Soapbox: The Child and the System

If there is one proof for me that the fundamental nature of humankind is broken, or at the very least bent in incredibly wrong directions, I only have to look as far as my workplace. I have the opportunity to work with our less fortunate children in our society, in our city of Calgary. I work at a grouphome with teens that is part of the child welfare system. The basic way I understand the child welfare system to work in Calgary is thus. The provincial government gives grants to a privatized not-for-profit groups to house children that need the care of the state. The way this is organized is that the health region (or an analogous equivalent), in the manifestation of the Rockyview Child and Family Services hands out contracts to these grouphomes based on demand (used in units of beds) for spaces for these kids. The grouphome system runs parallel to the foster care system, it's what houses kids when they are waiting for a family. Its where they go when that foster situation breaks down.

That's how the system's mechanics basically works. It's interesting though, I've worked in the system, more specifically with the company I'm employed by, for the past three years. In some ways the company feels much more like a family or, vaguely even of a church. Someone calls looking for relief, and you figure out whether your schedule can fit it in to help out the grouphome.

My beef isn't with the company directly, but more so with the government and primarily with the reason that these kids are in the system.

What's been incredibly frightening to learn over my limited years as a youth worker, and a young one at that, is the real depths of depravity that human nature sinks to. I have heard stories and witness things and read files of kids that would make Quentin Taratino sick to his stomach. The things that people are capable of is unimaginable. One might say, that the abuse of people say in slavery in the US before emancipation was a long time ago and a product of the culture of the time, of the attitude of colonialism, etc., and things like that don't happen today in our society. Or that CSI depicts things that happen down there in Las Vegas, and it's just tv. No. It's not. It's happening now. It's happening as we speak. Maybe not murder, but certainly neglect. Sexual abuse. Physical abuse. Sexual slavery. Starvation. These are things that don't just happen in Africa, but down the block! These are things that don't just happen in the bad part of town, but maybe around the corner! There are monsters in our world and they live down the street. Hell doesn't take dying to experience.

And you know what? It makes me bleeding angry. Boondock Saints angry. I am afraid of what I would be capable if I were put in the same room as the monsters that devastated the children I work with. A feeling of helpless overcomes many people who work in the field. Burnout is common. Over the last year and half of working relief shifts at the grouphome (and a summer's worth of overnights) I've worked with 4 supervisors. The turnover rate of staff doesn't help the kids of course. Of all the industries in the world, this is one of the few that works to negate itself.

So, as workers, we are left with the broken children that the world gives us. I think about the primetime dramas, and our cultures fascination with flawed characters, with fallen men and women, and I think, they have nothing on the kids I've worked with. My first shift at a grouphome, I was bitten. For keeping away a t.v. remote from a kid. I had to do a write up and witness statement for the police and everything. I've seen the breakdown of a family I worked with, seen a kid abuse his mother, had a couple of death threats leveled against me, had things thrown at me, been shoved around, and I've seen a cop forcibly take down a kid. I'm 22. And those are just a few of the stories I've got in my book.

When it doesn't make me angry it makes me sad, tired and lonely. I think of the kids I've worked with who have FAS, who've been made the way they are before they even had the semblance of a choice. I think of the kids who've collected multiple STDs. I think of teen mothers trying to be a teen and a mom at the same time. It's a grey tableau.

And yet there is hope. Not much, and it's hard to see sometimes. And it comes out in ways not always expected. A kid will say sorry to you for beaking off, getting angry and breaking something. Or you go out on a outing and for a brief moment you forget that these are kids with behavioral issues, with no parents worth speaking of, or have drug addictions, or neurological problems, but instead just kids having fun. And most precious of all, you'll hear back from kid who's grown up and out of the program and is trying to get into college, and trying to make life work, despite the shitty hand of cards life dealt them.

And sometimes there's just a little bit of the divine in it. Getting to tuck in a kid at night. You are their father in that place. Teaching a kid to throw a football. You are a older brother in that place. Giving them a hug when they hurt. You are a friend, a mentor in that place. You get to be Jesus with skin on.

THESE kids are what Jesus talks about . They are our "least of these."

Do something about it.