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An Open Letter to Rachel Adam-Smith and her Social Worker
When did we stop believing that ‘It takes a
village to raise a child’? When did asking fellow community members for
assistance in special needs parenting (or any parenting) become a potentially
harmful act? And why would a social worker believe that a mother asking for the
support she needs to keep her daughter safe is a demonstration of irresponsible
parenting?
Rachel Adam-Smith is a UK blogger who is also a law student, patient with congenital heart disease, the daughter
of a mother who has muscular sclerosis and she is the mother of a 15 year old
daughter who has severe disabilities including autism.
Recently, Adam-Smith penned a blog post
describing how the social worker assigned to her case did not believe she
should seek assistance from strangers when her daughter became physically
unmanageable during emotional meltdowns that occurred in public. The social
worker maintained that Adam-Smith’s daughter might not understand that talking
to strangers is a bad thing. Rachel Adam-Smith is a petite person with a
serious heart condition. She is a single mother. She is economically isolated. When
Adam-Smith’s daughter has a meltdown, she falls to the ground or tries to run
away (including into traffic). She is always with her daughter when she asks
others for help.
What are we to make of the idea that
seeking emergency assistance from neighbours or community members is innately
dangerous? Should we conclude that it’s equally risky to offer help to a
vulnerable person who is clearly in distress?
I speak as the mother of a young man with
severe disabilities. Cormac Russell is the Managing Director of Nurture Development and a leader in asset-based community development.
Here’s what Cormac and I would say to Rachel Adam-Smith and to her
social worker:
Dear Rachel Adam-Smith:
You are not alone. In your community, there
are many people who want only the best for you and for your daughter. They
would like to help you – not only in times of crisis, but as loyal friends and
supporters. The next time you ask for assistance from a stranger (and we hope
you will continue to do this, because it is the safe and sensible action to
take and we believe your instincts and experience will guide your choices), ask
if the stranger would like to join you for coffee. Ask if you might drop off a thank
you gift at their place of employment. Or ask whether you could write a note of
appreciation to their employer praising the stranger’s kindness and character.
Look for opportunities to transform the kindness of strangers into authentic
friendships. After all, no one knows better than parents of vulnerable children
that it is our caring relationships that keep our children safe and secure.
With very best wishes and gratitude for
caring members of your community, who extend a hand of help and kindness,
Donna and Cormac
Dear Social Worker:
You are doing your best to help Rachel
Adam-Smith and her daughter. You are trying to keep them safe according to all
you’ve been taught in your field of study and work. We believe that your advice
to Ms. Adam-Smith reveals a problem with the way we think about ‘help’ and
‘safety’ in our society. We would like to propose an alternative way of
thinking.
Traditionally, help is thought of as keeping people
out of harms way, and safety is understood as preventing bad things happening.
This mind-set is so endemic in Western culture that these ways of thinking
have become certainties. We no longer question them.
But question them we must. Because when our efforts to
keep people safe actually separate them from natural support networks and make
them less autonomous and more dependent on salaried strangers, those efforts to
help can become counterproductive and harmful.
In other words our efforts to help can produce the opposite
of what we intend; they make people more unsafe, not safer.
The question then, is how do we make that shift from
risk aversion to liberation? For Social Work as a profession there are four
necessary changes in our opinion:
1.
Shift the profession en
mass towards Community Social Work and away from Case Management
Social Work.
Measure success on the basis of how interdependent at the centre of their
communities the people who are being served have become, not how dependent on
professional support, support that in reality is quite limited. And when that
professional support ends, only the community remains (which is why we should
focus on strengthening those ties for everyone, especially vulnerable people).
2.
Change what Social Workers are afraid
of. We all carry some
fear as professionals. So let’s make sure if we are going to live with that
stress, we choose the right things to be afraid of. Fearing that I won’t meet
my Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) this month. Or fearing the
unpredictability that comes with the new relationships with individuals you
serve when you work in a community way – these are counter-productive fears.
They increase unhealthy stress within practitioners generally, and they stifle
and disable those we serve. Useful stress comes with the fear of what might happen
if I displace natural indigenous support in order to cover my back or meet my
targets. Or if I make people dependent on a system that cannot provide ongoing
love and mutuality without the hidden cost of unintended institutionalization
and loss of autonomy. These are fears worth having, and they are real.
3.
Include Safety II
thinking in how Social Workers are trained to think about and work with safety. Professionals in the field of Airport
security are at the cutting edge in thinking about safety. They have identified two main ways that folks think about Safety. Safety I (the dominant way of
thinking about safety) aims to stop bad things (things as imagined in the
future) from happening. Safety II, aims to optimize the potential of good
things happening based on what actually happens in the present and optimizing
what’s strong not wrong from there. We need both, but our Social Workers and
wider society need exposure to the Safety II mindset if we are to restore
balance and common sense.
4.
Finally, we need to ask different
questions. Instead of asking
what will my intervention prevent, ask ‘what will it produce? What kind of
person will be produced as a result of my advice or intervention? Systems could
ask: What type of person does this ‘supposed’ productive process/advice,
produce?’ We say ‘supposed’, because until we know the answer, we can’t know if
its productive, non-productive or counter-productive
When institutions develop processes that degrade the
human capacity, inventiveness and autonomy of a person/persons they serve, it
is mostly done with good intentions. We
must learn to become wary of Good Intentions, because
as we all intuitively know, the road to a life of disconnection, loneliness and
misplaced fear is paved with them, especially for those most vulnerable to not
having their gifts recognized or received.
With best wishes and hope for a more community-based
future for all,
Cormac and Donna
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