2.1 Introduction

This, Chapter One in Section Two, Setting the Scene, is a general introduction to the website.  It is divided into three Sub-Chapters.  They are entitled:

2.1.1    INTRODUCTION – INITIAL WORDS

2.1.2    A BIT ABOUT ME!

2.1.3    A NOTE ON DESIGN

My decision to write this is driven mostly by enthusiasm, a longing that things might be different and a desire to reflect the learning that I have been so privileged to experience on my journey through the world of youthwork, family support, child protection and community work over many years.

As I hope will be clear, it is more of an invitation to consider that something could be different rather than some sort of exhortation that something should be different.

I mention this because I strongly believe that the work that will have the best chance of making a difference will be of an invitational nature.

Initially I was wondering does it have to be written! While I argue strongly for a holistic approach to healing in general, and the written word is of necessity a bit cognitive (i.e in our head), I feel that it suits me better in respect of describing work and explaining theories and concepts that I would struggle with in other media.

So that is my chosen method.

In a previous post I offered guidance on how to navigate. I’ll repeat some of it again in case you just jumped to this post!

In order to get around the website being too head based, I decided that I would try to make it easy to read, as accessible as I can, and laid out in a way that a reader (or browser) can play with it – that is, dip into a part of it and then skip to another part that the first part might lead to.  The wonders of the Internet will allow me to do this by linking – something that anyone who has been on the internet for any length of time will be familiar with.

Or, if you like, you can simply read from the Prologue to the Epilogue in sequence!

Allied to the above, another thought that came to me was that if someone reads it, will anything change?  The only reason that I’m doing this at all is to invite people to consider different ways of supporting, and thereby protecting vulnerable children and their families living in communities that often feel ignored (and abandoned) by the system.

And the reason that I ask myself will anything change is that I have very little evidence (from my work over 30 years) that decision makers find the applications of the theories that I invite people to consider attractive – or to be more precise, if they do, that they act on it!  The same goes for research into child development, education, sociology and much of the general social research out there.

In my work I come across many examples in the area of protection of children that seem to ignore what many thoughtful books propose, and what much good research promotes, and even what courses in social work, social care, community work, counselling and psychotherapy etc. teach, as good practice.

Sadly, a lot of this (usually very expensive) research and teaching seems to count for little when decisions are made.  (That is why a full Chapter, in Section Five, is devoted to Research and Evaluation).

Sometimes those of us who ply our trade in this field can struggle with morale. We wish to build trusting, long term relationships with children and other vulnerable people. Our desire comes from both our natural inclination to do so and the fact that through education in child development, social care, social work, counselling etc. the importance of relationship in fostering positive change is continually stressed.

However, organisations’ policies, protocols and procedures – all initiated with the best will in the world – can get in the way of our ambition ………..

And it’s not that anyone is doing anything that would be deemed to be ‘wrong’ in organisations – it’s just that the priorities seem to be driven more by the needs of bureaucracy than those of the people in distress.

More on this later!

Well you have got this far, or else you just jumped to here from the Welcome page, or perhaps you arrived here by chance. Whatever way you got here (and because I don’t wish to waste your valuable time) I’ve decided to put in a checklist to see if you’d like to continue reading.

The checklist takes the form of an ‘agree-disagree’ quiz.  The ten statements (ten is a nice round number) that I ask you to agree or disagree with are either personal experiences from my own work or more general realities plucked from the recent past.  (I could probably have thought of 100 statements without too much difficulty but I think that people will get the gist of what I am on about after 10).

You might like to print out the page so you can put a tick in an agree, disagree or not sure box.  If you don’t print out the page you’ll have to do it in your head. See how you score.  Think carefully now – some of them are tricky!

Now, whether you are a worker in the statutory sector, the voluntary sector, or the private sector, or an ordinary interested citizen, (that most versatile lay person), if you score 10/10 agree, then perhaps you will not have much interest in this website.

You believe in the system as it goes about its business and are obviously very convinced that it is protecting children and vulnerable families, and there is not much wrong with it.

And I fully respect your beliefs!

If however, you score higher on disagree or even not sure side, then you may be interested in reading a bit more to see if you are interested.

Then, depending on how open you are to hearing alternative views in respect of situations similar to those described above – read on – you might find the website stimulating, interesting, or even useful.

Everyone’s life contains twists and turns and at this stage you might have an interest in where I am coming from – as is said so often nowadays.

(Or you may not, in which case you can fast forward to the next Sub-Chapter)!

I am currently a community worker and a psychotherapist, who started off my career as a soldier and a physicist.  I love cycling, music and anything to do with boats and rivers. I am a son, brother, husband, Dad, and Granddad – in that order! I was in the Defence Forces for over 22 years – a considerable slice of anyone’s life.  But I believe that community work is my real strength.

I feel very lucky that I found something interesting to do with my life and I don’t take it for granted.

Now I was intrigued, when I started writing this, to see what would emerge (we’ll be using that word again) if I threw the experiences of family life, soldiering, boating, physics, psychotherapy, music, and community work into a pot and mixed them all together.  I’d like to think that I bring the best of what I have learned in all the above to community work and to this website also.

I went to secondary school in Sexton’s St. CBS in Limerick.  I was never the brightest in any class that I was in but I was (and still am) quite a hard worker.  I retain a lot of core beliefs about hard work from my schooldays.  This, of course, was matched by the work ethic in my home and, I believe, in my extended family in general.

In my teens/twenties I was quite good at physics (and mathematics) in fact I loved both subjects but in particular what was, in my day, (and probably still is) called experimental physics.  I’ll skip over all the failed exams of my early academic years – (moving swiftly along – I think is the best expression to use here), except to say that on my journey I learned the very valuable lesson that I wasn’t bright enough to do nothing and still pass exams like some of my more academically inclined friends and acquaintances.

Following my Leaving Cert I joined the Army as a Cadet, and two years later I was appointed as an officer in the Signal Corps – that’s the part of the Army that is in charge of communications – mostly electronic communications nowadays – since flags, smoke signals, and pigeons are not used that much anymore!

On my eventual qualification from University with a degree in physics and maths (after, yes, you’ve guessed it – a lot of hard work) I was appointed to a post as an electronic engineer in the Army Signal Corps which I served until I left the Army in 1990.

I spent a number of years in jobs with responsibility for installing/repairing radios and radar systems in air bases, naval bases and ships, and teaching young signalmen, airmen and pilots about radio and radar.  I got some enjoyment and job satisfaction out of it and I suppose I was reasonably competent but I never had a great idea or a wow moment and if I am to be honest I never considered myself to be great at it!

However I enjoyed most of my life in the Army, and am very proud to have made some contribution – however little. I particularly enjoyed the Signal Corps so long as I wasn’t posted in what I considered to be meaningless bureaucratic roles – which I endured for about five out of all my years in uniform.

Now while I was never over-confident about my talents in engineering, radio/radar, etc., I considered myself a good listener as an officer, and I would try to help soldiers (some of whom, in those days, were from not very advantaged backgrounds) with different problems that they had.  I sometimes tried to hide this helping part of me (though I don’t believe that I ever succeeded) because I feared that if I listened to soldiers’ problems, and empathised with them, I might be deemed to be not keeping the distance that officers were expected to keep from other ranks – as military men who were not officers were known those days in the Army. (Of course I didn’t know the meaning of the word empathy in those days).

But nowadays I am very happy with this part of me. And looking back I realise that my thoughts had more to do with my own fears than some imagined attitude of colleagues with whom I generally got on very well and with whom I had and still have long-lasting friendship.

However, as a person that took soldiering seriously, I did connect , in some way, my tendency to empathise with my image of myself as a military man.

Because accepting that acknowledging the pain (or even the potential pain) of others was a gift that I wished to embrace changed my attitude to soldiering – and, thereafter – militarism in general.

I suppose that I might as well say here that I suffer from a rare condition not easy to diagnose.

It is a mixture of naivety, over-enthusiasm, and idealism.  A lot of my motivation to join the Army was patriotic.  Looking back on those days now, I  can say that I was a little disappointed and disillusioned that my idealism wasn’t matched by the career in the public service realities that I encountered all around me, after I was commissioned and began to serve in ordinary barrack life, and in particular as I rose through the ranks.

But change – even though I was not aware of its full implications – was on the way!

A trusted colleague of mine sometimes says:  ‘Nothing changes if nothing changes’. 

But change always involves taking a risk.  I’ve made fairly big changes in my life because I was lucky to have the wherewithal to take a bit of a chance and be surrounded by a loving wife, family and extended family that believed in me and supported me through those changes.

Is there a time in one’s life when one can pinpoint a change, or an epiphany, like Saul on the road to Damascus?  I don’t really know the answer to that question.  Indeed my arguments elsewhere will suggest that a succession of small oft-repeated events usually have a lot more power in effecting change than one big event.

However, that which we remember vividly is probably of some importance in terms of determining the when of change, the tipping point, as I will also be describing elsewhere!

My work on radio and radar when I was stationed in Baldonnel Air Base near Dublin necessitated occasional visits to Shannon Airport (or Ballygireen, which is near Shannon, to be exact) and one day I was on a train from Limerick to Limerick Junction when I picked up a copy of a magazine that someone else had left behind.  This magazine, (an English magazine called Resurgence, (now online of course) was very interesting to me as I was always (and still am) interested in the environment, cycling to work, growing my own, making country wines, hill-walking etc.

It’s hard to believe that this little event first got me thinking about leaving my public service job and heading into (what was to me) the unknown of the community sector.  I found the magazine so interesting and congruent with my views on the world that I became a subscriber.

Long before global warming was topical, Resurgence (and other publications that I came across through it) were warning about the dangers of reliance on fossil fuels, risks posed to the health of humans by big pharma, how corporations and governments are in each other’s pockets, corruption at high levels in society, the link between nuclear power and the military industrial complex, the difference between non-violence and peace, (really eye-opening for me – that), the power of the arms industry and the apparent indifference of the system in the face of serious challenges to our humanity.

Another aspect of the magazine that intrigued me was that it, generally, contained more positive news than negative. This was all very new to me – and very exciting at the time!

Exposed to all this new thinking, I came to believe that humans could do a lot better in respect of resolving conflict than going to war to kill each other.  This is not that easy to argue for.  As a former mentor of mine, Colonel E. D. Doyle, argued, there’s always an army in a country, and if it’s not the army of the country itself – it’s an occupying army.  And people will justifiably say that the reality is that if we are attacked we have to defend ourselves, and we need a Defence Forces to do that ………

Agreed!

However, through reading books, magazines, articles etc. that I never was exposed to in school, (or anywhere else, really, up to that time in my life), I became aware that the principal causes of wars in the world are injustice, exploitation, colonialism, inequality, and the vast majority of people do not want, and gain absolutely nothing from war [1]. 

As a result I began to be more interested in being part of the solution rather than part of the problem.  Now, living in, and enjoying the benefits of the Western World, many of which are due to our economic exploitation of poorer countries, I know that I cannot be totally part of the solution.  But at least by leaving the Army I would have the freedom to choose, and could allow myself to lean strongly in the direction of the solution if I so wished. And through it all I noticed something about myself.

My heroes began to change.

In physics I had come across phenomena known as matter and anti-matter.  I was thinking of this one day and I began to think about who matters to me and who doesn’t.  I know that this is a bit of a play on words but I like words and connections between words so I thought about it a small bit.

In my new reading I discovered an entire world out there exemplified by people like Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks, the black women in the 1950’s who defied apartheid in the USA and sat on seats on buses that were reserved for white people.  And one day I read about a man in India, who, concerned about the environment, planted 100,000 trees.  He just went out and did it himself.  These, I thought, are the people who really matter – to me anyway. 

Who, then, are the anti-matter people?  Which people don’t matter?  Well – I have plenty anti-matter people but I won’t mention them here!

On my journey I discovered something else about myself.  That is, in order to be part (albeit a very small part – but a part nonetheless) of the solution I had to let go of my ego.

What I mean is, because the solution certainly won’t happen in my lifetime, being part of it involves believing in my own limitations, and also humanity itself. In fact, rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that part of the problem is that we want too much to happen too quickly – and in our lifetime if possible.

That belief has implications for this website – and how I present it in general, in the sense that I much prefer change to be like healthy growth, slow and sustainable, than the opposite; i.e. too fast, too much too soon – and ultimately unsustainable.

Growth will happen if conditions are right – and if not, so be it. Maybe they’ll be right some other time, or maybe they’ll never be!

This is simply my gift to the world of protection of vulnerable people, and really, as I state above, it is an invitation.

[1]. I deal with this in more detail in the Chapter on Power and Control in Society.

In the previous post I described how finding a magazine, Resurgence, (and having a train journey ahead with nothing to read) was a kind of trigger (to use a part-military expression) that sent me on my journey.

I’m not going to spend a long time describing that journey in full, but the real journey that brought me to writing this website started when I got a very lucky break.

I applied for a succession of jobs that would enable me to leave the Army and at the same time maintain the relatively modest middle class standard of living to which our family had become accustomed.

Being reasonably proficient at Gaeilge (and pretending to be a lot more proficient than I was) one of the jobs that I was interviewed for was a kind of roving reporter with Radio na Gaeltachta.  Naturally enough I didn’t get it.  Another was with a Boy’s Home in Dublin where, (even to my then very uneducated ears), I was really surprised at the line of questioning at the interview, and decided that in the unlikely event of my being offered the position I wouldn’t take it.  I wasn’t!

However in July 1990 I was called to an interview for a job with Southill Outreach, a streetwork Project based in Limerick City.  (This was my 13^th interview in about two years).  I absolutely loved the idea of this way of working.  I’m not sure why but I think that it was because the word creative was in the ad for the job, and it involved building relationships (out of doors) and potentially doing a lot of outdoor pursuits such as camping, canoeing, hill-walikng, even horse-riding or soccer etc. all of which I liked anyway.

I was called to a second interview in August.  I got a letter in September to say that I had got the job of Project Worker and that I was starting on a certain date.

When I arrived on the job the first day the Chairman of the Board informed me that the person who got the job of Project Leader had not turned up, and asked me if I’d take it on.  With a bit of trepidation, I did so, and since then, (well, I can’t say that I never looked back) but if I did I certainly didn’t look back that much.

The only education that I had had at that time in the field of helping people in distress was a Basic Counselling Course in Cork Counselling Centre which I had done in my own time while attached to the Naval Service in Haulbowline near Cork city.  I had enjoyed this Course very much and I learned a lot on it.  And to me, at that time, it seemed a lot more than basic! I had also been to therapy myself, and had got involved in self-help groups and small one-day courses in helping people.

In addition to formal and informal training I had read copiously on the subject – many radical, (and to me anyway) profoundly eye-opening books such as The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere (which I already referenced); Anarchism by George Woodcock and, what I consider to be a very inspiring book for community workers, Why We Can’t Wait by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to mention but a few.

When I immersed myself in the world inhabited by probation officers, social workers, teachers, experienced youth workers and such professionals I was not at all confident.

However, right from the start, I always felt that I had something special to offer the young people that were to form the target group, a moniker that I felt was funny having come from the Army, where targets were things we fired bullets at with the long-term aim of getting better at hurting other people. (That’s the last military type reference – I promise) ……..

But in my new job it meant something completely different. And ……. I got it!

What I got was that in order to build relationships I would have to meet the young people where they were at – and where they were at was not where I would like them to be.

In fact, where they were at, at first meeting, was often an unreasonable, angry, anxious and irrational place.

To recognise that irrationality might have a role in healing was one of the most valuable learnings of my early years in supporting very hurt people. (I will return to this theme later in the website).

Finally, in this bit about me, when working with families who seem to be excluded from the many positive aspects of life that the vast majority of the population take for granted, I often have there must be a better way moments.

(Maybe) because of this, I often have different feelings about things than that which prevails in the mainstream.  For example, some years ago, when all the country was celebrating the passing of the Referendum to enshrine children’s rights in the Constitution, I felt sad – because it says so much about us that we have to have a referendum to enshrine rights of vulnerable people in the law.

I know that there are realities out there which demand that we do this – but I just felt sad about it.

Another thing about me is that usually, instead of complaining about what is, I dream of what might be.  This kind of keeps me going because I generally don’t like complaining.  If I can’t do anything about something that I don’t like (such as bad weather or my mobile phone helpline) there’s not much point in complaining too much anyway.

If it is something that I can do something about I find that complaining without doing something actually depresses me more than the thing itself.

This is different to sounding off or expressing my frustration at something now and again – I do plenty of that!

We generally associate the word design with clothes, cars and other consumer items. The late Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers, said once that ‘design is not just what it looks like – design is how it works’. I associate the word design with beauty!

Let me propose that there are two kinds of design. One I will call static design, that applies to clothes, cars, computers, buildings etc. and the other I will call dynamic design, that applies to living things – i.e. nature.

The living world is active, constantly changing and beautifully designed. Every living creature from tiny microscopic bacteria (or viruses) to the elephant or blue whale has its place. All living things are interdependent and have developed ingenuous ways of survival even in the harshest conditions. And if one species becomes dominant, nature has a way of ensuring that its dominance doesn’t harm the overall system.

(As an aside, it could be argued that homosapiens is the only species that has a negative effect on the design of the living world, as we have, for the last few millenia, controlled nature not only for our survival, but – mostly – for our comfort and convenience).

The reason that I call such design dynamic is that it can change and adapt to emerging needs. A living thing doesn’t have to be instructed to change – it does so by itself – or dies out. One of the most famous examples of this is the one of the peppered moth that turned black during the Industrial Revolution in parts of England. If it hadn’t adapted it would have died out.

But even dying out – if it happens – is part of the overall design, as something more suitable and better equipped, with a new energy, takes its place. (This is manifest in the legend of the phoenix).

And design is also very important in the way that we live our lives day-by-day!

Crucially – in a living entity, if something works well less energy is used. So when I say very important in our lives I mean that if we design our lives well we will save a lot of energy. The dynamic part of this is that we have to keep adapting to new situations as they emerge and challenge us.

And added to the factors that are important in survival in the non-human world are our unique attributes of altruism, inspiration, creativity, idealism, generosity, compassion etc.

For example, one good design feature of living is to have a job we enjoy.  Another one is to spend a little less than we earn.  Yet another is to keep our life as simple as possible.  All these save valuable energy. And in respect of our survival, a lot of evidence shows that if we are generous or compassionate in our lives others will be generous and compassionate towards us – more good design!

So, what relevance has all the above in our organisation that supports families in distress?

Let us use a long river as a kind of metaphor. Let us say that we have the ambition that the water that enters the ocean from the river is pure and pristine. In order to ensure that this happens we have two choices.

1: We can prevent harmful and toxic substances entering the river as if flows from its source as a small stream to a wide estuary, or

2: We can allow towns, cities, factories, farms and businesses along the river pump anything they want, untreated, into our river and then clean it up at the estuary.

Which, would you think, is the better design? To quote Steve Jobs, what would work better? Obviously, if we protect the river by prevention we will have beauty, health and harmony along its course and won’t need hugely expensive clean-up at it’s outflow.

In everything in nature, (as indeed in our built, or constructed world), beauty and harmony are ubiquitous.

Why can we not have beauty in resolution of social problems such as crime and child protection?

What would harmony look like in social/community type work?

How could we ensure that beauty, health and harmony prevailed over harmful and toxic influences along the course of our river of life?

I believe that it diminishes me as a human being if I have to leave the qualities that I mentioned above (altruism, inspiration, creativity, idealism, generosity, compassion) – the qualities that I believe are to the psychological world what symmetry, form, structure, colour are to the physical world – outside the door when I arrive at work.

And crucially, because people love to be creative, good design involves allowing creativity to flourish!

I first began to think about design in family support work when Bedford Row Family Project started up.  I was not directly involved in the early days (1999) but I was visiting Limerick Prison as part of other work that I was doing and I met the early staff (of Bedford Row) in the waiting area – the Hospitality Centre – where they offered refreshments and a listening ear to family members visiting their loved ones in prison.

I thought it was a beautifully simple idea.  It was a bit like street-work – meeting people where they are at, under their conditions.  There was undoubtedly a lot of pain and distress, often hidden, but there was not a lot of doom and gloom.  In fact people seemed to have a bit of fun together and enjoy themselves. 

The one thing that struck me about the Hospitality Centre in those early days is that people were at their ease there.  The relationships built were, on the surface, quite casual, but at another level, very deep.  I believe that this depth came from the trust created by the environment – i.e. the naturalness of the workers and the cup of tea.

So I began to make some sort of correlation between the good enough parent and the good enough family support project and thoughts began to form in my head that the reason why the good enough parent is successful (if you don’t mind me using that word) is that s/he does not try to be perfect.

Yet almost all agencies with their protocols, policies, procedures, standing orders, rules and regulations, etc. do! In other words, they try to eliminate all the chaotic elements that might get in the way of good work.

Now this is a perfectly logical course of action, and it is hard to argue against it.  Yet one of the hallmarks of the good enough parent is that s/he is forgiving of mistakes, manages chaotic unexpected events, allows different personalities and, above all, tolerates members’ illogical, uncensored views and off-the-wall expressions on their journey of growth.

In other words – accepts some dysfunction rather than be frightened by it, trying to eliminate it fully.

Of course there are rules in families, many unspoken, there are rituals and cultures that are peculiar to that family, and often the rules are challenged, broken, and then adjusted to fit a new situation.  (These are manifestation of what I will call root foundations of growth that will be described in Section Three in the Chapter on Universal Theory of Change).  All growth has a certain amount of randomness and chaos inherent in it but in a good enough context growth moves steadily in a positive direction within that randomness.

In a good enough family kindness of members and compassion for the wrongdoer, inclusion of the one that is different and doesn’t fit in, (done within reasonably healthy but not rigid boundaries), are all present.

The hoped for outcomes for this good enough family are children growing to maturity with good enough physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.

The family is, truly, creativity in action. This is not surprising because parenting itself is full of creativity.

When we face problems that seem beyond us, we create, and we can come across such problems when parenting! And I believe that if we are not allowed be creative, we get frustrated. 

Creativity, (which I consider to be of such importance that I devote a full Chapter to it) is about doing something that is unexpected and because it is unexpected it usually involves trial and error, in other words the inclusion of chaos, and possibility/probability rather than certainty.

When parents are creative, children will naturally learn creativity!

In fact, creativity is probably the most important element that is modelled in parenting.  If it is not, then the family may not be good enough and problems are seen as things that cannot be surmounted, rather than opportunities for growth and development of the individual within the family and indeed the family itself.

Another element of good design in the family is compassion.  I was at a conference many years ago and someone made a lengthy speech on compassion as if it was a commodity that could be taught.  And I’m not saying it can’t be taught.  But I believe that it is taught by modelling, not by reducing it to bite-size sections so we can learn it and then do an exam and pass it and get first class honours in compassion!

Like creativity, the teaching, (or imparting) of compassion is hugely augmented by modelling.

Finally, I believe that the fear that can be sometimes present in child protection and caring for vulnerable people in general comes from the fact that we have such poor design.  (And the opposite is also true – i.e. fear can cause us to accept, or endure poor design).

On the other hand, good design (incorporating the root foundations referred to above) allows us to see both the nature and the extent of the problem at lot clearer and thereby leads to far better and more cost effective outcomes!

This will be revisited throughout the blog but particularly in the Chapter on Energy.

It is important to recognise this if our goal is for our organisation to be good enough – and have the courage to name it.

I often feel very fortunate that my first influences in the world of helping people in distress were formed in Southill Outreach which I mentioned already.  I spent a few years working in the children’s charity, Barnardos, where I learned loads too. A substantial amount of flesh was added to the bones of those influences by working in Bedford Row Family Project.

For some reason I’ve always been interested in design and the first day that I arrived in Bedford Row I noticed that the Project contained many unique design features. 

For example:

1. I sensed that the Project was as much a way of being as a traditional family support project.

2. The sense of autonomy and self-efficacy was tangible.  Allied to this was a strong sense of determination to do it for ourselves because no-one else is going to do it for us. What I mean by this is that there seemed to be an intuitive acceptance that while outside assistance was always going to be very welcome – the spark to do anything creative or innovative was going to come from within.

3. I noticed a healthy scepticism towards Government type grand plans and/or new initiatives, such as the quick-fixes that I will be mentioning in later Chapters – and a willingness to say it like it is!

(And, I believe, most important of all)…….

4. While a fair amount of formal support work was going on (e.g. therapy groups, counselling, personal development classes etc.) the non-formal work that was done was as highly esteemed as the formal work.

Through all the above what struck me most was the embracing of imperfection!

There were some characteristics of the Project that might be more at home within a family situation than a working environment.  While, of course, there were (and still are) very good and rigorous policies, procedures etc. there were also norms and routines factored in when decisions were made that were a little different to those that would prevail in a mainstream family support project.

In this, I observed that, without really naming it, the Project utilised phenomena that are part of the natural world, (there’s that term again) and applied them to the age old problems of crime and imprisonment. (Some of these phenomena I refer to as root foundations in a later Sub-Chapter).

The unpacking [1] (though not, I hope the reducing) of them will be an important part of this website.  They manifest in characteristics (for example warmth, genuineness, idealism, consistency, immediacy, patience etc.) which the casual visitor often perceives and indeed frequently comments on.

However the maintenance of such characteristics cannot be taken for granted and requires deep reflection not to mention attendance to many essentials on an ongoing, day by day, basis.

[1]. Unpacking means identifying the elements that have influence and significance in the overall entity.  It is different to reductionism which I will be describing in the Chapter on Cause and Effect and Nurture in Section Two.

The unpacking of the phenomena mentioned in the previous post will involve exploring elements that are a common part of our day-to-day physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual experience.

I propose that they have been woven into our consciousness since time immemorial.  I also propose that they are all the more powerful because we take them for granted.

We don’t really, consciously, notice them as we live day by day but their influence on us is profound nonetheless.  (I have already described this as high impact-low noticeability and I will be referring to it again).

I mentioned Bedford Row Family Project already and I believe that many of the features found their way into the Project because:

Firstly – the families affected by imprisonment who trusted the Project in the early days had the courage to get involved and be forthright about their and their families’ needs.  (Courage).

Secondly – the early leaders were wise and farsighted enough to allow people to both be and be themselves. (Wisdom).

Thirdly – the then Governor and Officers of Limerick Prison embraced this very unique model in an era when they got little encouragement to do so from the powers that be, and when, on the surface at least, there was little in it for them! (Compassion).

In identifying, naming, and describing interconnected elements that are a common part of our above-mentioned day-to-day physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual experience, my intention is to ensure that:

1. The characteristics (i.e. the warmth, genuineness, consistency, etc.) manifest (and prevail), and

2. The process of steady growth towards autonomy and independence can be better understood in the context of the elements identified, named, and described.

It is intended that 1 and 2 above will be better understood as the blog is read.

Now there is a danger inherent in all this – and I will mention it now.

In what I am describing, maybe there’s no theory – it just is!  The fact that practice might be transferable from and/or determined by a theory or theories (and/or vice-versa) is a risk that I am taking. (Much more on this later, in the Chapter on Research and Evaluation)!

My fervent hope is that through the naming and understanding of the theoretical framework on which the warmth, congruence, consistency, etc. is built, it will be understood better so that it can be rigorously examined, challenged and if effective, replicated.

In doing this – reframing – it is helpful to think of the work being more process than solution. There may be solutions hidden within, and/or we may stumble on them, but they are by-products of process. In fact, constant searching for solutions is, so to speak, barking up the wrong tree!

Think of it like a child growing. It is a long process with loads of successes (solutions) along the way. If there was a solution to a child growing – it would probably be adult maturity.

I like to think of it another way too. That is, the framework just mentioned, on which a new paradigm is built takes things that traditionally were seen as problems and turns them into opportunities – just like parents often do rearing children!

To sum up, and all the above being considered, I strongly believe that:

1. The time is now ripe for a fresh look at design, i.e. methods that we use to support those who are always ignored until they cause us trouble, using concepts and ideas not always associated with this challenge, originating in our natural world.

2. The emotional dimension to human problems almost always plays second fiddle to the cognitive analyses of which there are so many that they overwhelm the emotional.

Having been lucky enough to be in a time and space in the evolution of helping modalities, (where the head of neuroscience is meeting the heart of traditional wisdom), I feel that those of us who are working in this field have a responsibility to bring these gifts to the world.

Anyone who aspires to propose an alternative paradigm to the mainstream must describe it as rigorously and as thoroughly as those who wish the current one to prevail [1].

And as for myself – I believe that I am a suitable person to write this website because I often take the road less travelled [2] myself!

[1]. This is a kind of paraphrase of Martin Luther King’s encouragement to us that those of us who want peace must pursue it as vigorously as those who want war.

[2]. The Road Less Travelled is the title of a best-selling book by M. Scott Peck.