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Time to be Counted

The time for solidarity with the beseiged and brutalised inhabitants of Gaza, the wider Palestinian people and their collective human right for an independent state, is now! It is time for the people of the Western world to summon the political will to demand a free Palestine. Che Guevara is credited with the following appeal for a revolutionary moral consciousness that is both personal and universal: “Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world”. And, the Palestinian tragedy is not just another unfairness in an unfair world: it is perhaps the defining injustice of the post-war world order. It is a wound that has festered since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948.

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Fronting up to the Abolitionist Critique

Change is needed in child welfare and in social work more broadly if we are to begin to realise a social justice mandate. It has become blindingly obvious that there are fundamental disjunctions between the way that the profession of social work likes to see itself and the reality of policy and practice. In this post I want to examine some key narrative threads and pose some questions.

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Life and Time

A poem arrived today … as I drove down Great North Road … and I thought it might be a thing to share …

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Oranga Tamariki: Reform or Abolish?

The question of whether the Aotearoa statutory social work agency Oranga Tamaraki can be reformed or whether it should be abolished and replaced with something radically different is an issue that has drifted into the fog in recent times. In this post, I’d like to blow away some of the smoke and refocus on this fundamental question.

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Institutions, abuse and alternatives

First a disclaimer. I don’t pretend to be an expert on youth justice or residential care but as I mentioned many moons ago on this blog site – you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. I would like to say that the recent revelations suggesting sexually exploitive behaviour, young people breaking out to the roof of the Korowai Maanaki residence and video of cage-fight style violence apparently over-seen by staff is shocking and appalling. It is of course, but sadly I think that ‘predictable’ is a better descriptor.