Giving young people chance to fly the nest should not be a crime - Christa Ackroyd

Until then I had led a pretty sheltered life. I hadn’t even been allowed to go to the city centre nightclub under 18s disco which all my friends seemed to frequent without parental hassle until I had begged and I begged, using the age old excuse ‘but dad, everyone else goes’.

My father finally relented. I can see him now cleaning and polishing his work shoes on the dustbin lid in the back garden. He was not for turning. I tried everything. Until desperately I announced ‘you don’t trust me do you ?´ and that was the clincher.

He told me I could go on one condition. That I didn’t drink alcohol. And that he picked me up at 10pm. The alcohol I could cope with.

I didn’t drink (some might say I have made up for it since) and was well aware that as a policeman it would be dad who would be in trouble if I was caught drinking under age. It was the picking up at 10pm which caused me an issue. And it wasn’t the time limit either’

That Wednesday I knew dad would be in his police uniform. I also knew he meant what he said when he warned if I did not come out at exactly the allotted time he would be coming in. You can bet your bottom dollar I was on time. And that he would have done.

I was 14 years old at the time (nearly 15) and this was for me my first foray into the grown up world. Nothing untoward happened. And of course I left at one minute to ten. But the shock of seeing of dad parked right outside the front door is still imprinted on my mind.

In the weeks that followed I persuaded him to wait for me a little more discreetly down a side street until he announced I could come home on the bus with the others as long as it wasn’t the last bus home. I saw some sights there I can tell you.

And now here we were one year later setting off to Scotland by coach for six weeks working away, waitressing in some hotel we had never been to. We arrived at the dead of night to be shown our accommodation… a caravan in a field. Okay not the glamorous life style we anticipated but we were tough Yorkshire girls. We could cope.

Until out of the door stepped two boys aged about 18. We would be sharing with them. All my bravado went out the window. But what could we do?

As it turned out as we quickly put a makeshift sheet to separate our living quarters we need not have worried. The boys were more horrified and more embarrassed than we were and we carried on. That was until I happened to mention our living arrangements to mum.

Big mistake. Two days later and my parents were on their way to pick us up. I never knew what my father said to the hotel proprietor. I am sure it would have been to the point.

It was another year before we were allowed to travel again, this time to France on our own. And not before mum and dad had checked out the accommodation. It was, my father said, rather a long way to pick us up if we got in trouble. So don’t, was the message.

Years later my mum with her usual turn of phrase said she had been ‘having kittens’ while we were away. But she knew she had to let go. And if necessary let us sort out our own problems along the way. And we did.

Three decades later I found myself in Australia with a father and son who had travelled to the remote town of Bundaberg where 19 year old backpacker Caroline Stuttle had died having been thrown off a bridge while fighting to cling into her handbag and it’s precious contents.

Alan, her father and Richard, her brother, had travelled to see to spot where she was found. It was one of the most shocking and moving experiences of my journalistic career.

Out of her death came Caroline’s Rainbow Foundation set up by her mum Marjorie which still offers travel advice to young people. And despite their terrible personal loss the message is still that we need to let our young people fly.

This week television presenter Kirstie Allsopp was reported to social services for allowing her 15 year old son to travel with his 16 year old friend through Europe with a pre paid rail card.

She is furious. As is her son. And yes it does seem a daring decision to allow him to go and brave of him to want to. But is it criminal? Of course not.

As well as the couple of stories I recounted earlier about just a few of my teenage adventures it is worth remembering in my day you could leave school and go to work at 15.

And also consider the new government is toying with the idea of allowing 16 year olds to vote.

But there are other examples in my development worth mentioning. I caught a bus at 11 and walked through the city centre to go to school every day. I travelled alone on a particularly slow train at 15 , no trackers no mobile phones, to stay with my auntie’s in Devon and Cornwall. And so much more.

And it taught me to be both street wise and independent. And before we say things were safer then. They probably were not. According to the statistics the seventies saw the highest rise in violent crime this country has ever experienced. It is just that we hear about it now with social media and 24 hour news.

So was Kirstie Allsopp right to let her son and his 16 year old pal travel across Europe? I cannot say. They got home safe and sound and saw and experienced a lot along the way during their three week adventure.

But I don’t know the young man and how mature he is, I don’t know what arrangements had been made before they set off. And quite frankly I don’t want to. It’s none of my business.

What I do know is that for a parent letting go is one of the hardest things to do. At any age. That’s why we stay up until silly o’clock until they get home and eventually get a home of their own. We ask them to text us when they arrive safely and worry when they don’t. And that doesn’t stop at any age.

But in a world of neglected children, children suffering from violence and trauma behind closed door in the environment that is meant to protect them, let alone out in the real world, was it really the best use of a social workers time to open a file on Ms Allsopp and her now 16 year old son? I think most of us know the answer to that one.

To all our young people testing their wings and learning to fly, say safe, have fun and make every second count. The world is your oyster. Go and explore it while you can.

There is a long time ahead for you to be a grown up. You have to start somewhere. And what better way than a teenage adventure.