Small fish of child protection
Unite, Fabio Gioia, Italy from Good 50×70 ‘08: A winner in The project that helps social communication.
Child protection continues to be viewed by many as the job of the Government. While rhetoric tells us otherwise (government endorsed slogans and campaigns about child protection being a community responsibility), the power and control of statutory child protection agencies is frightening. They eat little fish like you and I if we do not do what they want!
In control of how good, safe and non abusive parenting is, I have experienced some child protection workers who treat their clients with total disrespect and non transparent practices that I consider abusive. It is those few workers who get statutory child protection a bad name and aid misunderstandings about the statutory nature of child protection and community responsibilities. Not all statutory workers are megalomaniac nor are they abusive in their micro practice skills. But, the good ones get swallowed up by the few bad ones. Unless the bad ones are challenged and their power taken back.
Despite individual views and complaints against the powerful control agents of child protection, child protection is still a community responsibility. As small fish, we have to take community child protection seriously and challenge whose responsibility it is to look after families and children. My view is that it is not solely the government’s job. Certainly statutory child protection is the pointy end of the stick – they come in after harm has occurred. Who looks after kids and acts to PREVENT child abuse. We do. Community does. YOU do.
What are you going to do today to ensure a community change away from having government control of child safety? I hate to break it to you but you are community. It is your responsibility to do something protective and to help change community culture. A zero tolerance of child abuse begins at home. No matter who perpetrates that abuse (Governments, business, cults or individuals) the tide must change and we small fish have to swim together against the sharks that hurt our babies.
Child protection is your responsibility. Do not give away your power by expecting someone else to always do it.
Start with some protective play from Parent Sense: a 12 page protective play tutorial. Have a conversation around personal safety. Just start! Child protection is in your hands, not the Government’s.
Get your rocks off for child safety
Be the change you want, hero day
June 13
Drink driving is a child protection issue
May 30, 2008 by Megan · 8 Comments
Drink driving and speeding kills. Speeding and drink driving are risk taking behaviours. A person who speeds or drinks and drives is more than a bloody idiot, they are a risk to children: my children, your children, our collective children. This is my value and I accept that not everyone shares it. Certainly some people do not share my child protection principles either.
Values and principles around child protection issues tells me a lot about a person. Those who engage in risk taking behaviour and law breaking are not going to always place child protection highly on their personal agendas. Certainly from a structural and political analysis, countries that allow drink driving appear to also have low impact child protection legislation (if any). I find this disturbing.
As a teenager and young woman growing up in rural Australia, drink driving was the norm. Everyone did it, even the local police men, the councillors and other town authorities. There was also an awfully high number of child protection cases. Ummm, I know that correlation does not mean causation but research certainly supports a link between alcohol and sexual assaults.
Always a few standard deviations away from the norm, I never drove if I had been drinking: NEVER. I have maintained this standard. I do not need laws or volume of cars/people on the road to convince me to not drink drive. My internal motivators, my ability to delay gratification (having a drink) and my commitment to child protection ensures that I obey my own value of never drink driving.
On honeymoon, we went to Norfolk Island. Drink driving was considered safer than drunk walking in their very hilly terrain. You know the old joke: Hi, my name’s Cliff, drop over some time? Norfolk Island is that joke personified. Cliffs, no street lighting and cows that have right of way; walking was just too risky. Similarly, seat belt wearing is not a road rule expectation. The thinking appeared to be that if your car goes over a cliff, a seat belt may impede a quick escape. Regardless of the reasons supplied to us, I did not drink and drive and I wore my seat belt…because those are my personal values of safety (and a lot of socialisation). I had no intention of putting either myself, my brand spanking new husband or other people in any danger.
Alison from Three Times Kewl lives her life around the effects of drink driving and speeding. Her post Get Angry reminded me that sometimes people confuse emotional reactions and behaviours. While many readers responded to an excellent anti speeding campaign with sadness for what happened to victim families (and sadness is appropriate too), Alison begs us to make distinctions and respond with anger to the driving issue: anger that people still speed and drink drive, anger that communities condone such risk taking behaviour and anger that maintains pressure on really changing an individuals locus of control so that they choose to not speed/drink and drive rather than not speed/drink and drive in case they get caught.
Anger is not being out of control as many people seem to think. Anger is natural and acceptable. Out of control behaviours are unacceptable (screaming, violence, etc). Anger is a motivator and gets things done. Anger is a secondary emotion under which sadness often bubbles. Please, use your sadness to get angry: anger gets things done. Speeding and drink driving kills. Speeding and drink driving are child protection issues.
Do not kill my children you drivers out there. I will use my anger to ensure that another person is never hurt by you again.
What’s your view on drink driving and speeding as a child protection issue?
Traffic Sign photo by sundstrom at photo stock.xchng
Child search for a hero
May 29, 2008 by Megan · 11 Comments
We all need another hero. Are you that hero?
Are you ready to wear your hero cape and badge on June 13?
As a hero what will you change?
Be the change you want,
hero day June 13
Australian Childhood Foundation is encouraging us all to become childhood heroes on June 13. Funds raised from the sale of capes, badges and Christmas Cards go toward ensuring Australian children affected by child abuse have the best treatment and best outcomes we can give them. Damn but our kids need that.
Treating child abuse is expensive. Buying a cape for $5.00 or a badge for $3.00 is NOT expensive and IS something most of us can afford. Please help cut through the expense of professional help by buying a cape and becoming a hero.
Make your own donation to Childhood Hero Day here
Buy a cape or badge here
Find out more about Childhood Hero Day here
Find out more about the Australian Childhood Foundation here.
Thanks for being my hero 
Imaginif moving to 30 James St North Cairns
May 28, 2008 by Megan · 6 Comments
We don’t do secrets at Imaginif but we are very good at surprises
In July
Imaginif is moving to 30 James St
North Cairns
We’ve bought a magnificent old Queenslander (already renovated and right beside the bright red Rainflowers Florist) and downstairs is set to be Imaginif talk doctor central: Huge training room, numerous talk doctor offices and magnificent gardens for people to wander in or even have their counselling sessions in.
But wait, there’s more: steak knives and linen will be supplied free of charge in the self contained motel type room that will be available for short term stays. For those that travel to Imaginif workshops and trainings you can now book an overnight stay in the Imaginif unit. We are even negotiating therapy weekends away for the communicating couple: Stay for the weekend at Imaginif and have a Saturday and Sunday session with an Imaginif relationship counsellor or life coach.
We move over the first two weeks of July. During this time there will be minimum business activity and servicing of client needs, however, all existing counselling and training bookings will be kept. Closer to the time I will let you know our new telephone and fax numbers.
Entry to Imaginif House is from the back street (Edward Street – turn left beside the Florist, next left is Edward St). Here’s the back view of Imaginif House:
And for those that wish to send office warming flowers….the red florist is right next door: Rainflowers Florist (you listening Paulie boy?).
Get your rocks off for child safety
Introducing talk about personal safety, protective behaviours and, oh ah….vagina and penises, can be difficult for many parents. Sex predators love kids who are emotionally and communication disconnected from safe people. They especially love kids who can’t talk straight and say something how it is (because the perpetrators can then twist disclosures to make it look the child was lying or that the child’s words meant something else). I’m sick of perpetrators getting to our kids. It is time to stone them! It is time to stone talk to kids about protective behaviours.
Talk with the help of a stone
Find a stone, rock or something natural and common in your area. It must be big enough to not be swallowed by a child and small enough to be tucked safely away in a precious box, drawer or dressing table. Give the stone to your child and tell them that the stone is special but that it is also private (like a vagina or penis). Not a secret (secrets are bad, surprises are good) but something private that nobody else may ever touch or look at without your child’s permission. The stone is to be kept in a special place, beyond the eyes of everyone else and only pulled out at times of cleaning, or checking. The stone is so sacred that if ever anybody touches it, your child must immediately tell a safe adult: you.
Stone age child protection metaphors
The stone is a metaphor for a private part – a penis, vagina, anus or breast. During your stone talk or stone play you may like to casually share the following information: Just like the stone, we also keep our private parts covered up and hidden from public view. Just like the stone they can at times be shown or touched. Sometimes the doctor or nurse may have to touch to make sure that all is well. But doctors and nurses or even people bathing the child, only ever touch there quickly and for a cleansing reason. If ever anybody spends too much time looking at or touching the private parts then it is a sign that not all is right and the child should tell a safe adult immediately.
There’s more ideas for protective play in Parent Sense, a 12 page protective behaviour tutorial free for you to download and use.
Many thanks to my 23 year old son for this idea. He rang me one night, shared his idea of helping parents to talk about personal safety with their kids and I have used the idea ever since. Thanks Rhys.
You may also be interested in these protective play ideas:
5 gifts to encourage child safety
Head and shoulders, knees and vagina
Are Children’s books providing them with enough advice?
The secret business of child sexual abuse caught by surprise
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