Today the Guardian reveals that Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, is calling for a child protection approach to address the growth of violent gun and knife crime among the young. This has long been the demand of childcare legislation. In extreme cases, children who are at risk of being involved in violent criminal activity ought to be protected, but this should not be viewed as a demand for the control, regulation and disruption of families or automatic licence for the removal of children from their homes.
What Sir Ian Blair does get right is that policing alone will not impact on the threat of violent criminality involving dangerous weapons in which a minority of children and young people are caught up.
In the early 1990s I was responsible for the delivery and implementation of child protection training, so I know all too well that successive childcare legislation, including the Children Act 1989, had long recognised that local authorities have a duty to protect children from crime and from the fear of crime. Unfortunately however, there has never been the proper "joined up" thinking to fully implement that aspect of the legislation. The legislation back in 1989 was considered radical in widening the definition of child abuse beyond the notion of physical and sexual abuse and even more radical was the notion of the duty placed on social workers and others to engage in preventative and partnership work and understanding the wider definition of families.
Essentially, when our children are picking up guns and using them like toys our response is too late. Part of the problem has been the failure to implement the preventative and multi-agency approach that childcare legislation demanded. Instead, we saw the eradication of the very tools - in terms of a recognised statutory youth service and funding for voluntary and community groups - that would help.
So yes, children in families where there are known repeated violent offenders, whether as a result of older siblings or others, should be considered "children at risk".
However, a broad definition and understanding of child protection is required that recognises the victimisation of children, not just from within families but also from societal neglect and failure. Let us think for one moment what it must have been like as a child to grow up living next door to a crack-cocaine house on some of our council estates. Taking a child protection approach would mean that children could be identified for a range of support from a wide range of agencies including youth, voluntary, education, health, housing and others in order to provide the necessary one-to-one intervention to protect children from abuse and the culture of violence to which they have been exposed.
Ten years ago when, as a black community, we established Operation Trident, we never imagined that we would be dealing with children as perpetrators of gun violence. We established Operation Trident to deal with the "men of violence" on our streets who were using guns to protect their drug-related criminal activities. We are now dealing with a growing minority of children who whether through fear, intimidation or protection are acquiring guns and knives and joining gangs and who themselves are prepared to go on and use these violent weapons with deadly effect. Given this context, you cannot help but sympathise with Sir Ian Blair's search for solutions.