Responding to terror

For many of our children and young people, last month’s terrorist bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, which left 23 dead, might be the first such event that feels ‘real’. While this generation has grown up flooded with images of devastation from around the world, there haven’t been any dominated by scenes of children. We haven’t seen screaming young people and parents fleeing a scene. We haven’t heard stories of British children dying. They haven’t happened at events they might have been at with victims who looked like them. Many young people will have woken up the next morning thinking, for the first time: “This could have been me.”