I stated already that I believe the job of protecting children whose misbehaviour is enduring and persistent is complex. I also believe that it is multi-faceted, intricate, and wide ranging and demands that very delicate skills are applied consistently and confidently over a considerable period of time.
These skills need to be applied not only logically and intelligently, but also in a human and holistic manner that takes cognisance of the effect that their application is having on the child, the child’s family, and the practitioner both in the short term and the long term. And in the case of a vulnerable man or woman, the same applies. (Remember again – the practitioner is part of the process).
While some progress has been made since the days of using what I already referred to as corporal punishment, I fear that the continued lack of understanding of the complexity, combined with the imperative of saving money [1] is leading to the replacement of what we now have come to call institutional harm by what I will term pharmacological harm.
While I believe that, obviously, there are times when a child should be given medicine, I also believe that there is a big danger that medication is becoming more and more part of the problem, not the solution – not only for children – but in humanity in general.
Sometimes when I see a new shop opening – and it turns out to be a pharmacy – I feel a little disappointed!
I further believe that giving chemical substances to children at a very young (and impressionable) age to ease their emotional distress introduces them to the notion (which soon becomes a belief) that ingesting a chemical substance into their body will alter their mood for the better. For a child that comes from a family that has struggled with addiction over many generations, this is a highly dangerous belief particularly during the sometimes anxious period of adolescence.
Yet it is often to those families that chemical medication is suggested as being the first (and only) option for alleviation of the distress that comes from a child misbehaving! And introducing and then maintaining pharmacological solutions that do not work is false economy and costs (and will cost – I predict) the State incalculable amounts of money in the long term.
Teachers and family doctors are often the first practitioners to be consulted by desperate parents who want their child to behave. I believe that these two professions would benefit greatly from education in the fields covered by the Sub-Chapter entitled Trauma and Related Topics.
For most, far too much of their education and experience has been in the mainstream educational/medical models that will not have traditionally taken into account understanding of human patterns of behaviour and how they are affected by our emotional state and vice versa.
I hope that this website will be of use to, and will add to the body of knowledge and/or spark the curiosity of professional practitioners who may find themselves faced with what often appear to be impossible situations.
It is my experience that for those children who grow up in families as described in the next Section in the Sub-Chapter on the Focus Group, the road to dependency, possibly depression and addiction, early school leaving, and ultimately crime and imprisonment, is marked out, from a very young age, with shunting from agency to agency, from expert to expert, from strategy meeting to case conference, etc. ingesting legally prescribed medication along the way, while watching the adults that have the most significance in their lives doing the same.
Does this sound familiar?
[1]. I say saving money here as prescribing medication is probably seen to be lot less expensive, in the short term, than employing a support worker. In the long term it is, as I say above, way more expensive.