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28 April 2015
Starting to babble about social workers' love
by Marianne Haslev Skånland
It is about as crazy as it can get: Now educational establishments training child protection workers are starting to talk about the love of social workers for "their" children as a "a basic competence".
(Translations from Norwegian are mine.)
Ungdom trenger kjærlighet fra barnevernet (Young people need love from the child protection agency)
Forskning.no, 28 April 2015
("Forskning" means "research", "science". forskning.no is a website publishing news from universities and other establishments of higher education etc in Norway. The website is solidly and unquestioningly a supporter of the politically correct, and has been known to quickly remove critical articles and comments. This distressing article is of course run of the mill in Norwegian philosophy about children, so it no doubt has a secure place. It might, however, be interesting to see if any critical comments appear and for how long they stay.)
We are told that:
"Love belongs not only in private life, but is also found in the professional relationship between social worker and child and youth."
I have to be ashamed, then? Because I have quite often said and written that one word is totally absent in the world of ideas in Western style social work: love. It turns up here. But in what manner of twisted, distorted version!
Once again there is no mention of at any cost honouring, respecting and upholding the nature-given, unique love between child and parents, the love which holds them together in freedom. No, the program is that social workers are to develop love for children in the hands of the child protection agency as a "basic competence", as "an appreciation which can function as a 'treatment strategy' in working with exposed youths". Love as a pedagogical trick. A helpless theatre performance of paid make-believe-emotions, then, which is said to "demand strong involvement and commitment, says researcher Hilde Marie Thrana at the District University in Lillehammer". One example which is given is the love which a young girl experiences from the social worker who wakes her up every morning when she herself would really prefer to drop out of school.
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First, the social services destroy the family's preservation of family love, and shut the family completely out of their ideological horizon. Then they talk sentimentally about "Many youngsters in the child protection service have not had the necessary self-confidence established which others get when they experience love in their close family".
This is one of the most harrowing articles I have read for a long time (which says quite a lot). Norwegian professional child protection circles are in the process of stepping over the precipice. And the docile Norwegian population follows them faithfully, almost to a man, on their journey.
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