Duty

Children are our future. It is a tired cliché, but one we continue to drag out because it reminds us that, as our strength and usefulness fade, someone younger who looks a bit like us will soon take our place. It brings comfort—that the things our generation built and cultivated may endure. It also conjures anxiety about whether we have equipped our young with the tools and sensibilities to navigate a complex, frequently disheartening, yet ultimately rewarding 75 or so years on this rock.

If true, our future is equally dependent on the strength of the family in which our children live. We can see from a couple of news stories in these pages that our institutional response to family disintegration—whatever the cause—is an imperfect substitute for these young people.

Bayfield Treatment Centres say, with good reason, they operate a highly accredited residence, education and counselling facility that has nearly 40 years of proven success in guiding many damaged young people toward productive and healthy adulthood. Yet neighbours of the six residences scattered across Ameliasburgh are feeling less safe in their homes due to a rash of break-ins, vandalism and other petty crimes by the growing number of children living in these facilities.

The Children’s Aid Society pleads for a community to focus on its successes rather than dwell on its failings. Yet a Superior Court Justice who has peered into the workings of this agency urges the community to probe deeper into how this institution screens and monitors the homes in which it places vulnerable children.

CAS Chair Steven Ward writes that it would compound the tragedy if the actions of a few were allowed to stain the significant contributions made by the many. It is a rational and I am certain heartfelt expression of his wish to protect the institution over which he presides—an institution that unquestionably does important work and has served many children well.

But caring for children isn’t a numbers game. This is not, as institutions would suggest, a best efforts situation. The test for these organizations is not whether they followed the rules and procedures— but rather, are they providing all the children in their care with safe and healthy homes? And in doing so, are they contributing to a safe and healthy community. We expect, and indeed insist upon, a much higher standard from agencies established to assist children than those dealing with our taxes.

Both institutions say they are doing their best. They say they are responding to problems and failures with a series of remedial steps. Both say theirs is an imperfect business—that all agencies fail. Both resolve to do better.

It doesn’t feel like enough. It feels like too little, too late.

Which brings me back to my contention that institutions, no matter how well-meaning, are inadequate replacements for the family from which these children have been removed.

Of course, there are circumstances in which removing a child from his or her family is the only option— where the choices are all bad. And we certainly need an institutional response—a safe, reliable and caring solution for these affected young people.

Institutions can never, however, be a replacement for the family. These complicated and genetically driven organizing structures are an essential part of what has propelled our species through time and space. Without families we do not exist.

So it is up to us. Clearly we need better family supports—not just appointed institutions and agencies, but support from other family, neighbours and the folks down the street. Dare I say we might do with a little less focus on personal fulfillment, and a little more sense of duty?

My generation has handed over great swaths of responsibilities to institutions that once belonged solely to the family. We did this to ease the hardship and burden in some families—to protect the vulnerable in others. All good intentions. But pendulums swing too far.

When we subcontract out our social responsibilities and personal duties and obligations we render our children to imperfect institutions. We can keep harping upon these folks and insist they do better, and we should, but we can also ask ourselves: what more can I do to support the families around me? Our future depends upon it.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca