Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Second chance?

Lost children now "adults" by legal definition but stranded on the island of intellectual disability which keeps them children.....the island that if recognized early might have provided intervention, might have provided stability, might have made things......better.  

Intellectual disability coupled with psychiatric disorder, a disorder that developed over time because of the island that nobody recognized, plain as it seemed, complicated as it was, apparent as it could have been.  

The foster home provided care, some love, but no cure......the system failed again, but in all reality, can it ever really work?  Can it ever really be a parent, heal the scars from inside the womb?  I don't think so.  
So we take the system and turn it inside out, we shake it, we rattle it, we make it encapsulate a person's issues just to give them a second chance and hope it works, and sometimes....sometimes.....it sort of does......

So I beat my drum with those I work with, together we make it heard, like Sysyphus pushing the rock up the hill to find help, help that is long in coming, fraught with red tape, endless waiting, endless politics, lack of money, lack of resources, not wanting to be saddled with this "kid" on his island for the next fifty years.

And that's what makes the job worthwhile, to know, that you have seen the island, you have seen the illness, you have seen what worked and what didn't, you have pushed the rock and made it go over the hill.  

1 comment:

CWM said...

Thank God for your deep understanding and strife to change the system!