Fighting child abuse? Child abuse protocols in pre-schools – what do they need to work?
29. 4.12
Fighting child abuse? Child abuse protocols in pre-schools – what do they need to work?
Crimes of all kinds against children and women go untended to by communities. Yes people rage and march from time to time – but then do not put their minds to ways in which they can ensure the safety of their children, or ways to include youth more usefully in society, or helping children to become confident and have self -respect and self -esteem so that they are harder to abuse, or to help their own children to think about issues like women’s and children’s rights , to discuss them round the supper table – or simply to learn how to parent more effectively so that their children do not become either perpetrators or victims...
What really hurts and upsets and even angers me is that everyone is upset about an issue for a time, telling everyone, sharing the NAME of the victim, ‘salacious’ details that may be rumours, and even at times enjoying their outrage mightily. But nothing else happens. The rapist gets off because of shoddy police work and a culture that does not recognise that rape is a crime unless it is particularly violent (of 25 men accused of rape 24 are acquitted. (Jane Smith, The Star ), the victim (no I won’t call him or her a survivor in this case) is conscious of been talked about, blame gets attributed to her and she gets no counselling or therapy for her to process the dreadful event – rather her symptoms’ are not tolerated and she is further traumatised. Yes. Many people feel helpless in the face of so much crime and it seem give them little will to do anything that requires commitment and work to stop it.
In a large pre-school and grade school classrooms with just too many children in each class which teacher can assess when a child’s behaviour changes suddenly (always an alarm bell), or even know what a child’s real behaviour is.
In most of the crèches and centres I have visited the children are herded rather than cared for – everything is done as a group, no personal wishes or preferences are taken into account, the teacher has no idea what the children are thinking about, their fears or in fact their characters or personalities – they only notice the children who are very ‘clever’(usually the children with best memories for rote learning) or very naughty, or sometimes just very endearing (often indicating that they are actually well loved and cared for at home). The ones in between get little notice.
So when we put child abuse protocols into schools where children are herded they are actually almost useless – only when the teachers get to know their charges better do these protocols start working. Also the protocols need work and sticking power – and the work can go on for a long time given our sick health and police and even court systems.