Essential `ingredients` for childhood identified

A unique partnership in one of the most notorious areas of
Glasgow has produced a list of eight essential ‘ingredients’ for a
happy childhood. The Children’s Inclusion Partnership (CHIP),
led by Barnardo’s Scotland and including local people,
Stepping Stones and Glasgow Council Cultural and Leisure Services
has charted the quality of childhood as Possilpark declined from a
prosperous community in the 1950s to an area devastated by
unemployment, drug addiction and crime by the 1980s.

The ingredients identified are: respecting and listening to
children; a good family life; hope and expectations; opportunities
to learn; secure housing; a stimulating and safe environment;
access to affordable leisure facilities.

The local people, aged between 20 and 60 years have drawn from
their own lifetime experience living in the area, which has been
printed in a report, Childhood in Possilpark – The
Ingredients of a Good Childhood, to be published on Friday (May
18). The report, a unique commentary on the decline of a community,
will be presented to local politicians, policy makers and key
agencies.

The report concludes that the area has been stripped of
facilities and parents are struggling to survive on low incomes. As
a result, the community has lost its sense of shared, informal
responsibility once so strong on the streets of Possilpark.