Thursday, January 14, 2010

Maori women and smoking 2

A few days back I did a post about Maori women and smoking. A belated comment came in and I am going to highlight it because it rings true and appears to have a credible author. I especially liked the comment about do-gooders;

I did several years in social work and 'early intervention' and my pet hate is health promotion forced on this area. Lets not get real with people and say ' he/she is a looser and you can do better', 'this is how to hang out washing', 'you need to get up at seven to get your kids to school, 'lets sit down and take a look at the list of groceries you need this week', how about we take a family trip to the park/beach/pool and make some sandwiches for lunch', 'how about we look into jobs, or courses'.... instead lets take them to expo's and more agencies to address smoking??? Lets do more assessments, lets keep ticking the boxes and insisting that the babies get all their vaccinations and tick all those boxes and if they dont do it' report them to CYFS, lets give grass roots workers impossible caseloads so they end up unintentionally colluding, so the experts with more impossible caseloads can in turn, miss the warning signs of yet another otrocity and blame it on the grass roots workers blah blah. You said it well Lindsay in your blog , and until people can tackle the everyday monotonous living that they probably never experienced consistently, why would they give up what seems their only pleasure at all. Especially with all the do gooders around to bore them and stress them out more!

I'm Maori, single ma, smoke and drink, have great friends and whanau, have a great job and look after us and I enjoy life. I dont see the health promoters knocking on my door :-) GET REAL PEOPLE!!!

4 comments:

Manolo said...

If we could only give all these do-gooders a one-way tickey to Antarctica, NZ will be much better off.

Anonymous said...

I suggest we need more do-gooders so that insteead of struggling with heavy caseloads they can be more relaxed and do the job properly. It is foolish to smoke, and to more than moderate social drinking. It is foolish for children not to have their jabs. It is ignorance on the part of the subjects and a lack of skill by the educators which is a problem.
We have no guide as to how this woman enjoys her life. It is good that she is happy but I don't think she or Manolo have the answer. jcuknz

Lindsay Mitchell said...

What answer jcuknz?

She has a job so she is supporting her own choices in life. People can choose to do things that are not good for them if they are prepared to pay for the consequences.

I think she most definitely does have her own answer to what makes life good. Work and reward. Unfortunately people like her often get weary and cynical about early intervention because of the prevailing approach.

Anonymous said...

My children and I were away on holiday, a surprise to see my rant of a comment posted, flattered thank you.
Sorry another belated response. I am a 'do gooder' one skilled and experienced and effective. Early intervention is a must, absolutely, but as Lindsay so accurately pointed out, I did grow weary of the prevailing system - it's not working and it needs a shake up on so many levels, it's mind boggling. My personal choice, rather than continue dissatisfied and frustrated, burning myself out up the ranks of Social Services, was to leave and come back in through a local government job hence my anonymity.(For now). Life is about choices and choosing your own path, very much advocated in our home. So far my children are great students enjoying school, socially able and participating in the community, they are rarely sick and between all of us visited the GP 5 times last year,,, i know this will horrify the health promoters but we chose not to immunise either, due to a severe reaction of my first born. An argument I truly am over having, I'm educated, I understand, but it's boring, get over it :-) (In my work I did provide the information to clients- cause that was my job, if they asked for more I got it.)People need to live as they please using not 'the lack of ignorance' they have to guide them, but the strengths they most certainly already have. Us so called 'do gooders; need to work on what keeps perpetuating the problems in this country... The other 'do gooders'