Emotions and Kevin Rudd

It was a day of mixed emotions as we saw the end of Rudd and the beginning of Gillard. I was interested in getting rid of Howard and excited about a new government in 2007. There was something refreshing about a new approach to politics with Rudd, sort of a sense of the unexpected we experienced during the Whitlam years.

Then it all turned sour as Rudd lost confidence in himself and the public began to see through the facade. We began to witness a man who had very little confidence in others and failed to consult with those who new better than him. Politicians are so closely scrutinised these days that we are able to see the skid marks in their underwear.

Kevin became dogged with his sense of his own importance and forgot that the skid marks were becoming more and more obvious. Every time he bent over the cracks became more obvious.

Regardless how we saw him and how disappointed we became in him it was with a great deal of sadness that we witnessed a broken man who, regardless of his lack of people skills was shattered that he wasn’t able to fulfil his dreams. I don’t think he was a “bad” man at all but he did work his staff hard and expected them to work hours that were simply unrealistic, all to fit his distorted view of the world. He did expect others to implement programs without much thought and planning even though he still worked his staff to death. Perhaps they were too tired to give his projects the clear headed approach they deserved.

There he was before all of us crying. No matter what you thought of Rudd if you were a half decent human being you had to have some sort of emotional connection with the humiliation he was feeling. Even Abbott had some emotional twinge, that may remind him that his day may also not be too far away, especially if he loses the next election. But what does it mean to shed tears like this? What are the emotions which a person experiences who holds such a high powered position? Why is it that the only person who has displayed such open emotional distress was Bob Hawke? Maybe its a Labour Party thing. Is it just the lofty position from which they have fallen or is it the fact that a large ego took such a beating that they are grieving their own deflated sense of self?

At his final press conference her reflected on the stolen generation and the people who were spread out on the lawn in front of parliament house. He clearly saw that as a very emotional experience. He could have talked about the emotions he felt a long time ago. I suppose we have to wait until we read his memoirs. The Rudd we saw today was human and not the monotone boring policy driven git we had become tired off. If he had been able to express himself in the way he did today over the past couple of years perhaps he wouldn’t have had to fall from such a high place.

The lesson we all can learn from this is that emotions are an important aspect of who we are. We try to hide from them and we make out that they shouldn’t play a part in our life particularly if we hold public office. The reality is that people connect with you when you display emotions as they did today. This doesn’t mean that our life has to be full of tears but I am sure that talking about feelings would be just as significant. To identify what our feelings are and describe them in appropriate ways allows us to see others for what they really are and not just see the facade. Feelings have great meaning and it is therefore the expressing of them which gives meaning to our lives.

Hears hoping that Julia doesn’t buy into the same political philosophy as Rudd and allows us to see her emotional self.

Attachment Theory

To better understand where child protection comes from regarding attachment theory I have undertaken the daunting task of reading what I could find on Attachment Theory. I have discovered that it is difficult critiquing something of which you may not have all that much understanding and which also makes some sense. I have often wondered about the application of the theory and whether it was in keeping with Social Work theory.

I become concerned where I witness any theory being used as a means of controlling individuals or a group of individuals. There are occasions when I see Social Workers doing this and to my horror I find myself confronting them and making myself seem like something I don't want to be, namely their enemy. What I see around attachment theory is this theory being used as a means of controlling women who are struggling with parenting. What I often see is young women, who have never had children and profess to be social workers, controlling the lives of the most dis-empowered group in our society - young women who are mothers.

Their seems to be an erroneous belief that because a child reaches a certain age they are then damaged for life and will then struggle to have meaningful relationships so somehow these young social workers role is to save these children from this experience. The truth is that we build attachment based on our experiences of the time. For a child to continue to have carers who provide appropriate attachment will provide a positive experience for the child. The onus is therefore on the child protection agency to ensure that the biological parents and any other carers are providing the appropriate attachment and when biological parents are able to be consistent regarding their attachment then it is reasonable to give the child back them. The notion that attachment is about carers behaviour and that the attachment is to the way a child is treated and this could be by a number of carers providing it is consistent rather than by the one carer. Most people in Child Protection would disagree with this notion. If they agree they would have to re think the way they work.

Working with Families SA

Over the years I have always had a mixed experience working with Families SA. There are times I find working with them a credit to our profession and then there are other times when I find myself bewildered and wondering if we all come from the same profession. I am convinced that some of us certainly attended a completely different University who had a unique and damaging way of presenting Social Work values and  principles. Or is it that in the effort to discover what social work means to us we take on a view which is more in keeping with our own skewed view of life? I believe it is the latter because I am at fault here as well. Have I taken on the role of Social Work because it has a certain meaning to me? That I believe in Social Justice, that people should be empowered to have the life they want, that it is helpful not to judge others and that I need to accept the differences of others. There is much more that can be added here which describes what social work means to me but that isn’t all that important to the issue I wish to raise in this post.

I wonder how we become our values regardless of our professional values. That somehow we make those values fit with us that we convince ourselves that we are acting in the best interest of our clients when to others we are doing the opposite. We then have to protect our position or otherwise we are not being true to ourselves and our version of the profession. We enclose ourselves in the bastardised version we begin to believe that this is our sense of truth and that anything outside of this is an anathema to all that we believe in. This becomes the cry not only for the worker but also for all those who agree with them. This builds a cultural belief which when confronted now has a mass of believers who will resist any idea which is counter to their own. Now there are a community of like believers. Welcome to Families SA.

Recently I attended a meeting with Families SA social workers to discuss access arrangements for a client as well as canvas the idea that a GOM 18 order can be amended to include re-unification of the child with her parents. It is difficult for me to describe the emotions I felt when I noticed the social workers berating the client for accommodation offered her recently by Housing SA when they were not able to offer housing when she was in crisis and had her daughter removed. The issue was that the housing was too far away from the carers and that the child had to travel too far from the carers to the parents home. This was their error not the clients.

This is a common story and a theme for many of the social workers I work with. They are stuck in a version of social work which lacks compassion and understanding. Which lacks a sense of creativity and reasonableness which would best fit with the client. There is a rigidity which limits the possibilities and presents “failure” as the only alternative. The challenge is to take the fight to our own profession and give our clients a louder voice so that they are heard amongst the chatter of poorly qualified social workers the and dangerous practices they espouse.

Different Standards

Do you want your blood to boil? Look at these two web sites. This one first. Now that you have had a quick look at what Families SA think about the parent of children who have been removed from care. You can now look at this site and realise how much in comparison they hold carers in such high esteem. Look here. I ask how can they show such distain towards parents by having almost nothing to say about parents rights and responsibilities. It is as if the parents don’t have any and the carers have all the rights you can think of. So clearly the carers are more important than the parents. What do you think?

Being Silent

Over the years I have had the privilege of working with many people who have been faced with workplace conflict. I remember when I had the same experience some years ago and my experience was the same as all these other people and I don’t seem to understand what is happening and need someone to explain it to me. This week I had a women come to  see me who was confronted with a workplace which was somewhat toxic and when complained about it was immediately silenced. She was told that she was not to talk about what had happened to her with anyone in the workplace.

This meant that she now had no one in her life that she could talk to about what was happening. It took a great deal of courage for her to raise the issue with HR but now she was silenced. Life at home wasn’t very supportive so it was unlikely that she could talk about work and feel supported. What does it mean when we are given instructions by HR to not say anything. What are they going to do if you do talk to your best friend who happens to work  in the same office? Are they going to sack you and continue the abuse? Is talking to someone who already understands what has been happening to you, likely to change anything? 

There is always your work EAP but that is limited and you can’t use them on a daily  basis if you want to debrief. Silencing an individual prevents any immediate debriefing process from taking place. You can’t say to the person next to you, “He said it to me again” for fear of losing your job or damaging your case. What the silencing does is prevent you from gathering up all those other poor workers who have been bullied by this person. Silencing prevents you from highlighting the inadequate management practices which have allowed the bullying to persist.

Perhaps we need to say “NO” to demands about how we are to behave when we are the victim of bullying.

Child Protection and the world wide phenomenon

I subscribe to a Google alert on child protection. It continually amazes me at the number of countries confronted by the same issues that we experience in Australia. I see the same complaints, the same type of practice, the same allegations levelled at Social Workers. If what we experience here is world wide one has to wonder what there is about social work practices and child protection in particular which has created a phenomenon which goes beyond borders, oceans and continents.

There is no doubt that we are all on the same page which is the need to protect children from harm and that the safety of children is paramount. This common and noble goal is to be commended and there is no one who will challenge these values. What is common though are two diametrically opposed factors.

There is growing concern about the extent that children are abused or unsafe in the parental home and that they are sometimes murdered because of this abuse. We as a society have to express our anger at these tragedies by blaming those given the responsibility to care for all children in our society. This responsibility usually lies with government departments and finally with those who do the bidding of the government, social workers. Human indignation and laying blame are universal human traits which have no boundaries.

It is unfortunate that the only information provided about the Social Work profession is through child protection. We rarely hear social workers standing by their actions or challenging the system which fails children over and over again.

The second similarity is that governments make for poor parents. I don’t know when we are going to accept this premise and find other ways to move on beyond governments being seen as the panacea for all child protection issues. When governments realise that the best parent is the biological parent in most cases a significant shift will take place that perhaps we will find more appropriate and creative ways to support families who are in crisis. There are times when we need to act when children are being abused. My experience tells me thought that there are many occasions when parents are simply struggling with life in general and children in particular. Governments who decide to act in partnership with  parents will produce more significant outcomes. Governments in essence accept that partnerships are important but in reality are so risk management orientated that they loose sight of their real purpose.

We could see this world wide phenomenon as an opportunity to do things differently. While we are focussing on removing children when they don’t need to be removed governments are not able to focus on those who need to be. I wonder how many tier ones can be shifted into other categories and whether new assessment approaches could be developed which offer parents the support they really need. When are we going to understand that the removal of children from their home is an extremely traumatic experience, often greater than the trauma in the home? We need a balance and at this point no one in the world seems to have found it.

Understanding the past

I wonder how people work when I discover that they know very little about past experiences of clients. Recently I was talking to a Social Worker from Families SA and while he was an engaging person and cared greatly about the profession and how he worked I found it interesting that he knew very little of the clients past. To understand a clients present situation, how they are choosing at this time to respond to their world, and the emotional attachment they have to events of the past seems to be a primary concern to me. To fail to understand this often leaves the client feeling misunderstood, isolated and alone.

A client recently discussed with me some horrific events as a child. As she was telling me the story I became quite emotional. It was as if I could see the events unfolding before me. What she experienced was traumatic, abusive in the extreme. Through this story and others I was able to understand how she experienced her life and why anger, disappointment, frustration, resentment and abandonment sit in her life. How can we truly empathise if we fail to hear the stories and relate those stories to the way the client is interacting with the “now”? How can the client feel understood and trusting if they are not understood in this way?

What evolves from this level of understanding is a sense of partnership and dedication which is an important aspect of the therapeutic process. In relation to child protection and the partnership which is suppose to be developed between workers and the parent it is imperative that the client is heard and the worker understands the complexities of the clients lives and the reasons why the client may choose to respond in aggressive or unhelpful ways.

My experience working with Social Workers from child protection services is that they are so locked into the notion that the client is the child and that they are working towards the best interest of the child that they fail to see the whole picture which excludes the parents. Ironically this means that they also fail to see the impact and trauma created by the child being in care. This form of ignorance creates an environment of mistrust and fear.

To acknowledge the trauma, past and present, and to find pathways to understanding this is working in the best interest of the children. To assist parents to understand their own past and the impact this has had on their children is powerful. Unfortunately though this is often handballed to other professionals because it is not considered to be the role of child protection workers. Yet it should be a fundamental role of all child protection workers.