As practitioners, we do this work for pay and hopefully the vast majority of us do it well, and we work every day to the best of our ability.
With family members within the Focus Group, the work, if we can call it that, is a labour of love.
In fact, in many cases, it’s a lot more than that – it’s a labour of survival.
Apart from the odd article, often either exploitative or patronising in nature, the mainstream media, reporting crime and criminality, mostly ignore 1): the acute pain and suffering that goes on in families for years and years – and in particular what children go through, and, 2): what people can do for themselves. If they didn’t, their reportage would be very different.
The public’s general level of awareness of both is therefore very low also.
If we are highly stressed-out parents trying our best to protect children living with the characteristics as described, our concern is not whether or not our child gets 400 points in the Leaving or goes to college or even gets a relatively humble job, it is often whether or not he goes to prison, or even whether or not he will live or die.
Very often the energy that goes into saving our child’s life is dissipated in well-meaning but counter-productive actions driven by crisis, fear, (sometimes anger), perhaps guilt, grasping at straws, or even panic.
Sometimes these actions achieve a tactical short-term victory to overcome an immediate problem, but might not be done in an atmosphere of a healthy boundary or with a strategic long term vision in mind.
But what we do have is an inbuilt early warning system that no formally educated practitioner will ever have.
Imagine if we could harness all that energy and cohere it so that it includes the early warning system along with the creativity and tactical good sense born of years of struggle and then graft on the professional boundaries needed for healthy and safe work.
It would then be a powerful, collaborative response which would not only protect children but also foster independence, confidence and autonomy among very hurt families.
This is what the leap of faith entails.