Custom essays on Towards inclusion and a better childhood

As it has been already mentioned above, education is crucial for African Caribbean employees and lone parents are very concerned with education of their children because they cannot provide their children with good education without the support from the part of a state or local communities. Today, the problem of exclusion of African Caribbean children from the community life and the lack of educational opportunities is one of the major challenges the younger generation of African Caribbean face in the UK. To put it more precisely, many African Caribean children growing up in the family with a lone parent are deprived of an opportunity to get education and maintain high standards of living. Moreover, on analyzing the current position of many African Caribbean children, specialists (Walker & Wiseman, 2003) argue that they are in a totally disadvantaged position compared to the rest of Birtish children at average. What is meant here is the fact that African Caribbean children are deprived of basic conveniences and commodities average children in the UK are accustomed to take for granted. In fact, African Caribbean lone parents are often unable to provide their children with the normal conditions of living as well as with good or even elementary education. In this respect, it is important to lay emphasis on the fact that African Caribbean children are more concerned with survival than with their education because they have to start working to help their lone parents to maintain their household. In such a situation, they cannot focus entirely on their education and their academic successes are very poor. As a rule, African Caribbean children do not have time to learn.
In this respect, the problem of language barriers becomes particularly significant because it widens the gap between African Caribbean children, on the one hand, and the rest of the community, on the other. In fact, it is not only peers that have problems in communication with African Caribbean children because of the language barriers but also it is adults, including educators, who may suffer significant difficulties while communicating with African Caribbean children. As a result, African Caribbean children have to face their communication problems being on their own for the language barriers limits the number of their friends to their African Caribbean community mainly, whereas their lone parents cannot pay much time to them because they have to work to maintain household and to have money to provide for their children.
The lack of financial resources is aggravated by the negative models of behaviour African Caribbean children can learn from their parents and social environment. As a rule, African Caribbean children live in poverty stricken neighbourhoods, where the high crime rates and poverty provoke the development of negative models of behaviour in children. They take crime and violence for granted. As a result, when they grow up, they perceive crime and violence as a norm. At the same time, in the course of their childhood they feel their exclusion from the native-born, British community. As the matter of fact, they feel as if they are outcasts and they really do because of the poverty of their lone parents and lack of educational and, thus, better job opportunities.
In such a situation, overcoming educational barriers and cultural barriers is crucial for the successful integration and inclusion of African Caribbean children in the British society. In this respect, it is important to lay emphasis on the fact that African Caribbean lone parents cannot provide their children with higher education. At this point, it is important to understand that the lack of access of African Caribbean children to the higher education is determined not only by financial factors but also by socio-cultural ones. What is meant here is the fact that African Caribbean lone parents cannot afford maintaining their children’s education financially because of their low level of income, low-paid jobs, high household expenses, and other objective reasons. At the same time, African Caribbean lone parents as well as the large part of the African Caribbean community holds a low social standing and the higher education is not the priority of African Caribbean lone parents because they have to work and to raise their children. Therefore, they have no time for education. In such a situation, children of African Caribbean lone parents learn models of behaviour of their parents and they do not consider obtaining the higher education as their objective. Instead, they have to start working at the early age to help their lone parents to afford living. No wonder, African Caribbean children have little time to spend on their education because they have to start working. In such a situation, the support from the part of the government is essential because many gifted children from African Caribbean families cannot afford education, while grants and bourses from the state and other institutions and organizations could have helped children to get higher education. However, at the moment, educational programs for African Caribbean children are ineffective that leads to their exclusion from the community and limits their job opportunities in their adult life.
In such a context, it is hardly possible to underestimate the significance of problems, educational, cultural and communicative problems, on the adult life and employment of African Caribbean children. They are deprived of actual opportunities to obtain higher education, whereas, in the contemporary business environment and in the contemporary labour market, the higher education is an essential condition of a professional success of an individual. At any rate, the higher education opens larger and better job opportunities for an individual, whereas individuals, who have no higher education, are doomed to do low- or semi-qualified job and, therefore, they have a low level of income. Thus, African Caribbean children turn out to be in a sort of vicious circle for they repeat the same lifecycle as their lone parents have done. They grow up in a low-income family with a lone parent. They have poor basic education and they have little if any opportunities to obtain higher education. As they grow up, they have poor job opportunities and have to get employment in semi- or low-qualified jobs being unable to raise their children providing them with higher standards of living and better education. As a result, their children repeat their lifestyle over and over again.
Obviously, African Caribbean cannot tackle their problems without the support from the part of the state and community. They cannot provide their children with a better childhood as long as problems of their children remain their problems solely. The situation can start changing only if the government and the local community start assisting African Caribbean, especially lone parents, to raise their children and provide them with better education. For this purpose, it is possible to use educational programs, educational grants, and so on. In this regard, language courses are particularly important because they can help African Caribbean to close communication gaps with other members of the community, to get better job opportunities and to improve the life of their children. In this regard, lone parents need a special support from the part of the state and community because they do not have time and financial resources to raise their children respectively to average British standards.
The government should encourage local communities to support African Caribbean lone parents and their children in order to provide children with a better childhood. The latter is particularly important because problems of African Caribbean lone parents and their children cannot be ignored for they lead to the marginalization of African Caribbean community. African Caribbean children are excluded from the local community if they there is no assistance from the part of the community and the state. In stark contrast, the assistance from the part of the government and the local community will facilitate the inclusion of African Caribbean children in the local community. In such a way, they will learn a positive social experience that can help them to tackle their problems in their adult life. In addition, such support can help African Caribbean children to overcome cultural barriers because it is through the mutual work of African Caribbean and local community it is possible to develop positive interpersonal relationships between African Caribbean and the rest of the community.
Today, the government and community involvement in the resolution of problems of African Caribbean lone parents and their children is not sufficient. The existing programs, such as New Deal and Sure Start have good intentions but their practical implementation is far from perfect. As a result, many representatives of African Caribbean community, especially lone parents, do not receive the support they need so much and they have to tackle their problems on their own. In such a situation, the bunch of social and economic problems accumulates and, in a long-run perspective, it can outbreak and lead to consistent social changes. In this respect, the growing unemployment rate among African Caribbean lone parents can be a serious factor that warns against the ongoing ignorance of problems of African Caribbean community. The employment is crucial for African Caribbean lone parents, their survival and survival of their children.