Aside from spreading awareness about the impact of trauma and how to get beyond it, through this website and the book I am working on, I also want to apply the knowledge to set real changes in motion. I am delighted that over the past year, I have gone from a powerful but vague sense of how to make a major difference in the world through addressing trauma to a very concrete plan for how I can do something about that in a practical sense. As it turns out, it lies at the heart of the work I have been doing for the past 18 years. Its outline still sounds grandiose and theoretical: Radical child protection reform that goes beyond addressing symptoms and kicking the can down the road. But I have found a simple, practical starting point.
Continue reading “Getting Started: First Step”Tag: #socialwork
Reforming Child Protection Systems, Globally
Currently, child protection reform is generally understood as a move from residential to family-based alternative care and a need to build strong gatekeeping mechanisms. Moreover, many see it as something that needs to happen ‘over there, in the global South’, because ‘over here’ the system works, it just needs some fine-tuning and minor improvements. In this fine-tuning, the increasing trend of adding on trauma-informed practices is seen as a breakthrough and major improvement (don’t get me wrong, I’m not disputing that this is certainly a lot better than not having them). I have come to view this very differently.
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