We don't need no education

or time with parents, or positive relationships, or health and safety, or support from the community. But we do need under age sex, drink and drugs

In the last couple of days Unicef published a report that placed the UK at the bottom of a list of 21 developed nations regarding child well being. It was quite widely reported in the news, and expectedly the government were criticised by the usual suspects as having failed the young people of this country. But the political blame game almost never gets us anywhere, and it's not what I'm interested in. As with most of these sorts of stories, they are used for what political value they may serve and are then discarded. If a report favours the government, they will shout from the rooftops that their policies are working and Britain has never had it so good. If they are negative towards the government then the opposition parties will wade in to the debate, accuse the government as having failed the British public and hope that they have scored some more valuable credibility points with the population.The same thing is true in the media. It was on the front page of the BBC website yesterday, and today there was a little piece focussing on how children in the Netherlands have it so good (they came top of the Unicef report). But is that it?

I couldn't really be bothered less about political points scoring or articles with a clever angle to pitch, particularly in this instance. What this report is saying is that the UK doesn't have the right systems, resources, people, parenting, schooling in place for our children to grow up happy and healthy. The only area that we performed slightly better in was in education, but as David Batty in the Guardian said, "when our children are among the most awkward, lonely, friendless, poor and unhealthy, is it any consolation that they're good at tests?"

So where do we go from here, because we have to go somewhere. It's now impossible to stay where we are. On the one side is the 'kids have got too many rights' brigade. Be tough on them and they'll learn some respect. The recent series 'Brat camp' (which I have to admit to not having watched at all) or 'Bad lads army' would be an example of that sort of thinking. On the other side would be the 'listen to the kids, and let them know that they're important' bunch. Marilyn Manson in Bowling for Columbine opted for this approach when he was asked what he would have done had he been able to speak to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the two student who carried out the Columbine Massacre.

But can looking after children be so easily split in to the two debates. Over the past few weeks I've been spending quite a lot of time with a 16 year old boy who has next to no qualifications, and has nowhere to live. He is what it is about. Or the girl who after a year 9 (13-14 year olds) sex education lesson told me that all of the girls in the class had already had sex. The country is in a mess with regards to our children, and a lot of us have invested in trying to look after them. Whether we're working in the health care system, education, justice, religious, whatever, we've spent our time and energy on trying to help young people.

So people, where do you think we can go from here?

Ok, so maybe not bigger, but maybe better

So maybe I jumped the gun a little on the whole 'blogging's back' thing, but we're back in the game now.

YEAH!