[jambutty]

Under the banner of Trevor McDonald’s “Tonight” programme, Esther Rantzen, she of the “That’s Life” fame and the driving force behind Child Line - 0800 1111 – presented a programme last night at 8:00pm entitled Esther v the PC Brigade.

What she highlighted is an absolute disgrace in today’s society and a terrible indictment of how insular Joe and Josephine Public have become.

She got two child actors, a boy and a girl about 8 years of age and each in turn stood around inside a shopping precinct looking lost. I have to admit that both kids were brilliant actors and really did portray a lost child without having to resort to tears. The greater majority of adults walked past, some even detoured around them without even so much as a glance. One or two walked past, stopped, looked back and then carried on about their business.

All in all over ONE THOUSAND people walked past a small child that was obviously lost and only FOUR people stopped to ask if the child was alright. At that point Esther and the camera crew came forward to relieve the caring person of having to make some sort of a decision and did a brief interview with the Good Samaritan. One person, a man, walked past but did report the situation to a shopping precinct security officer.

When the programme ended I sat back and asked myself what would I do in such a situation?

To be brutally frank, I don’t know what I would have done in such a situation but having thought it through and now forewarned, if I was confronted with an obviously lost child I would stop and ask the kid if it was OK. But I would do the same as one bloke did. He kept at more than arms length from the child. The three female Samaritans got much closer. Having established that the child was indeed lost, one thing that I wouldn’t do is take the child by the hand and lead her/him away to try and find either the kid’s parents or a policeman. Instead I would seek the help of two or three other adults, preferably women, and ask one of them to get the police or to keep an eye on the child whilst I did it. More than likely someone would have a mobile phone so we could all stay with the child until the police arrived.

Some people, with kindness in their hearts, might offer the child a sweet or a piece of chocolate as a comforter. No! No! No! No! No! The child might have a peanut or some other allergy. You could end up with a situation far more dangerous than just being lost.