Bits and bobs from the social field:
Vote 16+. Of course people will resist and think that now politics will contaminate young people, but that’s because they do not believe in young people. It is also because they think that 16 year olds are simply on the receiving end, passive, disinterested and susceptible to prejudice. My experience with young people at that age is very different. They are highly opinionated, ready to take on a challenge and have a clear mind on what they think is good and bad. What this vote does is that it provides a space for people to voice their positions on a number of matters. Yes, this evolution is good news and will bring in the much needed fresh air in the political chamber. Oh and whilst we are at it I encourage our legislators to take another courageous step forward, that of allowing them to contest. Kudos to Hon Julia Farrugia MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Reforms, Citizenship and Simplification of Administrative Processes,for who so early in this legislature took this initiative forward and to the Opposition for supporting this historic moment.
Mt. Carmel Hospital. Yet again this care facility has been linked with another negative incident. However, not that I am a fan of this Institution, (in fact I’m not) but that does not lessen the efforts that are being made by most of the staff to try and make something good out of a place that was designed for a completely different mind-set and much as we may patch here and there buildings are more than spaces, furniture and curtains. A building represents the philosophy of the space. Mt Carmel Hospital is not and will never meet the new demands of this client group. I am sure that with such a site and such architecture we could find a better use of that structure and with the money generated get ourselves a decent facility and improved community services. Let’s do tis ‘yesterday’.
Social Welfare Professionals. In my role as Dean of this Faculty I work closely with this Foundation that employs most social workers and a great deal of other professionals in the social care sector. The people who work in that foundation have soldiered on notwithstandingthat the pay structures and conditions of work are not envious (thankfully, it looks like this situation is currently being sorted out). I have been saying this endlessly as many others have been doing so, we need to attract more people to this profession by exciting them about the lovely work they will be engaged with and decent conditions of work. We also need to find systems (and this is the job of the Agencies mainly) to ensure that the social care professionals have the space within the organisation to speak, to get supervision, to work with serenity by having sound legal support, good administrative back up and are allowed to be creative and not simply responding to the professions.
Victoria. There is so much to learn from the death of this girl. I hope that the Inquiry outcomes will help us all understand what happened.
'A changing society in a changing world’. This is one of the most Avant-garde polices that was written in the area of social policy. I would say that Fair society that was embedded in the Labour Manifesto programme of the 2013 would come to a close second. It is indeed time for all the interested parties to sit down and start thinking through where and in what direction we would like to take our social policy. I feel we are at a cross-roads and I think that the current Minister, Dr Michael Falzon has the experience and the qualifies to lead a revamp of our social sector. Haw political acumen and yet non-divisive dialectic, his knowledge about society and his grounding in the social fabric make him best placed to take this project forward.
Children. I have said this and will keep saying I till my mouth dries out. Our newspapers are costantly reporting that children are being abused or neglected. But how can this be happening? How can we be missin this? I reallt think that apart from putting more moey in the social sector, we also need to start investing in community development and woking within the communitys (ona micro level) to try and deal with this mess.
Larry Nassar. This villain has been allowed to go on an abuse spree tat has no precedence in Gymnastics history. Whislt derranged and sick pople like him are not common, thank fully, it immediately calls for our sports commuity, administrators, sports journlists, coaches and other sexperts to ensire that such abusive behaviour is disallowed.
Full Cooperation: Zero Violence. This is a research that has been launched by Dr Marceline Naudi, Prof. Marilyn Clark and Research Officer Holger Saliba. I was at the launch of this project speaheaded by Minister Helena Dalli. Whilst I feel that procedures an ystems tend to take some time to change and evolve yet we need to be extremly fast in ensuring that we see through the reforms required in this sector, not only in terms of improving legistlation but also of seeing a cultural change as the authors of theis research rightly pointed out.