All Talk & No Action – Do We Value Children or Just Talk About It?
How we value children shows up directly in the way we treat people helping us raise our children.
It hurts me to see political misunderstanding and an accepted practice of misleading people about something as important as this nation’s children. Reading the paper one would think that our problems lie at the feet of service providers (teachers, social workers and foster parents to name the main scapegoats).
At election time, politicians make political hay blaming teachers for failed schools (with public support).
Institutional failures are not the fault of people doing the hard daily work of foster care, teaching or social work.
These folks work within a system designed by policy makers and administrators (most of whom are very well paid – not a bad thing, but a thing to remember when looking for the responsible party).
Blaming worker bees in child protection is just as wrong as blaming law enforcement officers for allowing terrible crimes. Can law enforcement sue policy makers and counties for making their work impossible? – we may soon see).