I’ve been thinking about blame lately. You lose count in this job of the number of people you meet who don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions. Husband blames wife (and vice versa) or the new boyfriend, client blames lawyer, social worker, child, the system – for failed relationships, for poor parenting, for their rejection by traumatised children, for the removal of the children they neglected. It cuts both ways, too often also social workers blame parents who never had a chance – allocating responsibility is easier than confronting or solving problems sometimes. Social workers and guardians blame lawyers for procedural delay, and for somehow making matters worse, more complicated. Today we had to adjourn a final hearing on fairness grounds. It caused delay for a child who desperately needs permanence but avoided causing more delay by prompting a pointless appeal. The lawyers suggestion but not their fault. And sometimes – dare I say it – counsel blames their instructing solicitor (as long as they aren’t sitting behind).
Tag Archives: rants
Not Rising to the Challenge
You dare me to publish your comments, but they are full of private information about your child and the proceedings surrounding his care. I could not publish them if I wanted to.
You dare me to publish your comments, but they are full of material that is probably defamatory. I cannot publish them.
You dare me to publish your comments, but they are full of hatred and personal attacks on my professionalism and my parenting. Yet you have never met me. I will not publish them.
To those who dare me, I want to say this and only this, and let this be an end to it:
We all go out to work to earn a living. We all want if we can to be able to strive to help people through our work, even as we earn. I am lucky to be able to do this in my job.
You and I are both parents. I hold that as something we have in common, in spite of the hatred you hold for me.
You seem oblivious to the fact that I am often critical of the system or of social services where warranted, but I don’t criticise parents on this blog – because I know how hard it is to be a parent, even when the courts are not involved. As parents we are one and the same, but I guess not everybody sees it that way.
I accept that in maintaining this blog I become some kind of magnet for the aggrieved, and a proxy for ‘The System’. I want on this blog to listen to all points of view and publish the comments people want to make whether I agree with them or not. But be assured that whilst criticism and different opinions are encouraged, personal attacks will be deleted and your future comments blocked before I even see them. So keep typing if you wish, but I’m afraid I won’t be listening or engaging in a battle with you to justify myself. I’ll be focusing on raising my family and on how I can help other families through my job.
You will not wish it back to me, but best of luck to you all.
A bit Woolley…
A couple of tweets from @woolleyandco alerted me to some interesting posts on their blog: Andrew Woolley has it spot on about Baroness Deech’s curiously reality-detached approach to humiliating divorce settlements (I think she means demeaning, but anyway). “You say humiliating, I say equality…”. Doesn’t scan but you get the point. And as for the post on Baroness Deech’s remarks about grandparents’ entitlement to financial recompense for their gratis childcare – well I’ve posted previously about the political expediency of pandering to grandparents rights organisations, and all I have to add is this observation: do we really want to go down this road? If grandparents are entitled to claim maintenance from their children who ‘take advantage’ of free childcare, will the parents be able to recoup that in later years for the care they will give the elderly grandparents? Or perhaps parents should be able to recoup their childcare costs from their children’s earnings in years to come? We could all do with acknowledging how much grandparents offer their children and their grandchildren, but their contribution is more than one dimensional – financial support, childcare, time and love. And isn’t the essence of (grand)parental love that it is voluntary?
.
My own parents routinely take our son for a day a week, but whilst for them they are pleased to feel they have helped us out with childcare, we are pleased to ensure that they have some quality time with their grandson. We try not to rely on it as failsafe childcare, being sensitive to when they have something else they need to do that day, but we would want to keep up this special time with grandma and granddad even when we aren’t at work. For my son Monday is Ga-mma day. It’s not a transaction we could quantify with money. That would be demeaning. I do see the arguments for being able to claim working tax credits childcare element if a grandparent is giving up a large chunk of their week and is prevented from earning money through other work (although I also see the difficulties with it), but to create maintenance obligations between different tiers of family members just undercuts the whole notion of family helping family – politicians are obsessed with trying to strengthen the family and ‘mend’ society, reducing the family to a set of financial obligations or contracts is not going to help cement our society together or make our children happier.
.
As a footnote, its heartening to see that what I would call a ‘marketing blog’ can still be an interesting read, and can contain some real and insightful opinion. If a blog is worth doing it has to contain some human input and not just be an endless stream of advertorial. Whilst Woolley and Co have clearly invested heavily in their online media marketing strategy, they are doing it well. So many other firms are doing it badly.