Learning to live with it

I continue to be quite stressed out about the situation at work; in fact I have taken a number of days off to deal with the stress. However, much of that time has been spent trying to be able to get an extended time of stress leave, only to find out that is not possible in a financially feasible way.
Where I'm at now: I'm going back to work tomorrow. My supervisor has spoken of "conditions" to which I'll just agree, and I'll try to let go of it all and just focus on the basics.
Ironically: the very thing that is getting me disciplined at work - my passion for justice and an ability to argue a point from the perspective of principles and laws - is opening up doors for me in another area and has impressed a fairly important person. Two sides of the coin; a strength is one place is a weakness in another.

Approaching conversation

Conor is at a neat age where he gets that people have dialogue and he's trying it on for himself. The other day he said that he was letting Rob and me into the Buddy-Buddy club. Rob went to his room for their first meeting. He asked Conor, "What do we do in the Buddy-Buddy club?"
"We talk."
"What do we talk about?"
"We talk about everything!" Then, he began to jump around and said, "Let's talk about blankets! Blankets are made of...elements!"

This morning I was about to leave the kitchen where Conor was eating and he said, "Wait, wait, Mommy." I stopped and waited. He got a contemplative look on his face and said, "It's nice to drink wine."

CFS censors social worker for questioning CFS practices

That should be a headline. But I would probably get fired if I approached the media.

This is a follow-up to my Nov. 22 post. The evil CFS worker requested that the children in her caseload be tranferred to another worker in our agency. My supervisor agreed to this. There is to be a meeting with my supervisor, the CFS agency and 45 other people - okay, I'm exaggerating. There has been no clear purpose statement for the meeting. It's not being called by the agency but by the authority, which hopefully means they want to discuss the issues about the children. On the other hand, if it's a meeting simply to discuss whether or not my communications were "appropriate" it seems like overkill and would more represent a lynching, so it's just as well I'm not going to be there.

I have done a lot of thinking about values in the process. My supervisor has remained reasonable about the situation, but it is obvious we are not quite on the same page. Examples:

• She has made mention of my writings being "strong". So what's the point here? People should be weak? We shouldn't say important things with strength? I recently came across the Howard/Heidi case study that demonstrates that women are judged more harshly than men, even by other women. It makes me wonder if a man saying the same thing would be heard, not criticized.
• She has pointed out how I referred to the CFS Act and said that would be like someone from outside our agency quoting our agency's policies when commenting on my work. My response to that was, if I was not operating by the agency's policies, I would find it totally appropriate for anyone who had concerns about my work to point that out. I also said that in my mind, all of Manitoba's laws belong to all Manitobans.
• She has said that we have essentially been invited in by CFS to work with children and families. So essentially, CFS has the power so they are beyond reproach? I think having authority gives one greater responsibility to listen and evaluate concerns, not a greater right to ignore anyone who disagrees.

In general, her response leans towards going with the flow. This is also the response I'm detecting from the person, "A" who does "case consulatation" with us (largely a useless exercise of discussion going nowhere with "A" frequently throwing in derogatory comments about the pope and pro-life issues) whom my supervisor consults with. In contrast, my response is, see injustice, address injustice. Evil succeeds because good people do nothing.

I find it disturbing that what should be the central issue, the well-being of children, is not a question that is even on the radar. When someone says something that others don't want to hear but for which they lack an adequate reponse, what is the solution? Attack the person, her right to speak and her motives. The most frustrating thing is beyond that my communications are a discussion topic, the most frustrating thing is that what should be a discussion topic is not.

The coaltion

I laughed in delight when I heard about the coalition between the Liberal and NDP and chuckled at the sputtering of one Conservative minister saying something about "big spenders" and "big spending" (wonder if he failed creative writing in elementary school). I think the doomsday prophecies are totally out of line.

Here's my thinking:
1. The majority of Canadians did not vote for the Conservatives, their vote was split between the other parties. Cooperation between those parties could serve the important interets of them all, and would certainly bring some interests that are important to many Canadians but ignored by Conservatives (like child care)
2. I definitely did not vote for the Conservatives. I was in the anybody but the Conservatives camp. Conservatives by and large stand for the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" philosophy (ignoring that many people don't even have bootstraps), economic policies that has been shown the world over to make the rich richer and the poor poorer (the kind of policies that Bush used and we all know how well that turned out), and ideology that has been proven unfounded by social research (the idea that we will thrive if gov't just gets out of the way).
3. We may be in for a long season of no party being able to gain a majority. If we want to see any progress in this country it will have to come through inter-party cooperation, and Conservatives are too ostrich head in the sand don't show me the facts cause I like my opinion to actually play well with others in the sandbox.