Did you see the case this month of the guy that threw his daughter off bridge into Tampa Bay in December, killing her?
He had a history of domestic abuse, drug use, several investigations from social services, and they had just stopped by because his attorney had called the cops to alert them to what seemed like a full blown schizophrenic episode. For some reason, social services kept giving this guy a pass, including a visit shortly before he murdered his daughter. And when he drove onto the bridge at over 100 mph, the cops watched blow past without pursuing him.
As I was saying there is an entire subculture of child abusing and raping scumbags who the authorities just seem to say "Meh, those people are a huge hassle, with all the stupidity and screaming and extra paperwork and then theyāll just skip town anyway. Letās go bust on a nice intact middle class family because they will try to reason with us, and donāt you love that, because thatās we get to act stupid as shit just to mess with them. Thatās some easy overtime pay right there. Who wants to mess with actual dirtbags when the intact middle class family is the low hanging fruit."
You are, of course, not just going with press reports, right, since those would only include negative outcomes. Youāre going by some source that contains all social-worker-interactions, so you can comprehensively judge the data, right?
Which is good, because otherwise this would be so much horseshit.
Indeed, youāve so cleverly proved that the only possible explanation is some sort of character flaw of mine. You seem to be extremely worried about this.
Without doubt both the cops and the cps completely blew this situation. Absolutely zero common sense was used and the kids were traumatized by the very agency charged with protecting them. On their own cps workers have no authority to interfere with parent child interactions save for maybe stopping obviously harmful behavior such as beating a kid. Any and all of us would hopefully protect a child if they saw such an assault. The cps workers are hired to enforce rules handed to them by bureaucrats, maybe legislators. The jobs are usually poor paying, the training often mediocre. They have little authority and incredible responsibility. So what could go wrong? Perhaps this situation is reflective of the value our society places on children. Teachers also are a group of people with great responsibility but little actual authority. Most of the people I know in these kind of jobs entered their profession with great hopes and dreams. Many of them get ground down by the expectations placed on them but with little support from the society/community they try to serve.
As Iāve read through the responses here Iāve seen some fair criticism and outrage. I havenāt seen much in the line of helpful ideas or dialogue regarding a better approach. This is fair because I doubt many of us have the full scope of the problem let alone viable solutions. We have become a country splintered by fear and distrust of the very institutions created to help us. To that end I have seen here a concerted effort to have even more fear and doubt of yet another social institution. I certainly have doubts about police in the country and now a great deal of energy has been spent to create fear and distrust of another group of people charged with trying to make a safer, saner society. So easy to smear and damage, so hard to find common ground. Why bother really?
Iāve been working on the idea that there are approximately a dozen people-oriented professions that are especially attractive to adult children of alcoholics etc., and these are jobs for which they are uniquely ill-equipped. Social work is on the list, but itās not a personal cause of mine. There are two main problems: firstly, the inability to deal with normal people without becoming Inspector Javert, secondly, a unique vulnerability to being manipulated by narcissists, sociopaths, abusers, and their ilk. Again, social work is not my primary focus, so I have not thought about that field specifically.
Law enforcement is also on the list, but cops have a different set of personality traits, so the problems would be different. Again, that is not my main focus.
I know, I was living in some apartments and as I walked across the parking lot someones two year old came running by naked. Their parents said āGrab them!ā and I said āI am not in the habit of snatching up naked children in the street.ā But another time we did have to pick up a child who was about 14 months old and walking down the sidewalk with not a person in sight. Luckily the closest door we knocked on was the right place, and the baby had slipped out following some older kids.
I donāt think it ever got that cold during the day when I went to school (Britain has more of a problem with windchill and humidity than with temperature). The only time we werenāt allowed to play outside at school was because of torrential rain or risk of fallout from Chernobyl.
It was a parking lot at the end of cul-de-sac, and the situation was more humerous than dangerous. luckily mom was able to waddle fast enough to overtake a two year old kid.
Have you lapsed into Inspector Javert mode? Are you really conscious of your actions and emotions? Isnāt it pretty to think so?
Preston Sturges, yes, while the Sandusky case and the worker you cited in the above article are two tragic examples, to lump them all together is pure ignorance and downright prejudicial assholeism. I personally know quite a few social workers that go out of their way to ensure that kids are placed with relatives before considering foster care for them and thoroughly investigate ALL allegations of abuse in foster homes. If those accusations are found to be accurate, those parents are promptly arrested and sent before a judge. You forget that we live in a very large country with a population nearing 400 million people here in the States and that the bad apples barely reach a tiny fraction of 1%. IMHO, the way you write, it appears that you are a viewer of Murdochās faux noise.
When I started kindergarden in September 1975, my school was across a large grassy field that was the playground, I was only 5 at the time, but I walked to school and back home every day by myself. One day when I was 6 I decided to walk home alone after sunday school, got lost and got picked up by the police in a park because I was crying and confused, fortunately they knew my Dad because he was an RN at the local hospital, they took me home and my Dad invited them in for coffee and toast, they accepted and they all talked and had a good time cracking jokes and proud of me that at least I tried.
I used to work with a woman so afraid of everything that I once commented about jumping into a local river for a swim because it was blistering hot that day and she freaked and chewed me out saying that the local river was to be avoided because a couple of kids almost drowned there. I called her a nutcase flake to her face and demanded for her to justify her saying that to a 42 year old, me.
What authority does the choir exercise to be able to prevent him from leaving?
Physically restraining him would beā¦ well that would be abducitng a child, wouldnāt it?
Would they kick him out of the choir if he says, āOK, Iām leaving, see you next weekā?
As a scout master here in Austria, our legal advisors told us that when a ten-year-old decides to leave a meeting early and without permission, pretty much all we can do is call the parentsā¦
Oh, and by the way, when I was 16, I got on a train and went from Austria to the Czech Republicā¦
Thatās precisely my thinking as well. Pretty much every person I know that have problems with authority are those that are usually the troublemakers being consistently called on themselves.
Which was also much exaggerated. Total hypocrisy after the US and UK airblast H bomb tests; we were never kept indoors while the strontium and the iodine rained down.
