
:05:09. > :05:13.governments should organise themselves around. -- childhood.
:05:13. > :05:17.so when I asked you about the approach governments have, they are
:05:17. > :05:21.really buying what you have said. If you look at the latest
:05:21. > :05:25.initiatives this government has introduced, the troubled families
:05:25. > :05:30.initiative, whereby David Cameron says he wants to help 120,000 of
:05:30. > :05:35.the most troubled families by 2015, he has also rolled out a trial for
:05:35. > :05:40.better parenting, whereby parents of children from the age of the
:05:40. > :05:46.zero -5 can have support to try to improve their parenting skills, he
:05:46. > :05:51.would approve of that? The current government in Britain has made
:05:51. > :05:56.enormous progress. -- you would approve. In changing the way it
:05:56. > :06:00.begins to think about a troubled families. But the difficulty is
:06:00. > :06:04.that the rhetoric is beautiful but the resources are not really there.
:06:04. > :06:09.I will explain why. In Britain, there is a structure which demands
:06:09. > :06:13.that if a child is having difficulties, you refer them to
:06:13. > :06:20.social services, mental health, housing. The difficulty in Britain
:06:20. > :06:24.is that those primary agencies are at breaking point. They don't have
:06:24. > :06:32.the money or the resources to deal with the scale of referrals.
:06:32. > :06:36.the Government says the cost of these families... There is a cost
:06:36. > :06:44.of about �9 billion and most of that money is not providing lasting
:06:44. > :06:50.results. They say they will give about �0.5 billion, about 700,000 -
:06:50. > :06:55.- $700 million, over three years. That is real money. I think that is
:06:55. > :07:02.excellent, that they are doing that, but I believe that actually what we
:07:02. > :07:07.need is a radical approach, which is to convene an independent
:07:07. > :07:11.inquiry and look at the life chances of vulnerable children in
:07:11. > :07:16.this country and laid down a 15- year vision. What is happening is
:07:16. > :07:21.the imminent one political party has some initiatives, and they are
:07:21. > :07:25.out of power, most of the initiatives drop again. They are
:07:25. > :07:30.not sustained. These initiatives will only be successful if they are
:07:30. > :07:37.sustained. What my dream is, to see them all come together and signed
:07:37. > :07:41.up to a 15 or 20-year vision up strengthening the childcare system
:07:41. > :07:48.in Britain. You have been working with the most needy and vulnerable
:07:48. > :07:53.children over 20 years. Either the 1996 he set up the Kids Company.
:07:53. > :07:57.Your four dropping centres in London, you also have a social
:07:57. > :08:04.network available in around 40 schools, whereby children can have
:08:04. > :08:08.access to therapy if they want it. Give us an idea of the kind of
:08:08. > :08:13.young people you have been dealing with. You have about 17,000 at the
:08:13. > :08:18.moment? We deal with 17,000 vulnerable children and they very
:08:18. > :08:23.invulnerability. The ones who come to our street level centres, 84% of
:08:23. > :08:30.them arrived homeless. 87% have multiple traumas. I am talking
:08:30. > :08:38.about children who have been multiplies sexually abused, they
:08:38. > :08:42.have been deprived of food. -- will deplete sexually abused. They have
:08:42. > :08:45.been harmed by carers and complete strangers, like drug dealers who
:08:45. > :08:50.come into their homes. So when the children arrive, they are
:08:50. > :08:53.incredibly disturbed but they also tend to not have the basic
:08:53. > :08:59.necessities, like underwear, toothbrush, somewhere to sleep.
:08:59. > :09:02.Right now, as I speak to you, we have a waiting list for 500 beds
:09:02. > :09:06.because children are sleeping on the floor. People would find that
:09:06. > :09:09.difficult in one of the richest countries in the world. But the
:09:09. > :09:13.truth is, in Britain, there are some large numbers of children who
:09:14. > :09:17.are below the radar, surviving on the streets, who are very
:09:17. > :09:22.vulnerable because Dundee was at getting hold of them and running
:09:22. > :09:27.them as couriers. -- because drug dealers are getting cold. And there
:09:27. > :09:32.are a significant numbers of girls being sexually abused in street
:09:32. > :09:36.gangs. These children are what I call lone children. They may have a
:09:36. > :09:41.parent they are living with but the parent has difficulties of their
:09:41. > :09:46.own. They may be an addict, alcoholic, they may have
:09:46. > :09:49.significant and on contained mental health difficulties. A very toxic
:09:49. > :09:55.combination. And the child is being themselves up. What is the average
:09:55. > :09:59.age? Usually about the 10 or 11- year-old arrives. And then we go
:09:59. > :10:04.back to the house when they trust us and we find toddlers, very small
:10:04. > :10:09.children, sometimes in these houses. An additional problem in Britain is
:10:09. > :10:13.the problem of non-status individuals. These are individuals
:10:13. > :10:19.who may have come from other countries, they don't have any
:10:19. > :10:23.legal papers and Britain has made a rule of not supporting these people.
:10:23. > :10:29.Children seeking asylum, which is not just from the UK but everywhere.
:10:29. > :10:34.They may be all over the world. talk about those children who are
:10:34. > :10:40.below the radar. Frankly, you do not know if there are children out
:10:40. > :10:45.there who are even kilojoule raider, do you? That is very true. -- even
:10:45. > :10:49.though your reader. That is why I feel so passionately about this
:10:49. > :10:54.issue. Children inside social services and child mental-health
:10:54. > :10:58.officers, and are known about, are only a fraction of those in need.
:10:58. > :11:02.For every single one of those children, there are hundreds of
:11:02. > :11:06.others that nobody has actually paid attention to. The
:11:06. > :11:13.internationally recognised figure for a child could maltreatment in
:11:13. > :11:19.Britain is about 1.5 million children. That is a lot. What do
:11:19. > :11:22.you think can be done to try to get... Make sure these children are
:11:22. > :11:26.protected from difficult circumstances at home? Is there a
:11:26. > :11:33.method? We know many children fall through the cracks and are abused
:11:33. > :11:37.at home. What is interesting is at the Kids Company, 97% of the
:11:37. > :11:41.children itself referred. That means the children hear about us on
:11:41. > :11:46.the streets and make their way to ask. What we found is that children
:11:46. > :11:50.who are being maltreated often know each other. So, for example, one
:11:50. > :11:55.child of a drug addict will probably know another 30 children,
:11:55. > :12:02.because their parents used together. What I would like to see his street
:12:02. > :12:05.level centres open seven days a week from 9am until 10pm, where the
:12:05. > :12:12.children in that neighbourhood know that if they ever hit crisis, they
:12:12. > :12:18.can make their way to their centres. But you have come up with this idea
:12:18. > :12:22.of roving bands. Explain that to us, whereby you tried to detect if
:12:22. > :12:30.children are being abused in any way by dropping in unannounced. --
:12:30. > :12:33.roving vehicles. What I wanted was children who are recognised as
:12:34. > :12:38.living in households where the parents are harming them,
:12:38. > :12:42.especially under-fives, children who end up on what we call the
:12:42. > :12:46.child protection register in Britain, I would like the
:12:47. > :12:52.possibility for social workers to have a key to that household and to
:12:52. > :12:59.be able to let themselves in at any point to check on that child's
:13:00. > :13:04.well-being. I understand... This is a privacy problem. It brings up the
:13:04. > :13:10.surveillance tight society. understand that if one were to do
:13:10. > :13:14.that, you would compromise somebody's privacy. -- type.
:13:14. > :13:19.for me, it is a choice between that and the safety of a toddler. A
:13:19. > :13:24.toddler who is being harmed in a household warrants protection and
:13:24. > :13:29.is a greater priority than a parent who seeks to have personal privacy.
:13:29. > :13:33.I think if you are abusing your child, you forgo your right to
:13:33. > :13:37.privacy in the service of your child being made safer. But it
:13:37. > :13:42.brings the back to that point of the child-centred approach. Nobody
:13:42. > :13:45.would argue what you just said, I suppose, but you accept that
:13:45. > :13:50.wherever possible, it is best to keep the children with their
:13:50. > :13:57.families? Wherever possible it is. Children are profoundly loyal and,
:13:57. > :14:02.even if the parent is harming them, forgiving towards the parent. The
:14:02. > :14:06.ideal growth environment is an appropriate home a cup -- home
:14:06. > :14:09.environment. But at the same time, society has to be truthful and
:14:09. > :14:14.admit that there are certain households with children are at
:14:14. > :14:19.risk and we have got to be robust in protecting those children.
:14:19. > :14:22.do now actually have some of money from the Government, don't you, to
:14:22. > :14:32.run your centres? How do we know that you are doing the right
:14:32. > :14:34.
:14:34. > :14:41.Our government funding is only 20% of that total income. We got it
:14:41. > :14:48.from central government because the local authorities did not recognise
:14:48. > :14:53.ask for help directly. You have a fairly stringent evaluation process.
:14:53. > :14:57.Central government comes and evaluate us. We have passed out
:14:57. > :15:02.clinical and financial or debts with high assurance and no
:15:02. > :15:08.recommendation for improvement. We also have independent researchers
:15:08. > :15:14.constantly with us measuring efficiency of our expenditure, but
:15:14. > :15:21.also our clinical model. Had you demonstrate your results? Of the
:15:21. > :15:27.17,000 students, you can say that these numbers are doing this and
:15:27. > :15:34.sell one. You have been on the record saying it is not easy. You
:15:34. > :15:38.were quoted as saying that the focus of measurement is potentially
:15:38. > :15:43.useful for organisations that can be measured, but destructive for
:15:43. > :15:47.complex organisations. I use a complex organisation? We have
:15:47. > :15:56.children at both ends of the spectrum. We have children and
:15:57. > :16:05.young people who have gone on to university. At up to 120 children,
:16:05. > :16:10.100 went to university. -- out of 220. They are succeeding and
:16:10. > :16:15.progressing in ways that are visible, we can produce evidence.
:16:15. > :16:19.The difficulty arises when you have a child who is profoundly
:16:19. > :16:24.traumatised. You have to measure where that they are having less
:16:24. > :16:29.nightmares at night. Or are they are waiting be bad less. But their
:16:29. > :16:35.muscular structure is less rigid with terror and they are allowing
:16:35. > :16:40.you to sit next to eat them. That is progress. To governments, and to
:16:40. > :16:44.external agencies, that does not look like Lammas progress.
:16:44. > :16:52.Nevertheless, you have to be able to stabilise a child
:16:52. > :16:58.psychologically firmer they can go one to attain education. There is
:16:58. > :17:03.scrutiny for that? Yes, berries. Neuroscience, the ability to look
:17:03. > :17:08.into the brain, has advanced so much that we are at the cusp of
:17:08. > :17:14.something very exciting. We are getting measures of the level of
:17:14. > :17:18.stress at a brain level in children. Newport 16 electrodes on their
:17:18. > :17:23.heads, it is not going into a scanning machine, and you get a
:17:23. > :17:27.real picture of the functioning of their brains. There is definitely a
:17:27. > :17:34.measurement for the future. tuck about sexual exploitation of
:17:34. > :17:39.young girls. In the UK, we have a very public case of a young white
:17:39. > :17:43.British girl being sexually exploited in the north of England
:17:43. > :17:48.by a man who gave them food and cigarettes and alcohol for sexual
:17:48. > :17:54.favours. Had you deal with this particular aspect of abuse of
:17:54. > :18:00.children? I think that sexual exploitation of children is one of
:18:00. > :18:04.the biggest risks internationally because of the internet. Now, you
:18:04. > :18:10.have a number of factors playing into it. Adults can access children
:18:10. > :18:15.through the internet. Children are accessing very perverse and
:18:15. > :18:18.inappropriate sexual lies to sadistic material that is
:18:18. > :18:24.interfering with their normal development and the ring them
:18:25. > :18:31.towards per first -- perverse functioning. Jordan Armour
:18:31. > :18:38.vulnerable to sexual exploitation. -- children are more vulnerable.
:18:38. > :18:43.What was interesting in Rochdale and Oxford is that predominately
:18:43. > :18:52.the goals that were sexually abuse were in the care of local Bootes --
:18:52. > :18:59.the girls. We have a care structure that is not protecting the children
:18:59. > :19:03.that we deemed too vulnerable. -- the local authorities. It is not
:19:03. > :19:10.just in the UK, but the Leader the world. In this particular case in
:19:10. > :19:19.the UK, people are tired about a racial and ethnic dynamic. The man,
:19:19. > :19:24.the abusers, were a return Arabic men. You come from a different
:19:24. > :19:32.background, your mother was Iranian Muslim and due came here at what he
:19:32. > :19:39.is of age. We do you stand on that? I do not believe that religion in
:19:39. > :19:44.its purest sense or ethnicity leads to the sexual abuse of others. He
:19:44. > :19:50.of the human beings want to behave in a perverse way, they can use a
:19:50. > :19:56.number of theoretical frameworks like religion, ethnicity, gender
:19:56. > :20:02.and abuse those to justify their inappropriate behaviours. We have
:20:02. > :20:07.to be very careful not to generalise. That we must accept is
:20:07. > :20:13.that there was an abuse of a framework of the reef. By example,
:20:13. > :20:18.Muslim religion, too justified behaviour that the Muslim religion
:20:18. > :20:22.itself would find unacceptable. Absolutely. We attract about
:20:22. > :20:28.charred abuse, looking at the frustration that has spilled onto
:20:28. > :20:36.the streets. They could youth unemployment. The EU average is
:20:36. > :20:42.22.5 bus stop 16.5 % in the US. It is a bad time to be a young person.
:20:42. > :20:47.That is no excuse for the riots that we saw in the UK last year.
:20:47. > :20:52.People turning to crime, is it? There is absolutely no excuse for
:20:52. > :20:58.turning to crime. If you look to the riots in the summer and the
:20:58. > :21:06.statistics that emerged out of that, 66% of the young people who were
:21:06. > :21:12.involved in the riots had special educational needs. 32% where Sir
:21:12. > :21:18.Paul that they have to access school meals. -- where surplus off.
:21:18. > :21:22.If you look at the exclusion, a large amount of those young people
:21:22. > :21:30.had been permanently excluded from high school. That time concluded is
:21:30. > :21:33.that whichever way you look at it, the drivers of extreme unrest in
:21:33. > :21:38.Britain are likely to be individuals with exceptional
:21:38. > :21:44.vulnerabilities. When you have something like Sean Bailey, a
:21:44. > :21:47.community worker, this says that we have not heard our children a
:21:47. > :21:52.Mollie wrong culture. We need to talk about responsibility. You are
:21:52. > :22:00.not saying that because you have no money that you should turn to crime
:22:00. > :22:07.and rioting. There are plenty of people who are lower abiding.
:22:07. > :22:12.learned abiding. I completely agree. You must ask yourself where the
:22:12. > :22:15.children pick up the notion of entitlement and grabbing psychology.
:22:15. > :22:21.You are talking about a nation whose prime minister Margaret
:22:21. > :22:26.Thatcher stood up and said there is no such thing as a community or
:22:26. > :22:31.society and get on your bikes and go and find work. The point I'm
:22:31. > :22:37.making is that if you see children who are behaving anti- socially,
:22:37. > :22:41.please look at the adults around them, because I promise you, the
:22:41. > :22:45.framework and the example emanates from the adult world. A final
:22:45. > :22:49.question. Do you think that regardless of where a young person
:22:49. > :22:55.comes from, if they are young and valuable and have problems, is
:22:55. > :23:00.there a universal approach OP one- size-fits-all solution?
:23:00. > :23:05.universal approach is interesting. The latest brain research is
:23:06. > :23:11.showing that the ability to be laughed and at the receiving end of
:23:11. > :23:17.lava is the number one positive ingredients in stabilising brain
:23:17. > :23:23.functioning and keeping a child's at a process to a level. We are now
:23:23. > :23:30.finding that the attachment at Chard has to his maternal care
:23:30. > :23:35.determines that child's ability to keep their behaviour prose so sure.
:23:35. > :23:41.Paternal love develops in the fund part of the brain. The area used to
:23:41. > :23:47.control impulses and movement. there a solution of one size fits
:23:47. > :23:51.all? Yes. Create opportunities or of giving children and young people
:23:51. > :23:58.a sense of belonging and detachment and their chair it. If young people