Mike,
Respectfully I request why it is that you do not want to address the
questions of people who are expected to apply these theories that are so
easily bantered about as if they actually have value? I, for example am
required to both provide a service to my clients as well as explain to others
in the social service field my rational for doing so. It is frustrating that
theorists who obviously understand a great deal about human nature and the
process of different systems choose to ignore the problems that are happening
in america's schools and social networks. I admit they are very complicated
systems to understand, but we have to start somewhere. It is not a matter of
designing another study about interventions for ADHD or ODD. It is time to
take a good hard look at what the social services have done to provide
service and what they have done to protect the infrastructure of the social
service system. Many times I cannot get service for a client I work with
unless I park myself at the local Emergency room and wait the allotted three
hours for the crisis (?) social worker to do an intake for the client to
finally realize I do have a 16 year-old who is psychotic and is probably an
immediate threat to themselves or others. This is the nature of social
service in america, isn't it wonderful? Many times they won't admit the
client and so the family is left to deal with a mentally ill violent teenager
and they are left with no recourse but to call the police. I am not writing
this to get bleeding heart responses, I am writing this to get people who are
actively engaged in the process of theoretical construct to start realizing
that maybe what needs to be studied is how america can start to unify the
socialwork structure that is currently in place. If I could get one college
research practitioner to start actively looking at this problem, I feel I
have been successful. If there already is an active body of research on this
topic then please point me in this direction. The study of human development
is not just the neatly packaged study of movement through stages it also
addresses those roadblocks and disorders that prevents some people from
reaching their full potential. Let's not forget that besides normal
development there is also abnormal development. Also, besides people having
normal growth of biological functions those same functions sometimes are
retarded in their growth. Any theory that addresses normal growth should
also be able to explain abnormal growth.
Still actively practicing service delivery,
Eric Ramberg
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 01 2001 - 01:01:41 PDT