Professor Al Aynsley-Green of the Institute of Child Health and chair of the Children's Taskforce told a child health inequalities conference in London last week, organised by the National Children's Bureau, that many people did not care about children and questioned why services should be focused on them. He called for the 'lottery' in children's services to come to an end.
Professor Aynsley-Green said, 'Children are the lifeblood of the future and our guarantee for our nation's prosperity and success. Healthy children become healthy adults, so it is extraordinary that for so long children have been at the bottom of the pecking order of priorities.
'There needs to be a cultural change in our society toward the value and importance of our children. There is something perverse about the UK that we carry on the Victorian ideal that children should be seen and not heard. There is a long way to go on legislation of the rights of the child. Children are not yet seen as a specific client group with defined resources.'
Professor Aynsley-Green acknowledged the Government was making progress with such initiatives as Sure Start, Quality Protects, changes in taxation, neighbourhood renewal and the Children's Taskforce, which would oversee implementation of the NHS Plan for children.
Public health minister Yvette Cooper told conference delegates, 'We know that many of the health problems and inequalities people face are rooted in childhood which is why the Government is so concerned that every child should have the best possible start in life, in both education and health. Health and education are intrinsically linked, whether that is working together to diagnose hearing problems in a child or helping mothers with postnatal depression.'
Ms Cooper added that the most important Government health policy for children was the commitment to abolish child poverty in a generation. 'It is a fact that children from low-income families have a low level of consumption of fruit and vegetables and a higher incidence of cot death, and there are links between poor housing and asthma and other poor health problems,' she said.