Diocese of Liverpool

Thought for the Day, 21 July 2004

The Rt Rev. James Jones

Good Morning

Nestling in the rolling hills of North Wales there's a campsite called Colomendy. Here for the last 50 years thousands upon thousands of young people from inner-city Liverpool have come to play. In one of the terraced streets of back-to-back houses, due shortly to be pulled down, lives a couple with their children. With the pull of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn they regularly hire a mini-bus and take gangs of kids from the local streets off to Colomendy. I've been with them and seen how little lives, closed up by the harshness of urban life, start to open up, and to laugh. The couple who run it pride themselves on keeping faith with and in even the most difficult children. One weekend two of the kids proved impossible to control so that for the first time and with very heavy hearts they had to take them home.

Standing with the two children they knocked on the door. It opened. The mother looked out and said simply: ‘I don't want them'. I leave it to your imagination to ponder the fate of those two children. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they will become the target of the plans announced this week to crack down on anti-social behaviour by young people.

For the last four years I've chaired the Government's New Deal programme in Liverpool, and know that many will welcome more money going into community policing and neighbourhood wardens. Money's also flowing into children's projects and Sure Start programmes. But, the one area, crucial to the best development of children, that has for decades lacked serious investment by our society is parents, and especially married parents.

I know, from the debate about the Children's Bill, which is going through Parliament, that politicians are reluctant to prescribe the role of parents. But the most famous prayer of Jesus which begins “Our Father” gives a theological model of the good parent: as provider “give us this day our daily bread”; as forgiver “forgive us our trespasses”; and as protector “deliver us from evil”.

The central feature of the Children's Bill, totally eclipsed by the debate about smacking, is the proposal to set up a Children's Commissioner. Yet in the ‘General Function' of the Commissioner there is no reference at all to parents! You'd have thought that his principal function would be to ensure the right of children to be cared for by those who brought them into the world.

The impression given by this key section of the Bill, (which I know is not intended) is that the State can have a relationship with the child without primary reference to their parents. But God gives us two institutions for the good ordering of society – the State and the Family. It's a Christian conviction, shared by all the faith communities, that only when these two institutions are married, might we have some hope of peace returning to our streets.