The way we talk about and portray children in care really matters

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

In the report of his inquiry into the death of Dennis O'Neill in 1945, Sir Walter Monckton wrote:

It is first necessary to explain the basis of the policy of committing children to a local authority which may board them out. The "fit person," local authority or individual, must care for the children as his own: the relation is a personal one. The duty must neither be evaded nor scamped.

That does not appear to be the view taken by the Reform UK member of Cambridgeshire County Council Andy Osborn. He told a meeting of its children and young people committee that some children in care can be "downright evil".

In an article on East Anglia Bylines, Kerrie Portman explains how damaging such language can be:

Words, especially when spoken by those in positions of power, normalise assumptions and prejudices. They embolden others to think, speak and act in this way, which translates directly to the harms inflicted on Care Experienced people, leading to many of our ongoing vulnerabilities and even shortened life expectancies.

When researching my recent Central Bylines article on Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, I came across an article by Josie Pearce. In it she notes that writers of television drama treat the fact that someone was orphaned or adopted as enough in itself to explain why they have grown up to commit murder.

As she says:

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries orphans were most often heroes. ... But since the twentieth century and TV, our most common plotline is that because our parents were dead, dysfunctional, unable... we must be serial killers. I started counting eventually and by my reckoning 90 per cent of TV serial killers were orphans. 

Sir Walter Monckton's report followed the death of 12-year-old Dennis O'Neill on a farm in Shropshire, where he had been fostered with his younger brother Terry. The case caused a national outcry – more against the council that had sent them there than against the farmer Reginald Gough and his wife, who had actually killed the boy – and gave Christie the inspiration for The Mousetrap. 

In my article on the play for Central Bylines, I quoted Phil O'Neill, who is the son of an older brother of Dennis and Terry: 

"My gentle Uncle Terry always said he wouldn’t seek revenge because that would make him no better than the Goughs. It was a shock seeing him portrayed on stage as a psychotic killer."

The way we talk about and portray children in care really matters. We should give it more thought.