Tough test for the children's champion who had to learn a lesson in resilience

After a lengthy recruitment process, she had been selected from 40 candidates to be Children's Commissioner for England, following in the footsteps of the first ever commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, who had been in the job for five years and vacated the post in February.

Last autumn, then Schools Secretary Ed Balls announced Dr Atkinson's appointment, despite the fact that an all-party select committee had asked him to restart the selection process because it did not believe she was up to the job. Select committee hearings had been introduced – but without any power of veto – to improve accountability in the appointment of public figures.

The MPs had not previously snubbed any nominee, but here they were,

saying that although Maggie Atkinson was highly experienced, she did not show sufficient "determination to assert the independence of the role, to challenge the status quo on children's behalf, and to stretch the remit of the post, in particular by championing children's rights".

Children's charities stood by Dr Atkinson, as did Ed Balls, who said her evidence to the hearings had shown she would be a strong,

effective, and independent voice for the children and young people of this country. Dissenters still said they were worried she would not stand up to the Secretary of State or challenge the Government's

chequered record on young people.

"It was a very bruising time for me personally," says Dr Atkinson. "But it was far less about me than about political disagreements between different groups. The committee was a pilot scheme and didn't have a right of veto. And as Ed Balls said, 'If you think she's going to be pushed around by me, you've got to be joking.' I have worked with a range of politicians over the years, and I'm fairly robust."

Still, it was a less than ideal start to her first job on the national stage, a 138,000-a-year position at the top of a small quango, whose staff number 25 and whose budget allows for 25 pence per child in England – with current cost-cutting reducing that to around 23p.

Its remit is to bring the views and interests of England's almost 12 million under-18s to the attention of policy makers, acknowledging their right to have their thoughts and feelings taken into account in decision making about them on everything from asylum-seeking to the care system and criminal and youth justice.

Maggie Atkinson has spoken passionately about the "demonisation" of young people, and it's clear pretty quickly that this is one of her favourite themes. "The different generations in this country don't understand each other. There's a belief among some older people that most of them (young people) are hoodlums. In my job, I meet young people on a daily basis in all walks of life, all situations, in many different places, and 99 per cent of them are the salt of the earth, purposefully engaged in things they enjoy. They are well balanced, well parented and occupied. But that doesn't make news, does it?

"Many young people say to me that they don't understand why they can be standing by a bus stop minding their own business, but old ladies who see them there are instantly frightened. One of the challenges we have is that children and older people don't spend enough time together to get to know and understand each other, and maybe a positive outcome of public sector cuts could be that if a community has four places where young people and older people meet separately, then perhaps closing one and forcing people to use the same space will enable better

understanding."

Dr Atkinson had only been in her new job a matter of weeks when she was forced to write a letter of apology to Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, for the hurt caused by comments she had made in an interview, saying that Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both aged 10 at time they tortured and killed the toddler, had been too young to stand trial in an adult court and the two were "not beyond being frightened".

Mrs Fergus called for Dr Atkinson to be sacked for the comments. Dr Atkinson is reluctant to go over the whole story again, but she stands by the point she was trying to make about the age of criminal responsibility in this country and the practice of putting children through the highest criminal court in the land, one designed to deal with extremely serious adult offenders.

The age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales was raised from eight to 10 in 1963. In most other EU countries it is 12 or 14, and in Scotland it is eight. A 2003 UN convention on the rights of the child called for the UK to raise the age of criminal responsibility "considerably". Dr Atkinson thinks we should be having conversations about raising the age to 12, and the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association Paul Mendelle QC recently said he thought the right age was 14.

"I don't suggest for a moment that very young people who commit violent crimes shouldn't be made to face up to what they've done and be

punished for it," says Dr Atkinson. "The issue is not whether a 10-year-old understands the difference between right and wrong – most do – but whether they understand the meaning and impact of their actions and ideas like 'for the rest of your life'."

She advocates a punishment regime which, in all but a few cases of

those who are highly likely to hurt themselves or others, is based around restorative justice, community sentencing and supervised rehabilitation, trying to change the child's life and living environment rather than putting them into a mainstream prison system which will vastly increase their chances of growing up as hardened

repeat offenders.

"It costs between 70,000 and 200,000 a year to keep one person in prison, yet you could probably spend 50,000 and get a better outcome," she says.

Dr Atkinson's priorities for her job include providing input to various ongoing reviews – into social work and young people, young people and the justice system, and the effects on children of the long delays currently inherent in the asylum system.

She defends the social work profession, although it took a beating in high-profile cases such as those of Baby P and Shannon Matthews, the Dewsbury child who was kidnapped and hidden with the collusion of her own mother. "Even in these cases, serious case reviews have shown there were instances of good practice. But people didn't talk to each other, and professionals involved were not just social workers, but nurses, doctors and others.

"You can't look behind a closed family door, but to any trained

professional it is a devastating thing to find out that you missed a signal. Hindsight is always 20:20 and the public doesn't hear about the hundreds of lives saved by good team work."

Dr Atkinson is upbeat about the news, just announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove, that the role of Children's Commissioner is to be reviewed over the next three months. "When I took the job I knew an election was coming, and we knew that, whichever government we got, savings would have to be made. I welcome comments and suggestions and open consultation about how we work. You can always improve."

She describes herself in general as "an eternal, incurable optimist", but she is concerned about how services affecting some of the country's most vulnerable children might be hit by cuts.

"If you remove some funding from services lower down the scale, which can catch problems earlier, then 'top-end' services will be swamped , creating more need and longer waits. People running services will need to be brave and creative."

Dr Atkinson says she'd like to be in the job for a few years, making children's voices heard – and inevitably taking whatever knocks come with the role. She seems to be woman enough to take them.

MAGGIE ATKINSON

Born: Great Houghton, near Barnsley

Education: Catholic comprehensive schools followed by Cambridge University (History), post graduate certificate in education at Sheffield University, PhD in Education at Keele University

Career: 11 years as a teacher, various jobs in local government including county manager (education standards) at Cheshire County Council, assistant director (quality assurance) at Warrington Council, Ofsted inspector at Kirklees MBC and adviser, schools management and support at Birmingham City Council. Most recently director of children's services at Gateshead. Past president of the Association of

Directors of Children's Services and chair of the Children's and Young People's Workforce National Partnership

Married: With two adult stepchildren

Hobbies: Gardening, crafts and music