2.2.4 Modern Trends

Fear of modern trends is not the primary purpose of this website but yet it would be dishonest of me not to mention some of them as fear is a reality for me from time to time as I study and read about, and also directly experience recent trends not only in Ireland but also the UK and the USA, two countries with a combined population in excess of 300 million, between whom we are both physically and psychologically sandwiched, who speak the same language as us, and by whom we are greatly influenced.

I will mention some modern trends in the next three posts that, I believe, should they gain traction, would result in major disservice to families in distress.

I stated already that I believe the job of protecting children whose misbehaviour is enduring and persistent is complex.  I also believe that it is multi-faceted, intricate, and wide ranging and demands that very delicate skills are applied consistently and confidently over a considerable period of time.

These skills need to be applied not only logically and intelligently, but also in a human and holistic manner that takes cognisance of the effect that their application is having on the child, the child’s family, and the practitioner both in the short term and the long term. And in the case of a vulnerable man or woman, the same applies. (Remember again – the practitioner is part of the process).

While some progress has been made since the days of using what I already referred to as corporal punishment, I fear that the continued lack of understanding of the complexity, combined with the imperative of saving money [1] is leading to the replacement of what we now have come to call institutional harm by what I will term pharmacological harm.

While I believe that, obviously, there are times when a child should be given medicine, I also believe that there is a big danger that medication is becoming more and more part of the problem, not the solution – not only for children – but in humanity in general. 

Sometimes when I see a new shop opening – and it turns out to be a pharmacy – I feel a little disappointed!

I further believe that giving chemical substances to children at a very young (and impressionable) age to ease their emotional distress introduces them to the notion (which soon becomes a belief) that ingesting a chemical substance into their body will alter their mood for the better.  For a child that comes from a family that has struggled with addiction over many generations, this is a highly dangerous belief particularly during the sometimes anxious period of adolescence.

Yet it is often to those families that chemical medication is suggested as being the first (and only) option for alleviation of the distress that comes from a child misbehaving!  And introducing and then maintaining pharmacological solutions that do not work is false economy and costs (and will cost – I predict) the State incalculable amounts of money in the long term.

Teachers and family doctors are often the first practitioners to be consulted by desperate parents who want their child to behave.  I believe that these two professions would benefit greatly from education in the fields covered by the Sub-Chapter entitled Trauma and Related Topics.

For most, far too much of their education and experience has been in the mainstream educational/medical models that will not have traditionally taken into account understanding of human patterns of behaviour and how they are affected by our emotional state and vice versa.

I hope that this website will be of use to, and will add to the body of knowledge and/or spark the curiosity of professional practitioners who may find themselves faced with what often appear to be impossible situations.

It is my experience that for those children who grow up in families as described in the next Section in the Sub-Chapter on the Focus Group, the road to dependency, possibly depression and addiction, early school leaving, and ultimately crime and imprisonment, is marked out, from a very young age, with shunting from agency to agency, from expert to expert, from strategy meeting to case conference, etc. ingesting legally prescribed medication along the way, while watching the adults that have the most significance in their lives doing the same.

Does this sound familiar?

[1]. I say saving money here as prescribing medication is probably seen to be lot less expensive, in the short term, than employing a support worker.  In the long term it is, as I say above, way more expensive.

I believe that statutory responses to child protection, crime and anti-social behaviour are gradually drifting away from person centred orientation [1].

(Person Centred Therapy will be described in the Chapter on Modalities).

This might be tolerable if there were person centred initiatives set up to complement the statutory agencies that are drifting away, but rather than that happening; many state funded voluntary agencies, that might have been traditionally person centred, find themselves under pressure to change also.

In my 30+ years’ experience, I would say that it is now more difficult for a worker in child protection or in criminal justice (whether statutory or voluntary), to do something innovative or creative with a child, family, or young person, or take a risk, or even sometimes act out of simple common sense than it was in the past.

Undoubtedly some of this is due to an increase in the fear of impropriety due to revelations of wrongdoing in the recent past in Ireland where people in positions of influence betrayed the trust that families and children had placed in them.

But much is also due to over-dependence by agencies on highly formally-educated professionals who are far more fearful of making mistakes than the more ground up life-experience practitioners that formed the backbone of many helping agencies for generations [2].

Sometimes I would have experienced many of the ground up practitioners to have been very person-centred even though many would have received only minimal formal training.

I have read many books, and read many articles (too numerous to reference) on promotion of therapeutic approaches that are based on logical, cognitive processes that make a lot of sense to a lot of people. I have found most of them to be very interesting and many agencies, organisations, training institutes etc. that have sprung from them are now well established and becoming strong voices in promoting what is known as brief therapy for assisting with a wide range of anxieties, phobias, depression, and a myriad of other debilitating conditions.

I have respect for all initiatives that relieve people’s pain, and I know that I am not doing all these institutes justice by only mentioning that they promote brief therapy, as I am sure that they do a lot more than that.

However it is important to mention them as I believe that statutory agencies in the UK (and now Ireland) are being seduced by the word brief and are gradually moving away from more long term person-centred work. The influence of such thinking is (perhaps unwittingly) encouraging Government to favour short term approaches. I do not know whether this drift is official policy or whether it is seeping into the policy making agenda unbeknownst, as Departments strive to cut costs.

Such approaches work very well for many people, and the books/articles/websites that I have read/browsed contain testimonies to that effect.  However I believe that a period of six to ten weeks (or six months, or even a year) support/therapy would be of very limited use for members of families who are affected by imprisonment, and who may have suffered trauma, that make up the Focus Group which I will be describing in the next Chapter.

I hope that favouring such brief approaches is not driven by values of the corporate world, which always seeks quick solutions to problems – I will give my thoughts on that too in a later Chapter! 

I strongly believe that it is vital to continue to promote the building of long term, person centred, warm, loving, compassionate relationships as the bedrock of positive and enduring change in our work.

[1]. As an example I note in Ireland was the changing of the name of the Probation and Welfare Service to the Probation Service.

[2]. Thinking about this I am reminded of the old joke:  What is the difference between an amateur and a professional?  An amateur wants to get it right, a professional is afraid to get it wrong.

There has been a general trend in the Western World over the past number of years (and in particular the UK and USA) towards running down public services instead of improving them.

This is not an accident.

Rather it is a deliberate policy by Governments who are ideologically well disposed towards privatisation – believing it to be more efficient, better value for money and thereby saving the Government money. (In my opinion public service unions must also take some responsibility for this over the past 50 years or so, though I am sure that others might disagree fundamentally with me here)!

Over the past number of years (and relevant to this website, with its focus on child protection) the Probation Services in England have recently experienced privatisation. In Chris Mills Child Protection blog (30 June 2019) he mentions research to show that this has turned out to be what he calls a disaster.

The increasing tendency to medicate or the move away from person centred approaches described in the two previous posts pale into insignificance when we look at the trend in the USA (and now becoming popular in the UK also) towards privatisation of prisons.

Currently, in the USA, (ironically, I believe, since 1984 [1]), private companies make profits out of running prisons, and in some States even children are incarcerated in private prisons.  (In the USA, imprisonment has reached the extent where sociologists have coined the term mass imprisonment to describe it).

Enriching private individuals and companies by contracting out incarceration of people (including children) is a trend that, in my view, has nothing to offer crime prevention in any society in the world.  Even if a private prison works well (and, I have knowledge that some of them do) is there not something unethical about large corporations who have shares in the stock market etc. benefiting from imprisonment?

While there does not seem to be much discussion on it in Ireland as yet, it is something that all persons concerned with human rights should be worried about.

Obviously it is my belief that this trend should be (and would be) resisted by the vast majority of the population but because of the huge influence that the UK and USA have in Ireland I don’t take anything for granted.

It is important that creative methods of supporting families gain a firm foothold (certainly amongst voluntary agencies, but also among statutory agencies, where they should also be promoted vigorously) before any ideas such as privatisation of prisons and other Justice services that might be flagged by the commercial sector gains any momentum.

One of my fears in this respect is that, no matter how illogical something seems, or how unsuitable something is culturally, it sometimes takes on a life of its own and gains currency here in Ireland, politically, even though it has failed and/or is seen to be failing elsewhere.  It is then rushed through as a solution and implemented hurriedly.

Consider, for example, the construction of high rise flats in Ballymun in Dublin in the 1960’s.  No doubt the planners had the best of intentions, but it was not that well thought through and (as far as I am aware) most of the flats have now been demolished, a mere 60 years later.

[1]. ‘1984’ was a book written by George Orwell in the 1930’s that predicted how the world would change into a place where there was total Government surveillance of people’s private lives, manipulating them to be happy with the fact that their lot was to be in a state of perpetual war.  I just thought that it is ironic that modern-era privatisation of prisons began in that year. Also, I often wonder what George would think if he knew that, because of the Internet, we now have voluntarily and quite happily given up our right to privacy altogether.