While off last week, I was invited to go to the launch of Barnardo’s new “Children In Trouble” campaign. As I was unable to make it, I watched with interest what the campaign would focus on. Yesterday, I found this article from BBC News covering the new TV Advert.

In summary, Barnardo’s commissioned a YouGov survey on adult’s attitudes towards children in the UK. The results found that around half of the 2000 people interviewed felt children were increasingly becoming a danger to others. Martin Narey, Chief Executive of Barnardo’s said:

“It is appalling that words like animal, feral and vermin are used daily in reference to children.
“Despite the fact that most children are not troublesome there is still a perception that today’s young people are a more unruly, criminal lot than ever before.
“The British public overestimates, by a factor of four, the amount of crime committed by young people.
“The real crime is that this sort of talk and attitude does nothing to help those young people who are difficult, unruly or badly behaved to change their ways.”

Congratulations to Barnardo’s for raising awareness of these sad attitudes, and for working to change them. For those of us trying to encourage and champion young people, it seems we have a lot more to do!

Thanks to EasyRew for this one (via Facebook).