Helping families before crisis hits

Families in need should be identified before it’s too late to help them, The current system is clearly not a successful model, says Peter McVerry

CHILDHOOD is a special time, full of joy and optimism. However, it’s also a vulnerable time and a difficult childhood, surrounded by poverty, drug addiction, and violence can dramatically affect the life chances of that child.

Many children grow up in the shadow of poverty and desperation, and society must be extra careful to ensure these vulnerable children receive the very basic levels of support necessary to have a safe, happy, and fulfilled childhood.

As a basic principle, we can all agree that where possible, children should be brought up in the family home. Families are of critical importance to the well-being of children. The aspiration of every parent is that their child would grow up happy and healthy, both physically and mentally, and ready for the challenges of life.

Keeping families together and ensuring, where possible, that children remain in the family home should be the goal of all those working in family support services.

Being a parent is difficult. It’s a constant struggle to ensure children are safe and protected. We should empower and challenge parents, to ensure that families can stay strong and that children stay supported.

Needing assistance as a parent isn’t always an indication of bad parenting or neglect. It can simply mean that a particular family is struggling, like many others do, with the daily pressures of raising a family in modern Ireland.

The current system of waiting for families to reach crisis point before we intervene to help is clearly not a successful model of child protection or family support. With 200,000 children living in consistent poverty and more than 590 children registered as homeless, the challenges that face the child welfare system are immense. However, we must move to a model of early intervention.

Developing a stronger culture of children’s rights would strengthen the position of parents and families. Greater rights for children mean greater rights for families as a whole and the Constitution should vindicate those rights.

The Constitution must be amended to include individual rights for children, along with the current right to education. It should include a right to elementary healthcare, as well as the right to safe housing, where the basic needs of childhood are met.

The right to housing should not be defined as merely having access to a roof and four walls or to some other form of shelter, but should be considered in a wider context as having somewhere to live in security, peace, and dignity.

Parents are the best advocates for their children, but they are often intimidated by a system that can seem too cold and out of touch. We need a holistic and caring approach to family support, not merely a system that judges parents a success or a failure.

To support children at risk, we must first begin by supporting families at risk. It doesn’t take a lot of clever analysis or sophisticated political models to identify the families most likely to need assistance of one sort or another.

They are the silent minority, struggling with intergenerational poverty, drug, and alcohol abuse and violence. They exist on the margins, often forgotten by society and let down by the system.

The current system fails the minority of children and families most at risk and in a dysfunctional manner, ensures that those families remain at risk, right up to when it becomes almost too late to help.

Families at risk deserve better, they deserve the unconditional support of every element of State services, and they also need access to education, financial assistance, and job oppor-tunities. They also deserve the prospect of living fulfilled and dignified lives.

Parents want to raise their children safe in the knowledge that they will pass on a greater sense of hope and optimism for the future than they themselves received as children.

By moving away from a system focused on families ‘failing’ to one committed to family support, Ireland can change the way in which the State and the family interact, and ultimately how children’s rights are protected.

Supporting families when they are in need rather than when they are in crisis is better for children, families, and society.

* Fr Peter McVerry compiled this piece on behalf of Campaign for Children. www.campaignforchildren.ie