My first experience in the area of helping people in acute distress was doing streetwork in the suburb of Southill in Limerick City. I began this work in 1990.
(Shortly after I began working on the street I wrote a song, Every Way You Turn, which even though a little downbeat in some ways, focused my mind on the circumstances of the young people that we were supporting).
I wasn’t long at streetwork when I realised that the people who need the holistic approach most have little or no access to it. Also, I wondered if anyone had ever actually listened to members of families in the Focus Group.
I soon began to cop on to something.
The teenagers who we were set up to help, and who were in our group (and most of their parents) had been excluded from school – and much of society – at a young age. Well, certainly, one way of being seen and heard, and get attention, was to behave in a way that society disapproved of.
Moreover, some community leaders (including myself) had, (from my observations anyway) unwittingly taken on what Paulo Friere referred to as the values of the oppressor [1]. (I will refer to Paulo, one of my major influences, from time to time).
Despite my lack of experience at that time, I was reasonably familiar (at a theoretical level anyway) with the holistic way of working and how it differed from the traditional medical model. I had a fair understanding of the difference (which might not be very apparent to the layman) between psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis – different modalities – as they are called.
My reading, coupled with a two-year course in counselling, had opened my senses and helped me greatly in my understanding.
Because it is a bit harsh to state that the values that currently prevail in community work in Ireland are those of an oppressor – the term used by Paulo Friere in Brazil where he was working at that time – I will substitute the word mainstream. And it is true to state that, despite the best of intentions, mainstream values often do hold a dominant place in our work.
And this is no surprise – really, because virtually all community leaders and workers (once again – including myself) have been educated in our mainstream education system.
Now when I refer to the values of the mainstream, I link them to the values of the corporate world, and I will describe later how the values of the corporate world filter almost unnoticed into systems that we set up to educate and protect children. Such systems always have struggled, (and still struggle) to include those children who end up isolated, alone, and whose needs are usually ignored.
For example, in the Section on Setting the Scene (in a Chapter entitled Important Descriptions) I will critique the suitability of our mainstream education system in respect of our support work with very vulnerable families.
It is important to be aware of our values because they are linked to our education, and they are formed by our exposure to diverse experiences, (in particular, deeply emotional experiences around approval and acceptance) and influenced by the lens through which we view different situations.
[1]. My opinions came, at that time, from the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere (1921-1997). Paulo was a Brazilian sociologist who worked with oppressed peoples in that country, encouraging them to help themselves rather than wait for the Government to help them – recognising that what Governments set up almost always (often unwittingly) disempower rather than empower people. It is well worth a read.