Are you a carbon addict? Probably yes: and children are dying

Do you have carbon dependence syndrome?

Take the CAGE test - do you need a regular carbon fix, by taking a bath or a long shower, by updating your mobile phone while it's still functioning, or by going on an overseas weekend break or by buying new food instead of using up what's in your fridge?

I've been enjoying the website Carbon Addict, which treats irresponsible carbon use as a disease, which needs managing.

Remember: the World Health Organisation estimates that 150,000 people have already died from climate change, and they are mainly non-addicts in developing countries - another word for this social group is 'children in poverty'.

Try it: http://www.carbonaddict.org/

More creativity and funding for children: aims in Australian debate

An Australian social worker who has built up a big family and child welfare organisation uses a congratulatory press interview to press for reform of the Victorian child welfare system : no it’s not that old – the state of Victoria. She aims for:

Getting rid of the adversarial legal processes through the Children's Court … 'Investment in early years; funding for out-of-home care that matches the demand — right now it's capped; an education allowance for kids in out-of-home care, and the transferring of case management from the Department of Human Services to the community sector.

These would be recognisable aims in many countries. Adversarial legal antics is not a good way of handling children’s lives. Adequate funding that prevents children from coming into state care, supports children’s education and if possible keeps them in a community setting is an important priority to many social workers. And too often hard-pressed state social work agencies focus on government priorities and political prejudices instead of the needs of children. Better to support planning and advocacy outside the state. Of course, social workers can be creative in government services, but over-bureaucratic controls and poor finance often hold creative practice back, for children and for adults.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/repairing-broken-young-lives-20110715-1hi75.html#ixzz1SSp5O7vI

Why do people expect the truth from case records?

Garfinkel's obituary: I often find obituaries one of the most attractive parts of newspapers, because, with the odd exception when the Guardian prints a critical obit on someone every right-thinking leftie hates, they are usually positive, and they look at the whole of someone's life and achievements, rather than just the currently newsworthy snippet of their lives.



I have often cited with pleasure Garfinkel's paper on clinic records, in which he points out that health and social care professionals are bound to write records which show them in a good light, because they know what really went on, when they read the note, so it reminds them of what they need to know, but anyone else who reads it is likely to want to criticise them, so they will always present the best of what they did. It's so obvious, and we all know this, so why do people expect the truth from case records?

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

Harold Garfinkel, who has died aged 93, was professor emeritus in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was based from 1954 until his retirement in 1987. In the 1950s, he coined the term "ethnomethodology", literally meaning "people's methodology".

Ethnomethodologists showed how the formal methods and procedures that take place in courtrooms, scientific laboratories and workplaces are underpinned by everyday understandings, argumentative practices and embodied skills. Garfinkel challenged the idea that sociological methods were grounded in a specialised scientific rationality that was independent of the irrational and subjective basis of ordinary social conduct.

Garfinkel sought to probe the presumptive existence of social order with a series of idiosyncratic investigations that disrupted commonplace routines in households and public places. Even apparently mild disruptions, such as acting the part of a polite stranger at one's own family's dinner table, provoked explosive reactions laden with indignation. This demonstrated the moral accountability infused within even the most mundane of routines. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a17wmy

Do more as a caring dad for a disabled child and your marriage gets better: new Polish research

A colleague in Poland, Eugene Kaniok, sends me the outcomes of his research on 243 Polish fathers of disabled children. Fathers means also carers of course, and it's usually mothers who do the most caring.

But this research looks at fathers' involvement: if they got interested in the child’s life, and involved in the child's care, education and rehabilitation then this was very significantly associated with an increase in satisfaction in their marriage. Less important, but still significant, involvement correlated with the level of fathers’ concentration on the needs of their child with disabilities, the level of fathers' cooperation with their wives, the number of years during which parents cared for a child with disabilities, time devoted by fathers daily for their child with disabilities, fathers’ self-esteem, fathers’ education, the level of disability of a child, the level of fathers’ skills in dealing with their child with disabilities and the level of fathers' knowledge about their child with disabilities.

My experience is that when families have a child with disabilities the mother is almost forced to take on responsibility for the care, and fathers can feel left out, or decide that they can't cope with what's happening to their family. It often, sadly, leads to marriage break-up. If this research relates to other families with disabled children across the world, it's a message to social workers and others helping families with disabled children. Work hard to get dad interested and doing things actively, and you'll strengthen the marriage and really benefit the child in their life too.

Far be it from me to give it a political tinge, but one thinks, looking at this research, of our Prime Minister's family. Whatever you think of his politics, he clearly did the business as a dad, and if this research is true for England, that's probably one of the reasons that he seems to have a strong marriage.

I've got this from the English abstract and talking to the writer. there are going to be papers published in English, and I'll try to draw attention to them when they come out. We should be looking at and learning from international research.

P. E. Kaniok. (2011). Poczucie powodzenia malzenstwa a udzial ojcow w opiece nad dzieckiem niepełnosprawnym i w jego wychowaniu [Fathers' marital satisfaction and their involvement with their child with disabilities], Opole, Opole University Publishing.