From Mamacourage: State of emergency
What illness does our country suffer from where we fight tooth and nail over the sanctity of the unborn, but couldn’t care less about the welfare of the child once they’re in the world? This is a developed country, in a recession but far better off than many. Parents trusted these establishments with their children and paid dearly for the privilege. Those children will never get that precious developmental time back. Based on the statistics in the programme, this failure to meet basic standards of care is widespread.
From Office Mum: Childcare Betrayal
I’m angry for myself; I’m no longer sending my children to crèche, but did so for four years – last night my husband and I spent two hours talking after Prime Time, going back over ever carer that had looked after our two daughters to see if there was a chance that anything untoward had gone on. We are reasonably sure that none of the lovely people who minded our children could ever have behaved like the staff we saw on our screens last night. But you worry.
From In My Own Write: Time For a Culture Change in Regards of Abuse
Those of us who saw the programme, and those who heard about it, were outraged, upset, distressed and angry. I, for one, was not surprised. This, after all, is the culture in Ireland. Time and again we have seen that there is a terrible abuse of power in institutions in Ireland: The Industrial “Schools”; The Magdalene Laundries; Old People’s Homes; Psychiatric Institutions; Maternity Hospitals; Schools. Wherever there are vulnerable people, there are people ‘in charge’ to abuse their power. We might not like to face or admit it, but Irish culture seems to be a culture of bullying and abuse. Those in a position of power abuse it. Of course, I don’t mean that every person in a position of power abuses it, but I do mean that it is not a surprising situation any more.
From Our Man In Stockholm: Breach of Trust but No Surprise About Irish Childcare
This is but the latest in a long line of wake-up calls in Ireland, but depressingly, little will happen, as usual. The most-often used phrase on this blog is “we don’t do accountability” but I’ll copy/paste it again here.
The bank bailout means that we can’t change things, even if we want to – and even if we did, we are too enamoured by our love of the chimera of “freedom” and “choice” that the free market promises us as it dips into our wallets and neglects our offspring. I couldn’t help but noticing that at the top of the list of countries for childcare were Finland and Sweden, and I may as well draw a line under this article here and now. That we know this to be the case – and that we have known it for a very long time – yet still we refuse to do anything about it says it all about how we run our affairs. In fact, our social protection minster Joan Burton was here not long after I did a TV show with ITV on how the Scandinavian model works – but doubtless like her gin on the flight home, whatever proposals she brought home with her will surely be watered down by the time she gets to Dublin.
Did you blog about the Prime Time Creche report Scandal? if so let us know and we will add it to the post.
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