The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada

CHAPTER 6 Meeting the Challenge

6Meeting the Challenge When Canada signed the Convention in 1990, child advocates were hopeful. They envisioned a new practice of children ’s rights in Canada. However, their vision has yet to be realized. The gap between the promise of the Convention and current practice means that many children in Canada continue to develop in socially toxic environments. One reason that we have not met the challenge of children’s rights is that Canada has not responded vigorously enough to children’s unmet needs and rights. But even the most vigorous of reactive policies and programs will not secure the rights of children . Proactive measures are necessary. The primary reason Canada has failed to meet the challenge of children’s rights is because insufficient emphasis has been given to proactive or preventive policies, laws, and programs. Taking children’s rights seriously requires a true Children’s Agenda that is focused on the development of comprehensive proactive approaches to children’s well-being. In this chapter we describe proactive policies and programs that we believe would help Canada become more consistent with the Convention. The goals of the policies we describe are to nurture the development of the individual child, to provide support for the child’s family, and to improve the child’s school and community. From Reactive to Proactive Our goal in prescribing proactive policies is to provide children with the best possible environments for healthy development consistent with the Convention. However, since adversity can, and does occur even in optimum environments, it is important also to provide children with protective immunizations. The protective immunizations have been identified in research on resilient children. Notes to chapter 6 start on p. 207. / 129 There is general agreement among researchers and those who work with children that child outcomes are influenced by combinations of protective and risk factors. Protective factors have been identified in three areas of development: the child’s at-birth status, the quality of the child’s family experiences, and the quality of the child’s school and community .1 Risk factors are circumstances that increase the probability of negative outcomes. They can be toxic substances, but more often in Canada, they are social toxins. Risk factors can exist within the child and be present at birth. For example, a child whose fetal development was compromised by exposure to toxins such as alcohol or tobacco is considered at birth to be atrisk for developmental difficulties. Risk factors also exist within the family . Examples here are chronic poverty, poor parenting with use of harsh physical punishment, and parental divorce. In addition, risk factors exist within the child’s school, most notably poor teaching and anti-social peers. And within the community risk factors are poor-quality neighbourhoods , lack of recreation facilities, and lack of structures that provide for children’s participation in decision making. Generally, it is the presence of multiple risk factors that predicts problems for the child’s development. Nonetheless, we do see children who are exposed to a multiplicity of risk factors who have no developmental problems. What makes these children resilient? Emmy Werner’s Kauai longitudinal study provides some answers. Werner tracked the development of a cohort of children born in 1955 on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. A number of the children who had been identified as high-risk infants were successful at work and in family and social life in adulthood. Werner was able to identify protective factors that enabled resilience among children who experienced multiple risks. The protective factors in the child were easy temperament , social skills, and a sense of efficacy and control. The protective factors in the family were a parenting style that fostered child competence and self-esteem, and a positive relationship between at least one parent and the child. The protective factors in the school and community were the presence of social support from a neighbour or a teacher, and community opportunities for development.2 Changing environments such that risk factors are minimized and protective factors are maximized will have the greatest impact on children if done in a universal proactive manner. Targeted policies and programs are less effective. Under a reactive targeted approach, children must first experience risk factors, such as abuse, before there is any intervention. 130 / The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada As noted earlier in this book, often, by the time the child has received help, significant and sometimes irreversible...