Cristina Odone

Scotland’s inspiring success story with at-risk children

(Photo by Andy Buchanan - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

I never thought the Scots were more emotionally intelligent than the English. A year spent researching children at risk for the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) proved to me that they are. As documented in the CSJ’s latest report, Safely Reducing the Number of Children Going into Care, the Scots are far more advanced, in terms of their understanding of why we do what we do, than their English neighbours.

Holyrood has embraced neuroscience, enthusiastically building a social infrastructure that will support those suffering from poor mental health and trauma. Westminster, by contrast, continues to languish in the dark ages when the public would pay a penny to gawp at the tragic inmates of Bedlam. Scotland is ensuring that professionals who deal with vulnerable youngsters learn that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are the reason children have poor mental health, grow violent, and fail at school.

As of 2017, it has embedded ACE-prevention across all areas of public service, including education, health, justice and social work, committing £1.3m to practitioner training. Everyone from a youth justice worker to the carer in a children’s home is trained in trauma awareness to spot the danger signs of a child at risk: impenetrable silences, hostile (sometimes violent) outbursts, inability to concentrate. 

The brain of a neglected or abused child reacts exactly like the brain of a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The amygdala, the almond-sized bit of the brain that controls our ‘fight or flight’ response, is similarly enlarged in both groups. Just as we would never leave a traumatised soldier in the care of anyone unfamiliar with their condition, the Scots reckon the same should be true for a traumatised child.

Negative relationships can wreck a child’s life; positive relationships can transform it.

Scotland’s very enlightened wholesale approach to mental health will serve the country in good stead as it recovers from Covid-19.

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