In my work over 30+ years I have experienced many worthy, well-meaning initiatives, all costing a fortune, all doing great work staffed largely by very good people, but all influenced by the system or the thinking of the system and thereby disconnected from, and missing out on a cohort of families in whose lives chaos is more prevalent than the order necessary to avail of the supports offered by the initiatives.
Those families constitute the Focus Group, (who I already described as abandoned) by society in general.
Thinking about why this is so, i.e. so much effort and money going into something but getting so little return (and definitely influenced by my many years of street-work with young people and their families), I began to develop ideas around structures of society.
That is; what or who are most influential and therefore to all intents and purposes, control decision making. Following some deliberation I came up with four Pillars that hold up or support the structures of society in Ireland.
(As an aside, I need to say here that this pertains to my native land, there may be different Pillars in different countries – though in many countries in the Western World I’d guess that a lot of what I will describe in the rest of this Sub-Chapter would hold true).
The Pillars are the entities that control and direct behaviour in society, (i.e. that influence society to the greatest extent), that constantly interact at many levels, that give the imprimatur to decisions, and by extension, decide how and where our limited financial resources will be allocated, and within that allocation, what and what not, or, more often, who or who not to favour!
Before I get into it I’d like to explain why some powerful entities are not Pillars.
When thinking about it a bit I considered some obvious ones, notably the Catholic Church, dominant sporting organisations, and private industry. However, I did not include them because:
~ The Catholic Church: In the past, this was a very powerful pillar in that it directly influenced Government decision-making. God was referenced in our iconic Proclamation of Independence in 1916. When the first Dáil met in 1919 God was thanked for giving us courage to persevere through centuries of ruthless tyranny; and turned up again in our Constitution 21 years later! However I believe that, nowadays, while religious orders fund and support many worthy organisations working with marginalised families, the established Church has lost so much power that it does not really control our country in respect of how decisions are made or resources are allocated.
~ Sporting Organisations: Modern national professional sporting organisations have a considerable amount of power in our society, and also have considerable influence and impact – not to mention wealth! However, while connections made playing sports can be very important to personal advancement in business, politics and even the public service, I do not believe that the organisations themselves have that much power in society in respect of allocation of resources to assist our Focus Group.
~ Private Industry: This one was difficult to decide on! The private sector is very powerful, influences politicians and media, but needs (in theory anyway) to defer to state apparatus to get things done. While there are many people in the private sector involved in initiatives to assist our Focus Group, the sector does not perceive itself to have any responsibility for same. However – as I will be mentioning in the Chapter on Power And Control In Society – even though it isn’t included its values penetrate the Pillars enough for it to be very influential in terms of decision-making in society.
The next post will describe the four Pillars!