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!