I have said many times that this website, The Natural World Of Child Protection, as one of its central themes, makes a strong case for including people who are deeply affected by the issues thrown up by imprisonment in our overall efforts to protect very vulnerable children.
This can be challenging, and in my opinion needs to be done from the ground up; from first principles.
One of the challenges for our organisation if we aspire to offer people the skills to support the families in the Focus Group is to ensure that all the theoretical concepts are integrated into learning done on any training or courses – or on the job supervision – so that in turn the features, practices etc. described in the Section on Practical Applications will be adhered to by those who will work in the field as faithfully as is possible.
While it is not easy it is doable and with support and encouragement as well as a high degree of self-awareness it can be achieved over time. The method by which it is done should always mirror the work that will be done with families.
And in integrating the learning there is a symmetric relationship between growth of the practitioners and the work done every day.
In the previous post I mentioned making a leap of faith and this is what I believe organisations need to do to include those most affected.
This leap of faith involves taking a risk in believing that goodness, kindness, compassion, idealism and humanity can have equal status in the organisation with boundaries, policies and professional work practices which will actually result in more efficient, cost-effective work in an environment of enhanced safety for all.
If I were to posit one major difference that a leap of faith might bring, it is that we will be doing a considerable amount of processing when accommodating, honouring and affirming anger that may be incoherent or irrational.
Much of this is like what happens in our family situations – but of course in our organisation it is tempered with common sense policies, protocols and procedures both written and unwritten.
What prevents, or at least slows down committing to a leap of faith, is, of course, the domination of fast processors that we wrote about already.
In society in general the well thought out neat explanation or the educated rational justification (see – once again, this post) will always trump the incoherent and irrational anger.
Yet both can be equally valid in many ways – and resultant courses of action (decisions) are often the result of an amalgam of the influence of both.
From the leadership point of view, constant negotiation can be very challenging – which is why inclusion of very hurt people in decision making is more the exception than the rule in society in general.
Tapping into strengths, recognising gifts and affirming all that is good is the topic of the next post.