Children's Week, which commences in Australia this Saturday 24 October, is timely. It invites us to reflect on the proposals to impose control orders on children as young as 12, amid the growing tendency to see the response to the radicalisation of children to lie in punishment, not in considering the children's development into responsible adults.
Children's Week reminds us that children are young human beings, children among other children. It reminds us of the gift that our children are, of the future of the world that they hold in their small hands, and also of the world of violence, flight and hunger that so many of them enter, into which some are seduced, and in which many more unwillingly perish.
Children's Week also invites us to think of what responsibility means. We are responsible for shaping the world in which our children will grow. We are also responsible for caring for them and for protecting them from the things that threaten them. And we take it for granted that governments will assume this responsibility when parents and others cannot.
Children learn from adults how to take responsibility for their own lives and to be responsible to others in the decisions they make. Responsibility comes slowly. It involves brain development, training and teaching from significant adults, and the space to make mistakes and learn from them.
Some of those mistakes can have terrible consequences. But they are the mistakes children make, and should be responded to in a way that wins them to a better way, not confirms them in irresponsibility.
Many vulnerable children have lacked responsible adults to protect and care for them. Their development may have been affected by hunger, violence and lack of education. Radicalised young people may have been seduced by adults who prey on them. Many others have come to the notice of child protection services from an early age, and some who have breached the law have come under the criminal justice system.
The government exercises its responsibility for vulnerable children through these agencies and also through community agencies. The goal of their work is to accompany young people, many of whom have lacked responsible adults to nurture them, to provide a space for them to find themselves, and to encourage them to be responsible adults.
This delicate and precarious work demands that agencies and governments are responsible in ensuring that their care will further young people's development into responsible adults. Responsibility