Posted on 02/14/2007 3:58:38 AM PST by kipita
The UK has been accused of failing its children, as it comes bottom of a league table for child well-being across 21 industrialised countries.
Unicef looked at 40 indicators from the years 2000-2003 including poverty, peer and family relationships, and health.
One of the report's authors told the BBC that under-investment and a "dog eat dog" attitude in society were to blame for Britain's poor performance.
The government says its policies have helped to improve child welfare.
Unicef - the United Nations children's organisation - says the report, titled Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, is the first study of childhood across the world's industrialised nations.
Unicef UK executive director David Bull said all the countries had weaknesses that needed to be addressed.
"By comparing the performance of countries we see what is possible with a commitment to supporting every child to fulfil his or her full potential," he said.
The authors say they used the most up to date information available to assess "whether children feel loved, cherished, special and supported, within the family and community, and whether the family and community are being supported in this task by public policy and resources".
But they added: "The process of international comparison can never be freed from questions of translation, culture, and custom."
OECD countries with insufficient data to be included in the overview included Australia, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Turkey.
'Dog eat dog society'
Professor Jonathan Bradshaw from York University, one of the report's authors, put the UK's poor ratings down to long term underinvestment.
"It's very difficult to answer the why question. But if you're asking what is the main driver of these results, it's the fact that for a long time children in Britain have been under-invested in; not enough has been spent on them."
He said child poverty rates were falling but were twice as high as in 1979, while the government was "only just beginning" to put money into health and education.
The Unicef study found Britain had the lowest proportion of children who found their friends kind and helpful - 40%, compared to 80% in Switzerland, he went on.
Professor Bradshaw said that this was an indication of a "dog eat dog society".
He added: "In a society which is very unequal, with high levels of poverty, it leads on to what children think about themselves and their lives. That's really what's at the heart of this."
The UK was in the bottom third for five out of the six categories. It was placed in the middle third of the table for health and safety.
A spokesman for the UK government said its initiatives in areas such as poverty, pregnancy rates, teenage smoking, drinking and risky sexual behaviour had helped improve children's welfare.
Welfare Reform Minister Jim Murphy said the Unicef study was an "historic" report, which used some data which was now out of date.
"It looks at some information and analysis from perhaps six, seven, eight years ago," he told the BBC's Newsnight. "Some of the information really is out of date in that sense.
"If you look at the teenage pregnancies issue, for example, we're now 20 years low on teenage pregnancy levels, and on homelessness as well there's been real progress there as well - a 25-year low in terms of new homelessness, so there's an awful lot we have achieved."
He did acknowledged the Unicef report was important.
"Hopefully it leads to a wider conversation about what more we can do to eradicate poverty," he said.
Unicef's league table drew on sources including the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the World Health Organization's survey of Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) aged 11, 13 and 15.
However, the information attributed to the UK in the HBSC survey is only taken from responses of residents of England.
Unicef also said some PISA indicators for the UK should be treated with caution due to low sample response rates.
Website survey
The Children's Society has launched a website to coincide with the report, www.mylife.uk.com, which allows children to answer a series of surveys about their lives.
The society's chief executive Bob Reitemeier said: "We simply cannot ignore these shocking findings.
"Unicef's report is a wake-up call to the fact that, despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children and young people in a number of crucial ways."
The Children's Commissioner for England, Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, said the report's findings should be a wake-up call to politicians and society as a whole.
"We are turning out a generation of young people who are unhappy, unhealthy, engaging in risky behaviour, who have poor relationships with their family and their peers, who have low expectations and don't feel safe."
He said parents, teachers, politicians and society as a whole all had a role to play in nurturing children and helping them to develop into successful adults.
Colette Marshall, UK director of Save the Children, said it was "shameful" to see the UK at the bottom of the table.
"This report shows clearly that despite the UK's wealth, we are failing to give children the best possible start in life," she said.
"The UK government is not investing enough in the well-being of children, especially to combat poverty and deprivation."
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of having "failed this generation of children".
"After 10 years of his welfare and education policies, our children today have the lowest well-being in the developed world," said Mr Osborne.
He also said government could encourage parents to have greater involvement with their children through "a framework of more flexible working".
But he added: "I don't actually think government has the answer to all these problems."
A spokeswoman for the government said it regarded the improvement of the life of British children as a matter of particular importance.
"Nobody can dispute that improving children's well-being is a real priority for this government," she said.
1. Netherlands 2. Sweden 3. Denmark 4. Finland 5. Spain 6. Switzerland 7. Norway 8. Italy 9. Republic of Ireland 10. Belgium 11. Germany 12. Canada 13. Greece 14. Poland 15. Czech Republic 16. France 17. Portugal 18. Austria 19. Hungary 20. United States 21. United Kingdom
May I be the first to say PPHHHHHHTTT! ?
Remember those long-ago Halloweens collecting UNICEF money for the poor kids of the world? It turns out that those little bastards should have been collecting money for us instead!!
It's interesting that the first 8 have birthrates far below replacement level and rapidly-growing Moslem populations.
Did they just leave Moslem girls out of the "welfare" observations entirely, or is being married before puberty considered a positive factor?
And yet which countries have immigration crises?
For UNICEF, the answer is a resounding "yes!"
But don't dare mention Mother's Day -- it's demeaning to womyn.
Just another example of the nanny state going down the tubes.
A more educated guess is that the normal white British chick is so ugly that a guy would rather spend his time and money in a cold, depressing bar than being home with his kid (I've spent a lot of time watching the East Enders). Perhaps it would be smarter to import chicks from other countries that British men would want to be with. And export the ugly British chicks (sorry for being redundant) to the black Carribean islands and other places where they would be totally welcome.
Just a wild guess.
Excellent points.
There's a little Lenny Kravitz in me also with regards to American Women but I'd say it's more to do with the inner beauty.
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