Social Issues of Britain

This week has been a big one in the world of social work; and is one that could reform many inept and insufficient laws.
The whole “Baby P” case has made my blood boil. (For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Baby P is a child that died at 17 months old from negligence and abuse at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s best friend. Info can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/18/childprotection-ukcrime ).

The main body of the argument (and this is what pisses me off, other than the fact that there are some EVIL people in the world) is that the social services are to blame. Well... yes, I suppose they are, but not 100%. The police, teachers, doctors, and a wide range of academic or municipal service people are at liberty to tell the social services what they can blatantly see or hear, but they don’t. Nothing can be done if people just don’t know, right? Maybe I’m arguing the case because my dad recently became a social worker (and he’s a good man damnit) but I personally think that, even though the “Every Child Matters” document, among others, is seriously outdated and no longer protects children the way it was designed to, it’s not necessarily the fault of the people who deal with these cases every day. Think about what you would do in a similar situation; it’s easy enough to say yes, you would take that child away – but honestly, what if you were misjudging the scene? There are so many doubts you could face that you might even be fabricating all these pieces of evidence. So in the end... you tell somebody above you, and they can handle it. That way, you’re not responsible for removing the wrong child from the wrong home. Unfortunately, the pen-pushers at the top of the chain have little time and little care for these matters. “I’ll sort it later”.

This is understandable, but it’s still not solving, or saving anyone. According to the guardian, there are 69,000 known children that are being neglected or abused, and are still living in that home. Why?! I guess the cynical answer to that would, there’s no space to put them anywhere else, not enough people becoming foster parents, not enough money, etc etc. Which, in my opinion, is pretty piss poor. (Despite the lack of space for children, I’ll bet there’s still plenty of cells waiting for these people that think torture is fun... if not cells, then there’s plenty of ground left to create graves.) Another thing that I find outrageous is this; councils are reluctant to act on the claims made by teachers on behalf of neglected/abused children, because OFSTED lower the reputation of a school district if it has children on the child protection register for more than two years. Heaven forbid children showed up at school bruised and wishing someone would love them, Christ...

All these stories I’ve ever read; Victoria Climbié, Dave Peltzer, Baby P... They trigger two reactions. The first is to grab a bat, and go on a bludgeoning spree. These are the kind of people that don’t deserve to live and the only saving grace is that even the cut-throats of prison hate these kinds of people and will make their lives in prison a living hell. It makes me so angry!

The second (which is slightly more positive) is that i want to help. Initially, it makes me want to seek out these children personally and take them somewhere where they don’t have to worry about what they say or think; show them that not everyone in the world is heartless and brutal. So... who knows, maybe once I’ve finished THIS degree... I’ll follow my dad into the world of social work and change things. I for one, would rather be safe than sorry, and take a child from a home by accident where it was unnecessary. After all, you can remove a cared-for child from a loving home and return them. You can’t save a child once it’s dead.

Wade Into The Deep End

I thought, since Halloween has just passed and all, that i should write a blog about fear and danger.

I suppose that fear is tied in with imagination. Most of what we fear, is an imagined entity, and most of the time, we have no true reason to fear it.

What exactly CAUSES fear? i mean, in this day and age, there isnt much left for us to be scared of, other than the lengths of human psychosis. And of course, psychotic individuals are something to be feared, but dont we have securiy to help us against it? It sort of goes back to imagination.. what we are capable of imagining.. Can it become a reality?

For instance. This new subgenre of horror movies that seems to have come into its own recently. Things such as Hostel or Saw are movies based entirely on the evils one mortal person can commit, and they are truly horrifying, and they dont leave your mind alone even for a second. Even in the absence of a killer or a cut, these scenes are set in dark, dingy places full of germs that we know instinctively we should avoid, and yet we cant. But what is more horrifying, other than the fact that these things are possible, is that its possible for a human being, like-minded enough to be the same species, to break our views of normality and do what you could never bring yourself to. Is that scary because it means that one day, we could snap and do something similar? are we far away enough from the claws of media, and rage, and insanity, to never turn into that which we fear?

And then of course, there is the urban legends we are raised with. Ghosts, ghouls, zombies, vampires, werewolves, and all the things you'd rather not run into. These things are entities that we ourselves have created in our imaginations. So why do we fear them? why do children dare each other to say "bloody mary" into mirrors, and then spend their entire night avoiding anything reflective? Even sceptics, who scoff in your face when you quiver about your fear of the shadows, look over their shoulders now and then. But for what? Why do we all have this sense that something incredibly hostile and evil is just out of our peripheral vision and if we move but an inch, we'll be staring down the gullet of a monster sent from hell to devour us? is it a fear of the unknown? what we cant see? is that why many of us fear the dark? the possibility that one day our eyes may fail us, fatally?