Floating down to Camelot

I've found the story the quotation is from, in The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3240943.ece) - I'd assumed these were researchers with poor background knowledge looking for gang culture in Devon, but the report is somewhat more frightening.

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Eek! That is scary. I'd assumed the same, too. Poor girls!

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the-marquis.livejournal.com

LOL :) Although really I suppose I should be shocked and outraged. Still as a headline it does made for an amusing "culture clash"

That is until I read the article. Up until then I'd just thought it was about some American journalists working here not the frankly nightmare experience for the mum and two girls on what was supposedly a wonderful trip to NY. Still don't get why the various hotel and social services staff acted the way they did. Although I supect that the difference in location between hotel and hospital that gets commented on at the Times' pages is due to the hotel staff living in that area and knowing that hospital.

Edited Date: 2008-01-24 06:54 pm (UTC)

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I hadn't read the story when I posted, either. I was just amused by the image of a library as street gang.

The story is pretty shocking. It makes you wonder if this sort of thing is normal, of if it was one of those one-in-a-million cases of miscommunication. When I read nightmare stories of holiday-makers falling ill in America, I'm always very grateful for the National Health Service.

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It's difficult to tell what was going on in New York from the report. Looking at the related items on Google News, Devon24 seem to have had it first, but it's been picked up by Metro and by a paper in Adelaide. With no adult to look after the girls other than their mother, I can see why the authorities acted as they did, if lacking in imagination. I read in one of the reports that there are now proceedings against the mother, by New York, for neglect; I could see how that could be construed, but it's not really worth anyone's time now.

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The thing that scares me most if wondering if this is the standard treatment for children in care. Children in care have a very raw deal in life, but the emphasis - at least over here - is on trying as hard as possible to give them as secure and comfortable a life as possible. They've often had a horrendous life through no fault of their own, so the thought that a place like this can even exist is pretty scary. Ditto to the scary hospital.

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I suspect that it is the standard treatment, and that (from our no doubt liberal and cosseted British world view) denial of individual rights and comforts is routine in the New York system. It reminds me very much of what was caricatured in the musical Annie.

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If this is true, I find it horrifying. If the most vulnerable children in society are treated as little more than criminals, it's just barbaric. Our system is hardly great - I heard some pretty heartbreaking stories at a conference on "corporate parenting" (i.e. the idea that everyone working with "looked-after children" should strive to give them exactly the same chances as they would give their own children) - but it does at least try to work from the premise that none of this is the child's fault and first and foremost they need security and stability.

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The neglect thing is just beyond words. Are parents supposed to always travel in pairs, in case of incapacitating illness?

And frankly, if someone from New York came to Bideford and became ill, then I would bet my SOCKS that their temporarily unsupervised children would be offered every possible form of help by pretty much anyone, official, unofficial, and most particularly by people running the hotel they were staying in.

Seems to me, they went on holiday from their native culture of basically nice, if somewhat parochial and insular, people to a culture of what appear to be complete jobworth bastards.

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the-marquis.livejournal.com

Yup I reckon you're dead right there. "Neglect" sheesh! Mind you the US is home to the view that thinks the unborn child has more rights than the mother ... barking!

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I am not offering expiation, but I can see how a culture of egalitarian bureaucracy would behave in the way the New York authorities did. I'd have hoped, rather than expected, that the hotel would have let the children stay in the room.

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If a culture, en masse, has lost the will or ability for individuals to offer help to children in a crisis, then there is no hope for them. If that's what egalitarian bureaucracy does, then maybe they should pitch it out of the window, buy themselves a nice dictator and get lessons in being a human being.

In Devon, I reckon they could have stopped a passer-by in the street and got more help. Which may have been the problem: I would guess that local kids would have put up more fuss at all stages of the process: the Devon girls, I would guess, politely went along with everything they were asked to do.

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The Western Morning News had a big story on it. Poor kids, it must have been utterly terrifying for them. Good quote though.

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Judging from the general lack of sensitivity and sense shown by everyone in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if membership of Appledore library has now been added to the list of reasons that deny you admission to the US.

(I hadn't read the story when I posted about the quote. The idea of a library as a street gang just amused me.)

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