Listen to children ... we ignore their voices at our peril

THESE are the words of a young person, spoken last week. They are real, they are authentic, I will never forget them:

- Hilton Dawson

"Nobody gets in a dinghy to cross the English Channel unless they're even more afraid of the thing that they're escaping.

"For the first time in the whole of my life, I feel safe, living here (in Northumberland)."

We should listen to children. In my experience, children tell the truth. Children find their own ways to say the important things, which can be relied upon.

As we know, children grow up and eventually make their voices heard. We ignore them at our peril.

Our children command us to take a stand. Parents and grandparents, who is there among us who would not willingly lay down their lives for our own?

Last week, I had the privilege of talking to a mother, who gave up her child for adoption more than 50 years ago.

She subsequently spent decades searching and eventually found her, living her own life, happily.

Together with the adoptive parents, they have all been able to roll back the years and bring the birth mother into the whole life of a new extended family.

Such powerful, unbreakable bonds.

It may be the curse of the retired social worker, sometimes I think about children whom I've been involved in removing from their parents, or in placing for adoption and I wonder about how they turned out.

I reflect upon the passage of time and of how people change, of how we're all affected by 'events'.