Navigating to the place we should be

Siting here on a cold morning, but it's only hitting 8am & I'm annoyed.

Annoyed with the system & structures and well meaning processes that don't serve the most vulnerable within our communities.  I love my job, I do mostly it's just sometimes hard navigating a system that's not made for them.  Community agencies & workers are the middle men.  

When I say middle man, I mean the in between Statutory agencies & the communities they serve.  Which for the most part I thoroughly enjoy, when there's really good outcomes for the whanau we work with.  A good outcome being in my perspective what's best for the whole whanau (which is almost impossible) but everyone does their best.  As I've been in this work for 4 years I've been blessed to see really good outcomes for whanau, but if I'm really honest the negative can outweigh the positive heaps of the time.  Interventions that are limited by funding, incompetence & poor decision making at the top level of structures that we're governed in.  What I've come to realise that it's the families we are serving that are the biggest losers in it.  I've been a part of or witnessed how the system can work against the ones it's meant to be benefiting.

So much emphasis is at intervention level which I understand because there is a need.  However where I think there will be more change (long term) for families within the system is if there is a greater emphasis on prevention level.  Also with intervention level if it's driven by families, tailor made to their needs, NOT what we think is right. 

I'm not a qualified social worker but have and am making steps to grow in that, but even with that I take some issue with this as well.  My experience or friends I know that have done the work & lived experience doesn't qualify me to work within our community.  I definitely see the benefits of having accountability & transparency with our practice for the safety of the whanau we support BUT the standards need to consider all cultural perspectives, values & beliefs.  I've seen a common divide with those that are qualified social workers, & those that do the same type of work without the qualification but years of lived experience.  It's worsening with mandatory registration coming into play next year.  I'm not dogging having a qualification, I have one but not a social work degree.  I just get tired of seeing (I've done this too in times past) the superior mindset of those "qualified" doing the work.  It's  the same with everything we are constantly looking for ways to one up another, but this I fear is adding more divide to those that are meant to be helping the vulnerable navigate this broken system.  

The systems that we work in and families live within aren't made for them.  I see it the more I'm working in our community.  The system either makes you dependant on it to live, or you can't access it.  Life is not black and white, humanity exists with so much grey.  I understand that in our society it's money that keeps it all going, but surely not to the detriment of the people the system is meant to help.  

If you haven't lived or witnessed daily the struggle of living in trauma or the very least journeyed with close others through this, and lived in South Auckland (heart of struggle but strength too) what you say is not valid well to me, at least.  I might be wrong in this but it's so common in our community, like who are you that lacks struggle, similar experience to me qualified to tell me what to do (but it's honest, real & true).  I'm not saying you can't work, and work well within this community without it, it's just there's a disconnect if you can't relate to families on that level.  This is what I see played out daily.  Humanity in our community because of it's challenges will shut you down if you haven't walked in their shoes.  

Working within the system and being apart of it, but trying to work beyond it is where I find I am in my work constantly.  Where you daily try to do the best for your families you serve, but are still made to feel left wanting when your best is met with valid attitudes & sometimes harsh treatment from the one's you try to help.  This is understandable and something you have to learn really quickly not to get offended by.  When you work with brokenness it's a part of the job, so you let it all go over your head.  It's not easy, cause we're not robots, but in order to survive you do it.  I think the consistent thing that I see working within my community is the hardship that families endure & the survival and resilience that develops in them through it.  Sometimes we're privileged to see it on mainstream media but mostly air time gets filled with negative news, that's for the higher ups in society.  I know that as a brownie living in NZ, my eyes get sore from rolling constantly from the stories that don't speak to me or made for me.   I get so tired of South Auckland being portrayed negatively by media, but AGAIN it's a part of the system that needs to be turned on it's head.  The reality is there is so much beauty here out South but that doesn't reinforce negative stereotypes so is not aired.  

I understand that in this fallen world we live in, nothing is going to be where it should be.  With man & our ways plus the enemy's constant tactics to steal, kill & destroy it wouldn't be.  However I hold onto the hope that as we daily, do our parts (focusing on the one, working to deconstruct mentalities & equipping ourselves and others to do the same) in overcoming the system that we're living in we're making steps to where we should be.  

Holding onto this hope, even in the middle of a pandemic & a year that almost all of us want to be done already :) 

God loves you so BIG!

xox