What happened to John?
Earlier this week I went to a consultation on the review of the Child Safety Act. It really upset me and I've been trying to find the words to explain why.
I need to know what happened to John.
John was a boy in my year 7 class who always got in trouble. We went to a category 2 school in one of the most working class areas of our state. John was suspended every second week (sometimes more) and he just couldn't help himself to not get into more trouble. John was my friend.
John's mum had died when he was little. I think she had cancer. He lived with his single dad who was struggling to work and look after his little boy with minimal help. John's dad was a tradie and worked long hours, pretty typical for dad's in our town. When John was suspended he would sit in the cab of his dad's ute all day, because there wasn't always someone else to look after him.
John was as smart as me. I know this, because he sat next to me for a while and we would compete on our tests. Sometimes I won, sometimes it was him. Sometimes it was Melissa. She is smart too.
One time, John was going to be suspended again because he'd got into a fight with another kid. Our whole class had seen it. We were furious- John didn't start the fight. We were sick of John getting suspended all the time even when it wasn't his fault and so we demanded that the Principal come and see us immediately so that we could voice our concerns. He came and he did listen. John still got suspended, but the other kid did too.
I don't know why, but whenever John got suspended I worried about his dad's anger. I don't know if there was need to be concerned- I think his dad loved him. But I worried anyway. He was missing a lot of school. There was no doubting in my 12 year old mind that John's dad needed some support. He didn't always seem to be able to make John's lunch. Might have been because he had to be on site before John woke up. Not sure. Sometimes we would eat jelly sticks together in the shelter shed. I liked those times.
When I went off to high school I lost touch with John. I haven't been able to find him on Facebook.
The last I heard someone told me he stopped going to school all together and sometimes people would run into him at Salisbury Interchange. They thought he was taking drugs.
The reason the consultation upset me this week was that someone said that when kids leave home at 13, 14, 15 that the only thing that is checked is if they have a roof over their heads. If there was a pedophile in the house that they might be put into care then, but otherwise, it was up to the kids. Someone else said that they thought some of the kids were not trying hard enough to go home or to find an alternative.
My school friends have said to me that they find it so hard to get their kids to come home after they turn 12 because if they want to run away the police don't make them come home. If they are over 12 they can make their own decisions apparently. It sounds like they fall through the gaps in child protection too.
If you are 12, 13, 14 or 15 you aren't legally old enough to consent to sex. How then, might a kid sort out their own homelessness?
I always wonder who helped John? I wonder what happened to him? Is the reason that I can't find him online because something happened? Did he go to prison? Did he die? Maybe he got lucky and got the support he needed. Maybe he moved to New York and is living an amazing life. Maybe he's happy. I really hope so.
Might he have gone to law school like me? He would have made a great lawyer. It's probably a bit hard to get into law school if you aren't going to school because you always get suspended. It's hard to learn in the cab of a ute.
It is not ok for kids like John to slip through the system. It is not ok for us to have a system where I am still wondering why the adults didn't help John when I knew what the problems were when I was 12. It is not ok for us to think kids can sort their own lives out, when they are not old enough to make any other decisions. It is absolutely never ok to think that they need to do any more to help themselves or that they don't deserve help because they are the naughty kids.
They are children.
I wonder what John would have thought of the session I went to? How would he have felt in that room? Because I didn't feel great and I did go to law school. I didn't know all the acronyms. I don't have a working knowledge of the specific act or what is best practice in other states. But I do know how it feels to worry about John. John isn't a statistic to me.
He was my friend.
I know I'm saying things that are making people working in child protection uncomfortable right now. I'm not saying them to point out the deficiencies in the child protection system. We know it's not working as best it can. We know it's not the fault of the child protection department or the child protection Minister. They are dealing with really difficult stuff. If you go into child protection you do so because you want to make a difference. It's just really hard when everything is said and done to change systems so big that it is hard to know where to start. I really like the people putting on the sessions.
But I really liked John too. He was dealing with really hard stuff too. He was a child. My last memory of him is when he was still in primary school. I've been worrying about him since 1995.
We need to have uncomfortable conversations
It doesn't help to avoid discussing the things that we could be doing better. It does help to name them and to say 'hey, can we try just one more time'? It also helps if we can find a way to move beyond personalities and politics and organisations and to ask the question- how could we better help our most vulnerable kids?
That isn't a reflection on any persons failure. No one person failed John. He was let down by a series of things beyond anyones control, including his own ability to maintain his anger. But he was only a kid, let's not forget that.
If we focus on the failure we won't get the opportunity to ask the question- how good could we make it? What would it take to create a society and public institutions like schools, social housing and child protection that are so good and so safe that kids like John don't fall through the cracks? How do we create an economy so diverse and wonderful that a single dad could be confident he could get a job that supported him to look after his young son? To get him to school and support his needs after his mum passed away too early? How can we create the community connections so that single parents are supported when they need it, so that the whole village really does raise a child?
How could we create a world so amazing for children that no child has to be as angry as John was and that every child has an equal chance to go to law school, if that is what their potential allows?
If anywhere has a chance of creating this world, it's South Australia. We're the ones who can do it. I think we should give it a try.
Hopefully John is out there somewhere and wants to contribute. I think he'd add a lot of value to the solution. I also hope he knows where to find jelly sticks, because I haven't seen those since the 90's and they were awesome.
