You can't legislate altruism, courage, ethical behavior, competence and caring. Policy-making can't create the necessary conditions in which caseworkers and families work together toward achieving a better and maltreatment-free situation. Isn't that a major reason why reform after so-called reform fails to bring about substantial change?
Legislation and policy can, however, provide the framework if within that the requisite conditions are present. So, in the last blog article where I addressed the option of more training to improve the quality of child welfare work, and wrote that it is basically not the whole answer, I was pointing to the need to change the very nature, qualifications and the prestige of child welfare casework.
What is needed is the transformation of the concept of child welfare work. It should come to be seen as both an intellectual and helping profession. It should come to be thought of as a profession that requires, not only rigorous academic training, but also a combination of various ethical, altruistic and fine-tuned thinking skills. Its prestige among professions should invite and attract comers in the same vein as do law, medicine and engineering. There should be academic programs, either wholly dedicated to this profession, or, at least, with concentrations in existing psychology programs.
Not the child-saving attitude, that so narrowly and often cruelly refuses to understand that helping a child means working as hard as possible to maintain the parent-child relationship, nor any other agenda based mind-set, will do. Let's combine science and caring in the child welfare curriculum and let's graduate people who will approach their work with rigor and passion.
Let child welfare work become respected the way the teaching profession is in Finland. I understand that teaching in Finland is thought of and respected in the same way medicine is. Finnish teachers must earn advanced degrees in both education and in the academic discipline they will be teaching. It's something to aspire to and to feel proud about. Why can't child welfare work come to embody something similar?
Can the acceptance of the plight of impoverished populations, racism, and a minimal concern for others in general, be contributing factors in the reluctance to transform child welfare in this way? Can it be a shortsightedness in thinking that has never even considered these possible changes and has allowed the status quo to continue year after sad year? Can it be a combination of these factors?
Is it what we see every day in the Saks-Wholesale Club Syndrome? Shoppers at Saks are never sent through guard-check posts and asked to show their receipts as their purchases are inspected. Not the case however for their poorer counterparts at the nation's various wholesale clubs. Saks and other such establishments would never subject their customers to this treatment. And they're right. But one's bank account and resulting status should not determine how one is treated, not when shopping and not when receiving child welfare services.
This country would not accept a medical, law or financial system that was in a perpetual state of utter disarray with wide-ranging damaging outcomes. Let's not accept that kind of child welfare system either.
Legislation and policy can, however, provide the framework if within that the requisite conditions are present. So, in the last blog article where I addressed the option of more training to improve the quality of child welfare work, and wrote that it is basically not the whole answer, I was pointing to the need to change the very nature, qualifications and the prestige of child welfare casework.
What is needed is the transformation of the concept of child welfare work. It should come to be seen as both an intellectual and helping profession. It should come to be thought of as a profession that requires, not only rigorous academic training, but also a combination of various ethical, altruistic and fine-tuned thinking skills. Its prestige among professions should invite and attract comers in the same vein as do law, medicine and engineering. There should be academic programs, either wholly dedicated to this profession, or, at least, with concentrations in existing psychology programs.
Not the child-saving attitude, that so narrowly and often cruelly refuses to understand that helping a child means working as hard as possible to maintain the parent-child relationship, nor any other agenda based mind-set, will do. Let's combine science and caring in the child welfare curriculum and let's graduate people who will approach their work with rigor and passion.
Let child welfare work become respected the way the teaching profession is in Finland. I understand that teaching in Finland is thought of and respected in the same way medicine is. Finnish teachers must earn advanced degrees in both education and in the academic discipline they will be teaching. It's something to aspire to and to feel proud about. Why can't child welfare work come to embody something similar?
Can the acceptance of the plight of impoverished populations, racism, and a minimal concern for others in general, be contributing factors in the reluctance to transform child welfare in this way? Can it be a shortsightedness in thinking that has never even considered these possible changes and has allowed the status quo to continue year after sad year? Can it be a combination of these factors?
Is it what we see every day in the Saks-Wholesale Club Syndrome? Shoppers at Saks are never sent through guard-check posts and asked to show their receipts as their purchases are inspected. Not the case however for their poorer counterparts at the nation's various wholesale clubs. Saks and other such establishments would never subject their customers to this treatment. And they're right. But one's bank account and resulting status should not determine how one is treated, not when shopping and not when receiving child welfare services.
This country would not accept a medical, law or financial system that was in a perpetual state of utter disarray with wide-ranging damaging outcomes. Let's not accept that kind of child welfare system either.