System
Abuse
help that harms
System abuse constitutes
a significant threat to family stability that makes parenting
even more of a challenge for parents with learning difficulties.
System abuse shows
itself when people's problems are made worse by the services
that are intended to support them. As an umbrella term, it refers
to institutional attitudes, policies and practices that hurt
children, harm family integrity, or infringe basic rights.
System abuse is
a form of bad practice. But where bad practice does not always
damage those it afflicts, system abuse does - either because
the individual or family is particularly vulnerable or because
the bad practice is particularly serious or sustained.
A huge amount of
effort has been put into investigating physical and sexual abuse.
By contrast, there has been very little research into system
abuse.
There are probably
all sorts of reasons for this omission. Official agencies are
more prone to secrecy than openness about their own failings,
and whistle-blowers are often dealt with harshly. In any case,
system abuse usually arises as a result of the actions of more
than one agency. Only those affected may see the full picture
and they usually lack the power to speak out or, when they do,
their voices go unheard.
Because system abuse
has a long fuse, it is hard to link cause and effect without
close knowledge of an individual or family's personal history.
Without such a perspective it is all too easy to mistake the
signs of system abuse for something else. For instance, problems
encountered by parents with learning difficulties are frequently
put down to their own limitations when they owe more to deficiencies
in the support services.
System abuse presents
itself in a myriad of different forms. Some of the characteristic
manifestations of system abuse by families our research include:
- unwarranted intervention
in family affairs;
- lack of continuity
in service delivery;
- failure to involve
parents in decisions affecting them or their children;
- passing the buck;
- taking advantage
of the parent's learning difficulties;
- treating the parents
as less than fully adult;
- undermining the
parents' authority in their own home;
- judging parents
by standards and values that are foreign to their neighbours,
family and friends;
- applying standards
of behaviour to the parents that are not maintained by service
workers and professionals;
- diminishing the
importance of family relationships and undervaluing the strength
of family bonds;
- using parents'
fears of losing their child to secure their acquiescence;
- gender bias;
- failing to respond
to problems until a crisis erupts;
- seeing only the
evidence that confirms prior opinions;
- forming snap judgements
on the basis of partial evidence or enquiries;
- experts who deviate
from their field of expertise;
- practitioners who
interpret their role idiosyncratically and fail to follow laid-down
procedures;
- poor communication
with parents, inaccessible practitioners, and the provision of
contradictory, inaccurate, or insufficient information.
All these factors
contributed to parents' widespread perception of the service
system as a juggernaut before which they were merely hapless
and unheard victims.
System abuse becomes
more of a problem the more people lack the means to resist its
pull. The fewer resources and supports people possess the more
vulnerable they are to system abuse. The more they rely on the
service system for support the more they risk being let down.
Many people possess
the adaptive capacity to absorb or shrug off the kinds of institutional
failings listed above. Others have a much thinner protective
layer. For people and families operating on the edge of competence,
whose coping abilities are stretched, the extra burden imposed
by unresponsive services may be enough to push them past breaking-point.
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