Questions every social worker, every civil servant, every carer and every parent (to be or active) ought to wrestle with

There is a genuine need to protect society from some people whose behaviour is dangerous,  by incarceration, and  not as a 'punishment' or ‘revenge’ or 'paying the price' but as a safety of the community measure, and this must be done as humanely as possible.

There is also a need to see where rehabilitation can be efficacious, and what best facilitates this.

Abuse does not answer abuse, and violence tends to be cyclical......I have NEVER come across a Survivor who would urge violence against abusers.


It horrifies me the way Survivors voices and insights are brushed aside by people who claim to be supportive yet also declare they'd be happy to 'hang 'em'.... those people are making life for Survivors harder rather than easier because they are clouding the discourse with their rage and hatred.

I do understand that there are reasons why so many people react in this manner.

Social conditioning, inter-generational trauma behaviour patterns .....

How many people were flushed with stress hormones whilst in the womb?

How many mothers are subjected to stress by external events?

How many fathers have been trained to be 'tough'..?

How many men return from war, with wounds they mask, that their children are affected by?

How does chronic stress (12 years of schooling, relative poverty, religious indoctrination) alter the growing child, in schools, where bullying, peer pressure and submission to authority are constants?

These are not excuses for adverse behaviour, but an attempt to understand that dynamic that flows through time within Hierarchically Violent social systems where Power has a massive influence on peoples lives, and the emergent psychology of society, at the grass roots.

How many 'leaders' learned bullying as a power transaction in private boarding schools?

Is Social Services, as a State Institution, concerned with regulation over healing?

These are all questions EVERY social worker, every civil servant, every carer and every parent (to be or active) ought to wrestle with... as by taking that role on, they also take on a response-ability to those the intend to serve, and more so to the children yet to be born from those they serve....

Where is the nurture?

And importantly, the question of what best represents optimal human biological health must be tackled with a back ground in science, anthropology, history and personal growth..

These are the questions that Survivors have had to answer in their path towards resolution.

The State has yet to step up to the plate on this, as is the case for the mainstream media.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Andrew Brown's Blog in The Guardian - Facing the truth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/17/pope-benedict-cardinal-bernard-law

"A leader who wished to end the crisis would sack Cardinal Bernard Law "

Andrew Browns Blog 

THE GUARDIAN - March 17 2010 - St. Patricks Day (irony of ironies)

One ought to read this 'opinion' piece very carefully - it is a protective of The Vatican, , it is a clever piece of propaganda, and all the more nasty for that.

"What has driven a great deal of the outrage is the perception that the church placed itself above the secular law. Well it does.AS A GLOBAL INSTITUTION IT MUST. Otherwise it has no more moral worth than Google or News International, or any other multinational which will do business wherever it is profitable. And – especially under the Polish pope John Paul II who fought so hard against communism – the church's moral worth was validated by its utter refusal to bend to the standards of the society around it."

The author Andrew Brown, also implies that the 'scandals emerged' during the 70s and 80s and are over - he ignores the fact that the Residential Schools System worldwide (both Church and State) operates still, has operated for over 100 years, and that in that time, many millions of children have been profoundly harmed, by a culture of abuse thathas been described as endemic.

The Vatican leadership has long been aware of pedophile rings operating within the Church - the recent Ryan Report (2009) and more recently the Murphy Report in Ireland merely serves as one reminder of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse - The Ryan Report

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_Report - The Murphy Report

The same pattern is repeated across the world. The Last Indian Residential School in Canada was closed in 1996. These were run by Catholic and Protestant Churches, in conjunction with the State.

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org - Hidden From History : The Canadian Holocaust

The Canadian Social Services have taken over the role of 'assimilation' - Aboriginal Children are 50 times more likely to be fostered than white european children in Canada, and that figure has risen as the Residential Schools were shut down.

http://www.demeterpress.org/untilourhearts.html

Until Our Hearts are on The Ground -

Aboriginal Mothering, Oppression, Resistance and Rebirth

Edited by D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Jeannette Corbiere Lavell

White fosterers are paid three times the rate that Aboriginal mothers are paid in State support.

This pattern is seen in all countries where Church and State operated Residential School Systems.

Assimilitation by other means. Social services as a tool of social engineering and 'resource exploitation'. The reason for the forced assimilation is that the lands from which these Aboriginal peoples emerge are rich in 'explotable resources' deemed neccessary for the Economy. 

Uranium, Coal, Oil, Timber, Gold. To access the lands the Aboriginal peoples have to be co-opted or removed.

In Ireland, Australia, the USA and elsewhere, those populations whose children were formerly sent to Residential Schools are now more likley to experience forced removal of children, who are placed in State 'care' or are fostered. The poor, the distressed, the damaged, the Aboriginal.

Andrew Brown is either unaware of these facts, and their implications, in which case his article is lazy; or he is ignoring the facts, in which case he is being ignorant.

And both of these, given the serious nature of the matter, are harmful.

There are many other like Brown, public apologists for what is criminal activity.

They must  be confronted at every turn.

Empathy demands that one NEVER uses another as a means to an end.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Mothering in The Dominant Culture and Social Services

Reading "Until our Hearts are on the Ground" a study of Aboriginal mothering, and the oppression Aboriginal Mothers and Families have endured at the hands of The State, in Residential Schools, in Australia, Canada, North America and Africa, and susbequently through the action of 'Social Services' aas those progams were shut down over the past 20 years, I noticed that the 'Social Services' approach to the Aboriginal Mothers (most of whose parents were survivors of the Residential Schools)  AFTER the Residential Schools were shut down mirrored the approach of 'Social Services' inthe UK, Ireland, Australia, and Europe as they operate amongst the poorest sectors of Society, and various Minorities, such as Roma, Gypsey, Traveller and others like them.The sense that certain classes of people are 'targetted'.

http://www.demeterpress.org/untilourhearts.html

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/24/national-post-editorial-board-divorce-granted-justice-denied/ - newspaper article on how Aboriginal Mothers are discriminated against by Social Services and mostly Male Band Leaders (many of whom are 'appointed' or legitimised by the State)

I was struck by the clarity of that mirroring. I realised that 'Social Services' operates as a form of Societal Oppression, blaming those the Instutuion seeks to help, effectively masking those Power influences on peoples lives that do cause distress, deprivation, poverty and that do lead to the emergence of further dysfunctional behaviour.

Social Services as an Institution NEVER effectively confronts the System of Power with regard to deprivation and it's intergenerational effects - why would they, the system pays their wage.

Ther ARE many good Social Workers in the system, yet those who see the truth find it very dificult to organise a movement within the Institutional setting to bring about that confrontation. None of what I am writing about here is to be taken as judgement; this is an assessment of the facts.

In any Institutional setting it takes immense courage and strength to confront the Institution with the truth. And it puts one's carreer at risk.

As Bradly Manning is discovering right now, as he sits in a US Military Jail, having been shopped to the Military by a 'colleague'.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/conscience/

That masking, even it if turned out to be an accidental outcome of the work Social Serivces Policy and Practice as determined by Govrnment and think tanks, rather than personal failures of the Social Workers themselves (which in 99% of cases it isn't)  protects the Middle Classes who also happen to make up the bulk of 'Social  Services' trained professional staff and management and the Powers that influence peoples lives across society.

Those Powers that originate at some distance (distal) from those people most adversely affected by the exercise of that power refuse, of course, to accept any responsibility for the distress they cause.

Tony Blair on Iraq. "I did what I believed was the right thing to do at the time, knowing what I knew then." Chilcott Enquiry February 2010

It's VERY easy to judge others by what we read in the media because it is portrayed in a manner to serve that masking. I do not want to my words to be taken as if I am being judgemental in any way. The matter is far to serious for that.

You rarely hear about the childhood background and lived experiences of those mothers, nor the history of their parents, all of which form part of the whole picture. You certainly will not hear the stories of deprivation, generation after generation, that much of what 'Social Services' handles...

You do not hear about the ACE study, or the roots of deprivation, trauma or the true histories of the Aboriginal and the poor and how Society relates to these groups.

None of  this is to give any abusive parent an excuse or get-out clause. It is to point out that the responsibility is partly, largely down to the way Power is transmitted throughout our society. Both the individual AND Society share responsibility. A parent CAN accept responsibility and change that much easier if Society handles it's responsibilities in the matter. If ALL those responsibilities are laid at the Parents feet, then that change is far less likely.

And the hypocrisy of doing, of laying ALL the blame onthe Parent, that ought to be obvious to anyone with a rational mind and honest heart reading this material.

If, instead of pillorying or demonising the mothers who are reported as abusive in headlines, (often the MOST extreme cases are used, and then held as typical of a certain class or minority) the media and the general public were prepared to ask the questions and engage with the answers, the data that would outline where responsibility lies, and if those parents who are under stress were practically and materially supported in learning more empathic parenting practices (which would go a long way towards helping them recover) then progress would be made in reducing abusive parenting.

That is clearly NOT happening. Why?

And furthermore, in a Society that wards off the wisdom of Mothering, that ensures that Mothering wisdom does not enter into the discourse of Boardroom or Parliament and instead ensures that Mothering remains unpaid, minimally supported (more money is spent on early child care by the state than on maternity leave - the state pays for poor Mothers to work rather than support the Mother as a Mother) and to a large degree defined not by mothers, but by Society (Power), as an overbearing and limited frame of reference (Nurturing is for the home and early years, if at all; nurturing is deemed successful if the child becoems a worker, a consumer) women are under extreme pressure.

A double bind exists - join the corporate world and get a career, and if you become pregant, become a surrogate Mother by virtue of the committment one has to make to 'succeed', and all this to gain access to Power on the same basis as men, using Power in pretty much the same way.

It's extremely clever, and extremely unjust. And absolutely stupid.

Usefull resource on Social Services reform, from people whsoe research proves that supporting the whole family, parents and children, leads to much better lonr-term health outcomes for the families and the chidlren AND saves huge amounts of tax payers money at the same time!

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform

www.nccpr.info

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe