6.2 Closing Remarks

Well this is the last Sub-Chapter of the website, and just to finish I’d like to offer a few concluding remarks.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading it and that you got something from it. I think I enjoyed the challenge of writing it over many years – but I’m not sure…………..

Dividing up all the different elements and seeing where they would fit was a lot of work.  As someone that always seems to have more ideas than time it was a considerable test for me to discipline myself to actually take the time to write the website and not go off on yet another tangent – i.e. be distracted by some new idea or venture that took my fancy.

I suppose I do get angry at the lack of progress in my chosen area of work and ensuring that this anger didn’t get in the way of positivity was a bit difficult too.  In this, I deleted a lot of my more off the wall ideas and notions.

My Closing Remarks Chapter is divided into just four Sub-Chapters.

6.2.1                LEAP OF FAITH

6.2.2                TWO-WAY CHALLENGE

6.2.3                CREATIVITY AND UNCERTAINTY

6.2.4                CLOSING REMARKS – FINAL WORDS

At the start I said that this website is a bit of a shot in the dark.

So, in deciding to do it, I had to make a bit of a leap of faith. It would not have been the first time in my life that I have hovered between the two (seemingly) contradictory proverbs look before you leap and he who hesitates is lost.

And contradiction inevitably produces dilemmas.

In this post I will describe some of these dilemmas. And they were – in some cases – quite challenging and hard to resolve.

In an early Sections I offered this description of the Focus Group, and I still remember – as I was writing it (and the characteristics) – wondering firstly was it respectful and secondly would it be in people’s best interests. When I added the good news, I felt a lot happier in that I was writing in a positive and hopeful manner.

I wondered would it improve matters for very hurt people if others were alerted to their life’s circumstances, how they and their children struggle, and how there is so much potential, hidden, waiting to be tapped into?

I began writing about the Pillars around the same time. I was making notes for years but didn’t cohere them into anything readable until I began the website – maybe they still don’t cohere – I don’t know – it’s up to others to decide.

And, as above, my dilemma was would it improve matters for very hurt people if the effects of the actions of those who are very influential in our society – on families affected by imprisonment – were unpacked and more fully understood?

When I was describing the theories and the concepts and propositions and linking them to the natural world I pondered on what fitted with what, and in what sequence should they be presented.

Organisations are many and varied, big and small, open and closed and all shades in between but they are entities where the essentials of systems theory are really important and where the practical applications of all the theories, concepts, propositions etc. will be implemented and/or actioned. It was a challenge to write this part – in particular in respect of what is doable and what is not.

And, indeed, would it improve support workers’ skills if they made the link between the phenomena that abound in natural world – including what I call the root foundations; that have high impact low noticeability – and their day-to-day work?

Fundamentally, will focusing on how organisations are structured, (and what is prioritised and what is not) improve the prospects of people who are hurt, largely misunderstood and, as I put it at the start, abandoned by those of influence in society?

Finally – the website promotes collective responsibility cooperation rather than them and us conflict. I feared that mentioning the Focus Group and the Pillars over and over again might inadvertently lead us into the them and us zone. This is actually the last thing I’d want!

I hope that exploring, investigating and pondering on the dilemmas added some value to the finished content.

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.

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.

Some members of families in our Focus Group may have grown up waiting, waiting, waiting, getting very frustrated, then angry, being totally dependent on the State, zest for life often dulled (from a very young age) by dependence on prescribed and then illegal mood-altering substances, personal power being eroded by experts, perhaps in and out of care type institutions (including open institutions), and finally prisons, with some of their children following the same path.

Including people who have experienced all the above in decision making is not plain sailing.

But if they are included, we immediately see how much more urgent doing something is rather than 1): talking about doing something, 2): making grand plans, or 3): researching what needs to be done.

And, this is not one sided – like everything in the website, the challenge of inclusion is, of course, two-way!

Let us say that our grounding is in formal education, and we are passionate, and want to do something – i.e. make a difference. Sometimes, when we come face to face with the (often) chaotic nature of the day-to-day life of the Focus Group, usually precipitated by trauma (and in particular the anger, fear and the uncertainty it brings), we may default to what we know best, (i.e. the easy way out, cite health and safety, HR procedures, proper governance, etc.) which will exclude people but still alleviate our conscience, (‘we tried everything’, or ‘there was nothing we could do’, or, ‘it was her/his own decision’ etc.) as someone drifts away and is ultimately, once again, excluded.

It is usually very challenging – if we’ve had a lot of formal education – to share power and look beyond the paradigm favoured by the Pillars because firstly the messages of the primacy of Pillars thinking have been swallowed from a very young age in home and school and general society, and secondly we can say (with a lot of conviction) it-worked-for-us.

Now, let us say our background is in a family with some or all of the characteristics of the Focus Group (perhaps we grew up very resilient, left formal education early, and survived many setbacks) and we want to do something, i.e. aspire to help others in our own communities and families. On our journey we may find it challenging to learn the professional boundaries that have to be adhered to if progress is to be made, if the work is to be safe, and if confidentiality is to be maintained.

This could entail bringing parts of our unconscious into full awareness, a process that can be both enriching and painful, and during which we need good support and supervision. It could also involve taking responsibility for what might trigger chaos, anger or crisis that might, in turn, distort reality and rationality in a course of action.

For example what worked as a short term tactic may be seen to be now getting in the way of long term progress.

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There is an old saying; old habits die hard, and, take it from me – the blending of experience and knowledge and the forging of both into coherent action will be as emotionally challenging for the formally educated as it is for people whose grounding is in lived experience.

There is one final point worth mentioning here. It comes from the findings in the book Spirit Level that I reference elsewhere in the website .

That is, that people perform worse when they know that there are others, who they have been socialised into believing are superior to themselves, present – i.e. more educated, more qualified and, perhaps, from more privileged backgrounds.

This has implications for our work and it is important to be aware of it!

Werner Heisenberg, (who we referred to when we mentioned chaos) and who is credited with hypothesising the Uncertainty Principle, has a lot to answer for!

When uncertainty began to replace certainty in theories in physics, and then in scientific enquiry in general, the world began to change – and has been changing since. Over the past century or so all the old certainties have been undermined or eroded.  Anyone who is my age or older will have experienced some of them. These include religion, economics, nationality, politics, family, marriage, royalty, media, art, music, dance, poetry, strata of society, who is in charge, and people’s place in society. 

Because humans love certainty, this has caused us a lot of problems.

Uncertainty brings insecurity, as we struggle with freedom when choosing our own destiny!

While research in neuroscience shows that our brains love certainty – research also shows that creativity and the ability of the brain to accept uncertainty are linked.

So it follows that if we want to promote creativity in our organisation, and encourage staff to take risks, we need to model behaviour that shows that we can allow a healthy amount of uncertainty.

This can be a challenging balance to achieve because, of course, too much uncertainty is harmful. Emotional intelligence is relevant here because generally the more of it that there is in our organisation the less will be the need to weld down the manholes.

Getting back to uncertainty, it has led to violent revolutions as oppressed peoples refused to accept that they were inferior within the old certainties that were ordained for them by their betters.

Mostly, that was (as we noted in the Chapter on Power and Control in Society) the certainty that we are entitled to everything and you are entitled to a lot less, (or nothing – in the case of slavery).

Dealing with insecurity is truly the biggest challenge of living with uncertainty, and the accompanying anxiety and self-doubt (will I make it, am I right, can I trust myself) is one of its major down-sides.

And uncertainty, of course, also implies an increase in complexity.

The reason for this is that things can have different meanings as people have the freedom to interpret them subjectively instead of being told what the meaning is. (I spent some time already describing how difficult it is to define spirituality and how, throughout history, it was defined for us by people who we considered to have the inside track to a better life after we die).

Religion (and politics) are important top-down systems that have always been used to maintain the order necessary for society to function.

To illustrate this, think of the uncertainty that the political reforms of the second half of the 19th century brought to the world as people realised that they could be creative in determining their own destiny.

All that change, trouble, strife, hardship, poverty, even huge loss of life.

Is it worth it at all? Are we not better off with everything certain?

After all, take just one really important example. In healing our physical body, are we not delighted with the certainty that an antibiotic, or an anaesthetic brings?

But uncertainty has an up-side too – as will be described in the next post.

The previous post largely posited the problematic side of uncertainty.

However, a major up-side of uncertainty spreading through society has been that creativity became available to the general public.

The old certainty that only educated or well-connected people could be creative was shattered.

Like many aspects of humanity, creativity was once thought to be confined to brilliant minds, prodigies, and highly intelligent or highly educated people. 

When mass communication (first radio, and then TV, and now the Internet) came along, the democratisation they offered opened up opportunities for people who never had such opportunities before.  Creative individuals whose recognition would never have spread beyond their own village now had the possibility of becoming world famous.

Relevant to the subject of this website, person centred therapy (and the human potential movement) is the embodiment of the principle of uncertainty in emotional healing, which is fundamentally different to the traditional medical model that assumes that someone is a closed system, not an open, living, emerging, autonomous being.

Consider the practitioner’s implication that is at the heart of person centred therapy, that is, ‘you know better than me what’s best for you’.

What can be more uncertain?

What can introduce more complexity into the relationship?

What can be more challenging both for the person in distress and the practitioner? 

Even to consider vulnerability (and fragility) as capacities that can be creatively tapped into rather than undesirable qualities thought to be weaknesses is to challenge the traditional meaning of such terms.

Person centred work also implies the democratisation of creativity in healing of distress, i.e. of the psyche.  This is particularly evident in the research (readily available) which shows how little our qualifications matter in respect of easing distress – and how important relationship is.

While we would love to be absolutely certain that our distress will be eased, we intuitively know that it is our responsibility, and no matter how many external, professional experts we go to for help, the ultimate decisions in respect of healing are our own.  

In these Closing Remarks, and in the context of the link between uncertainty and creativity I would like to briefly revisit the Chapter on Leadership where I explored the nature of invitational leadership.

I believe that if we are leaders who are invitational we are reasonably comfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity and creativity in the organisations that we lead.

We generally tend to trust more than we fear, i.e. trust the process of growth (the root foundations) and particularly emergence – the hallmark of self-organisation.  We acknowledge that while specific elements have to be certain; there is significant value, in respect of growth, in uncertainty.

‘Keeping the predictable going’ and the reductionism which I described earlier is anathema to the creative leader who wants openness, safety, freedom of thought, argument and a questioning atmosphere.

I do believe though that the dangers that many practitioners see in too much uncertainty are learned – not innate, and can be unlearned if one is open to change.

But a bit like sharing power, uncertainty is not for everyone!

Some see it as an opportunity to be creative; others fear the lack of control that inevitably accompanies it.

Remember the post on how we protect ourselves from trauma? I believe that the best favour that I can do myself and those I lead is – in a supportive environment – firstly acknowledge, identify and then, when it is safe, take the risk of gently removing the protective layer, the armour as we called it, and welcome in the uncertain world of the emotions.

In the world of helping people, I believe that creativity and uncertainty correlates with resilience and flexibility, confidence to have the willingness to bounce back and take that risk.

There is probably a continuum from a very coercive, fearful and obedience-based leadership style and the more invitational trusting type (linked above) that tolerates uncertainty and self-organisation.

And all of us leaders are somewhere along the continuum.

But it is also important to remember that even the most creative person must be willing to, sometimes, respond with certainty and no ambiguity – if the situation demands it.

When to do this and how to do this has to come from experience, and a good support structure.

A leader can be authoritative without being authoritarian……….

The previous Chapter, Getting The Pillars To Believe proposed that we community workers need to be willing to engage with workers within the Pillars who are empathic with and supportive of different ways of working that are inclusive of very hurt people in the Focus Group.

In doing that, this website promotes collaboration and partnership.

Implicit in it is a desire to improve systems and processes that protect children and other vulnerable members of our society whose distress is often hidden.  Creative alternatives to current methods are proposed which include working with organisations whose norms and practices may have been, traditionally, based more on the coercion and obedience model than on the invitational one proposed.

This will, of course, bring a lot of challenges. I am sure that there will be uncertainty in our commitment to uncertainty! 

And I believe that the biggest challenges are transformation and dialogue – as distinct from trying to force change – within an environment of trust and uncertainty.

Transformation implies that we have a willingness to adjust our beliefs and certainties and accept new developments as well as ancient wisdom. The coercion and obedience (and the fear that often accompanies them) can all be challenged by compassion within a trusting relationship.

We do not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, (as is often said), or try to construct some unattainable Utopia.

Dialogue implies creativity and complexity, respect and trusting the other, and (our two old friends at this stage) two-way knowledge flow and emergence.

Our work needs to acknowledge that the low-level conflict within the Pillars (that I mentioned in this post) exists, but we need to take great care, in our dialogue, firstly to be understanding and not to be drawn into it – and the competition and comparison that always seems to accompany it.

Even basic knowledge of anthropology will alert us to the fact that our evolution happened because of our overwhelming desire to further our education in the broadest sense.

What we aim for is generation of new thinking and action which focuses on our humanity and all the positive aspects of same – particularly emotional and relational.

Natural selection reinforced and affirmed the traits (which we may also call gifts) to do this and it is very foolish and wasteful of us to ignore them when it comes to helping people in distress.

What might emerge is shaking up of old and apparently conflicting perspectives and forging a new approach that involves courage and patience.

Now I said a number of times that I would try and focus on the positive and I’d like to finish on a positive note!

In Ireland, in respect of protecting the vulnerable, we are not at all the worst in the Western World. Imprisonment is always a good indicator of a population’s attitude to such matters. And in Ireland we have about half the imprisonment rate as our nearest neighbour, England, and one-eighth the rate of another of our major cultural influences, the USA.

For some reason we seem to resist the binary approach of these countries where different belief-systems, traditions and stances on important issues of social justice and human rights are diametrically opposed to each other, thereby making progress in either area very difficult. I don’t really know why this is. Perhaps there is something positive in our much criticised ah-sure-it’ll-do culture. (Though Japan – which can hardly be described as an ah-sure-it’ll-do kind of country – has half our rate of imprisonment again)!

It is also heartening for me as a practitioner who has toiled away in the voluntary sector for many decades to have met and worked with people within the Pillars (of whom there are many – and some in very senior positions) who are enthusiastic about solutions. And it is particularly heartening to see how many younger people are enthusiastic and open to creative ways of working.

In this, I believe – as I have said already – that we on the community side have an opportunity, (and I know this sounds a bit heavy) but sometimes I feel that we have a responsibility to offer our assistance and promote our solutions.

Shakespeare notes in his oft-quoted phrase that there is a tide in the affairs of men.

Despite my fears expressed in the post on modern trends, I believe that the tide of complexity and interconnection, uncertainty and ambiguity, networking – and communication on a level never thought possible – has now turned and is coming in – and will not turn in the foreseeable future.

This is good news for our work in communities – and it is up to us to make the most of it!

This website, entitled The Natural World Of Child Protection, names, delineates, describes and proposes unique design features in the complex field of protection of vulnerable people that have parallels in the natural and observable world around us, with a commitment to give those features deeper consideration, than perhaps, they are ordinarily afforded in our day to day life.

And – importantly – to highlight their significance in designing initiatives that work when we support families in deep distress – the Focus Group.

I hope that this goal was achieved for you who have taken the trouble to read it!

I would really like to hear back from you so that I can improve my own understanding of the subject matter – and/or meet fellow travellers who share some of my views and/or meet people who disagree…..

I will finish with a quote from Marcel Proust about discovery. I believe that this quote has particular relevance for the role of creativity in difficult-to-solve problems: 

The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes