Perceptions of people

Last week, we received a referral for a case where when I was doing the conflict check I realized that I knew the opposing party. It really made me think about how we perceive people in public compared to who they are in the private of their own home.

Child abuse

One of the toughest parts of my job is hearing the stories of child abuse and the effect of violence on children. It's one of those things I don't think I will ever get immune to (at least I hope not). And incidents of child abuse seem to be on the rise or reporting them at least seems to be on the rise. As I got a referral for a 3 child abuse injunctions late last week, I thought about what I had been told by one of the attorneys when I did my first one a number of months ago. She said that child abuse injunctions are rare and that we usually only see a couple year at the most. Well, in the 6 months I've been here I have done intake on 5 different referrals that involved child abuse injunctions and my colleague has done 3 or 4. And each of them have been just as heartbreaking as the last.

I don't know if it is the economy which brings additional financial stress to families, stress that some seem to take out on their significant others and/or children. I don't know if it is something that the community is doing a better job of speaking up that it isn't right and so it has become more accepted to report it. I don't know. But I really wish people would see how much the violence affects their children and care enough to do something about it.