Monthly Archives: October 2012

Where has the duty of care gone from the care industry? Child left in state of Crisis while the ‘Caring Professionals’ go off on a Training Junkett.

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Where on earth has the care factor gone from those who work in the so-called ‘care industry’?

Those of you who’ve been kind enough to follow my blog will know that I’ve been dealing with several major issues surrounding my daughter.

You will also know that I’ve been seeking support from ‘professionals‘ to try to help her regain some of her equilibrium by preventing her from engaging in certain harmful behaviors.

At first I had no success  in finding any help for her at all.

But after months and months of being told over and over again that my daughter didn’t qualify for help, I finally found an agency that was willing to engage with my daughter.

Yippee…. Wonderful….

Finally The Light At The End Of A Very Long And Often Dark Tunnel Had Arrived.

Or so I thought.

As part of their in-take assessment process the agency provided my daughter with the services of a social worker and a child psychologist.

After five weeks of visits the time finally came round for the team to provide me with feedback concerning their observations of my daughter’s emotional and psychological needs.

The first feedback session was meant to have been last week.

But instead of providing me with any feed back, the team spent their time asking me questions about my daughters early childhood years, rate of development and so forth.

To me this was a complete waste of time as I had already painstakingly filled out page upon page of  questionnaires asking me all of the same details before the in-take process even began.

At the end of the session they informed me that they’d be away the following week and so would not be able to keep the second of our scheduled feedback appointments.

After expressing to them how important I felt it was that they  get their feedback flowing to me as quickly as possible, especially considering my daughters distress over recent events, they offered to phone through their group assessment to me early the following week before leaving the office for their week-long professional junket.

This week is now, of course, the said following week, and after waiting patiently for their phone call for the last two days,  my need to obtain help for my daughter got the better of me and I phoned them.

Only to be told that the team were already on their way out the door to a meeting and that none of them would have time to speak with me before leaving for their planned week-long workshop.

So now I’m being told to wait yet another week, that’s 8 weeks all up, before being given any form of feedback at all, that may either potentially directly help my daughter or better enable me to help her myself.

Now I ask you, does that sound fair and reasonable to you?

I mean where on earth is their duty of care in all of this?

They’ve gone off for a week-long workshop ‘to better improve their skills’, whilst  leaving all of their clients (children) in limbo!!!

Well I’ve got a few ideas that might ‘help them improve their skills’ that they won’t need a week to learn.

1) Give feedback when you’re scheduled to give feedback.

2) Don’t use parent feedback sessions as an opportunity to ply parents with questions you should already have the answers too, whilst failing to provide them with feedback.

3) If a parent stresses to you the importance of receiving  feedback, especially due to a heightened emotional crisis,  don’t ignore them and go off on a ‘professional junket’.

4) Phone back when you say you will.

5) If you can’t be arsed taking 5 minutes out of your day to provide the service that you promised in the first place, then you probably shouldn’t be working in a ‘caring profession’ at all.

To say that I am devastated by all of this is an understatement of epic proportions.

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I AM A PARTICLE

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Reblogged from soumyav:

Click to visit the original post

In the dusts of time ,I am merely a particle blown away,

from deserts to plains, mountains and vales,

in the weather of the time,in any condition,

I just froze and sometimes got melted...

Where do I lie?what is my place?

within the infinite space,

Are there any co ordinates,

that hold me in their state?

I am just a speck in the whole universe,

Read more… 60 more words

loved this poem so had to share it

The Hansel and Gretel Complex. Divorced Fathers Abandoning Their Children In Favour of Pleasing New Partners.

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In the original story of Hansel and Gretel, the father took his children into the woods to abandon them.

That’s right.

He took them into the woods to dump them.

Why did he do this?

To please his new wife who didn’t want the children around.

It’s an old, old story, but, given all that’s happened over the last few days with my ex-husband announcing his impending marriage on Facebook instead of paying his children the respect of talking to them in person, it’s fast becoming an old story with a very new meaning.

Well at least for me anyway.

It makes me wonder how many fathers’ there are out there who are executing the same old manoeuvre in this modern and apparently more palatable way.

Oh sure the children are no longer being taken out and dumped in the woods.

And our paternity laws are such, that to some extent, they try to ensure that children are no longer financially abandoned.

But are our children instead being abandoned in a new way?

A way that’s no longer purely physical or financial, but is instead, emotionally and psychologically charged with landmines that serve to continuously blast our children’s self-esteem apart.

I mean really, what does it say to a child when their own father prioritizes the companionship of a new woman, over his already established duty of care to his children?

Has our society really become so accepting of the myth that every man has the right to put himself and his ‘relationship’ needs first, that we  are now blindly sanctioning the bad behaviour of men who abandon their children in every  other way except financially?

Why is it considered Okay for a man to emotionally and psychologically abandon his children?

Can you imagine the outrage that would be occurring in society right now if mother’s routinely abandoned the day-to-day emotional and psychological care of their children in favour of pleasing a new man?

Could you imagine everyone saying ‘Oh it’s Okay, she’s paying child support so I guess it’s Okay for her to walk away from her responsibilities?’

As if.

And when we do hear stories about women who choose new partners over and above their obligations to their children, those mothers are always vilified.

Yet men, as fathers, get away with this kind of behaviour again and again without any vilification.

We are told that it’s ‘natural’ for a man to want a woman in his life.

That men have ‘physical needs’ that women don’t.

And that supposedly makes it Okay for fathers to psychologically and emotionally abandon their children in a wilderness of hurt that no amount of bread crumbs could ever lead them out of again.

Just how much harm is being done to the Children of Divorce due to the double standards that we still allow men to play by?

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When A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

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Recently my daughter found out, via Facebook, that her father had proposed to his girlfriend.

The sense of loss and dislocation she experienced as a result of the hurtful and impersonal way the news was broken to her, has left her reeling.

Especially considering  she’d rung her father the night before his Facebook announcement to invite him to her school sports carnival and he never said a word to her about it.

He never turned up to her sports carnival.

Despite this, my daughter showed a level of maturity far exceeding that of her fathers, by calling him the night after her carnival to congratulate him on his impending marriage.

The words she spoke to him were thoughtful and considerate.

The words he spoke to her were arrogant and blasie.

She hung up the phone and burst into tears.

She’s been crying ever since.

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

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Please Look Me in the Eye When You’re Talking to Me.

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Sounds like a simple enough request doesn’t it?

And for most people it is.

But I have found over the last few years that looking people in the eyes when I’m speaking to them is something that does not come naturally to me.

I can do it for brief periods of time when I really concentrate on it.

But in those brief moments of time I find that I focus so hard on reminding myself to look the other person in the eye, that I lose track of whatever it was I was saying in the first place.

No matter how badly I may have wanted to communicate an idea, whatever train of thought I might have been traveling on at the time, quite simply disappears.

It’s as if I can’t do those two things at once.

Because whenever I don’t try to rein my gaze in, even though it may wander all over the place, my though processes and communication skills remain clear.

I wonder what this says about me and how it affects the way others react to me?

I know for instance, that the idea of being able to look someone in the eye while speaking to them is often perceived as a sign of honesty.

It’s meant to indicate that the person speaking is telling the truth.

So what must people think of me when I’m speaking to them, yet not looking at them?

Sometimes the person I’m speaking too will actually turn around to try and see what it is that I’m looking at as I speak.

It is in those moments that I become acutely aware that I’m staring at a random spot on the wall or gazing at nothing more than the patch of invisible air just beside the person’s head.

Then there’s always that empty space just beyond the other person’s shoulder that somehow always seems to hold me spell-bound, for no apparent reason.

It seems I will look anywhere but into the eyes of the person I’m talking too.

One of the things I find so weird about this though isn’t just the fact that I can’t seem to look others in the eye when I’m speaking to them, it’s that I can easily, sometimes almost obsessively, look other people in the eyes when they are speaking to me.

It’s as if, when they’re speaking to me, eye contact  is not just Okay, it’s mandatory, but when I’m speaking to them, eye contact becomes an additional sensory burden.

It’s almost as if I can’t do the two things at once; Speak and look into another person’s eyes at the same time.

I do not understand why this is.

I only know that for some odd reason, I can’t seem to do this thing that comes so easily to others.

I’m not sure if it’s getting worse as I get older or whether years of noticing people’s strange reactions to me have simply made me more aware of it.

I’m also not sure whether or not this indicates that I have Aspie (Asperger) tendencies,  as I can look people in the eye, so I don’t actually have a fear of looking people in the eye, it’s just that I can’t  look them in the eyes when I’m talking.

Does anyone else experience this or know what it means?

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The Name Game….. How do you refer to yourself when asked? Is it by Occupation, Social Status, Married, Single, Full time Mother, Stay at Home Mother, Father, Student or None of the Above?

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How we define ourselves, the labels we use and the accompanying social judgments that ride along with our choice of words, speak volumes about how we are positioned in society.

I think for women, especially mothers, the question, ‘so what do you do for a living?’, no matter how casually asked,  has been a loaded one.

Should we define ourselves solely by our biological status as mothers, as so many women have done before us?

If so what type of mother’s are we?

Full time mother, part-time mother, stay at home mother?

Or should we strive to avoid the trap of seeking to quantify ourselves by the amount of hands on time we spend mothering in the first place?

On this issue I totally agree with http:// oneforthemummy.wordpress.com /2012/09/28/whats-in-a-name/  contestation over the use of descriptors such as ‘full-time mum’ or ‘stay at home mum’, when seeking to define ourselves.

I’m not sure why we as women still refer to ourselves in these terms, but we do. At least I know I have done and occasionally still do and probably will do again in the future.

Yet each and every time I do, I also know that I find myself becoming increasingly more uncomfortable about doing so.

To me the description of a mother as either a full-time mum or a working mum, automatically sets up that god awful, age-old debate concerning the roles of women in both the family and the workforce.

And apart from anything else, it also tends to rub in the even more appallingly ridiculous notion that being a mother and mothering, isn’t hard work at all.

Newsflash, mothering is hard work. Just because it doesn’t come complete with a recognized financial package and a demarcated award wage, does not mean that it is not legitimate work. It is and it deserves to be acknowledged.

Of course once you get past the whole full-time, part-time, stay at home debacle,  you are then faced with the more modern conundrum of whether or not you’re a married stay at home mum, a single stay at home mum, married working mum or a single working mum?

If we’re honest about it, we know that each of these patriarchal definitions arrives complete with their own unique brands of social baggage and more often than not, moral judgements.

Which  you might not mind  confronting so much if you were  simply honestly being asked whether or not you were a Miss, Mrs or Ms,…… but when the question is supposed to be a harmless social ice breaker like ‘what do you do for a living’……?  Somehow the automatic roll call involved  just doesn’t seem to fit.

Especially considering the fact that feminists worked hard to legitimise the title Ms, specifically so that women wouldn’t have to  automatically define themselves as either married or single, instantaneously.

Of course these days the term Ms has become synonymous with divorce, so that now it’s used primarily to define a woman as a divorcee.

So that particular piece of hard worn anonymity still hasn’t been able to purchase for women the same rights as men, who only need to declare the letters Mr before their name, on any and all occasions.

Quite simply  I find the inadvertent information that each additional label sends out, when applied specifically to women,  nothing short of astounding.

Not to mention a double standard of enormous proportions.

And I think we as women really need to ask ourselves whether or not, in this day and age, giving out that sort of information  to a casual observer  is really necessary?

I mean, even in today’s world, it’s still not a definitional issue that men are exposed to, as they  have always tended to define themselves by their employment status alone anyway.

Even if they didn’t hold that stop-gap ,  men are rarely expected to divulge  their status as either a full-time dad or a single dad with such an easily laid out , ‘what do you do for a living?’…. the way that women are expected too.

But I guess the bigger question is, why do we even feel the need to try and define ourselves by what we do?

Personally I prefer to define myself as a human being, who happens to be both a woman and a mother.

How do you define yourself?

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Living a Life Of Credibility Without Credit Cards

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Credit Cards

Now here’s a scandalous statement; I do not own a credit card. I do not believe in credit cards.

It’s not  that I don’t believe that  they  exist,  for they do indeed exist.

Rather,  I don’t believe that there’s any longer a need for this continuous line of revolving  credit, that we’ve all gotten so used too.

There’s simply no reason for us to keep dipping our hands into the pockets of others in order to “afford” our daily bread.

It’s not like we have too put everything we purchase on credit.

We do it now because we’ve gotten used to the feel of it.

It’s become a mind-set that we baptize our children into.

Turn 18, apply for a credit card.

And why?  Because that’s just the way things are done.

Even the language we use around this adhoc  system of permanent short-term loans, which is what credit cards actually are, is just so deceptive.

We call them credit  cards when in fact  they create nothing but debts.

Yet we go on merrily marking our accounts with debits, that we can’t afford. Meaning that in the long-term,  we owe more money to others than we actually have.

But don’t worry you can  pay it off overtime. Only of course, few of us ever really do.

Most of us add far more to the mountain than we could ever seriously hope to chew through in the time allotted to us.

And let’s face it, there is nothing what so ever about owning a credit card, that ensures personal credibility.

More often than not credit cards contribute to the ever-growing trend within out society to deny our  personal responsibilities.

In fact 9 times of 10 owning a credit card can be argued to encourage people to routinely display acts of poor financial judgement accompanied by  a very limited sense of personal responsibility.

Gone are the days of saving up for what you want.

Now instant, plastic, gratification rules.

Yet  it appears  the more easily we come by things, the less our capacity to value anything becomes.

I remember back in the 80′s when the talk of the town was the wanton waste that first world countries thrive on.

Flip top societies I believe we were being called back then.

Use it, break it, waste it, bin it.

Then Bob Geldof‘s  Live Aid Concerts came along and expanded our awareness that we were constantly throwing away items willy nilly,  that those in third world countries could live on, in or under.

For awhile we felt chastised by the ease of our own greed and repented by pledging huge sums of money to poorly run aid organizations.

Until they then too became such big businesses that the corruption within them became inevitably yet another part of the money hungry chain.

The collapse of our conscience  became once again  only a hop skip and jump away.

So we stopped donating to others and started donating even more greedily too ourselves.

Like dieters deprived of chocolate for more than a week,  we feasted on the smorgasboard of modern life and then when the time came  to pay ,we simply purged ourselves clean with the cloak and dagger  routine known as a  personal bankruptcy claim.

And  through it all, we learned nothing more than the nifty little trick of being good for a  year or two, before gorging ourselves again.

My Grandmother used to say; ‘Act in haste, repent at leisure’.

But these days I don’t think we even do that.

We might grumble a bit about the intrest rate payments on our credit cards, but we don’t repent and we don’t stop using them.

And here’s the point, the reason we don’t stop using them is because they’ve become a way of life.

Yet they are a way of life that we don’t actually need.

We’ve just been fooled into thinking that we do because they’ve been promoted as  making our lives so much easier.

After all they’ve made us safe…… haven’t they?

They stopped us from having to carry great wads of cash around and made us feel as if we no longer had to  worry about being mugged in the streets.

They stopped the threat and fear that we had of having our houses broken into and ransacked by thieves looking for bundles of cash.

Yes credit cards made it safe for us to walk the streets at night and leave our  houses unattended while on holidays.

If only they had, then perhaps it would have been all worthwhile.

Now days  of course crime has gone high-tech and a million and one internet scams have  shot up overnight with the potential to wipe out not just a wallet full of money but an entire bank account in one foul swoop.

But hey, we don’t have to worry about that now either, seeing as how so few of us actually have any savings in our accounts to draw on.

Is it just me or does anyone else wonder  what’s so credible about living life with a credit card these days?

Safer? Smarter? More credible?

I don’t think!!!!

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