Thanks to QCOSS and Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC) for promoting this issue. I love this because I think it draws our attention to the fundamental causes of this issue not just the effects. I appreciate that the dominant culture obsesses on the individual and, like left-over medieval theologians, is enraptured with a hierarchical ontology whereby the individual, created in the image of God, is placed at the paramount causal centre of the Universe, so that all things flow from, and are connected to, the individual, or more accurately, the individual mind, to the exclusion of all the other more inconvenient, more profoundly causal, social relationships, who's causality has little to do with any particular individual's mind or morals, such as class, ageism, inequity or race, or the rest of the manifold narcissistic and alienating progeny of this hyper-individualism. Consequently, I love this because it draws our attention to the breakdown of healthy community cultures, community cohesion, and an inclusive and caring communitarianism. It shifts responsibility for all of us to see the problem for what it largely is, a social problem, and act accordingly by critically reflecting on our own hyper-individualism, within critical discursive communities, and then adding our own collective efforts, to nurture kind and caring communities - in our own communities and others. Therefore, I feel, yes, younger people need every single one of us to call for change AND we all need to change.
The Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC) report Exiting youth detention (https://lnkd.in/gcqf-jXT) finds that kids in Queensland's youth justice system have the same dreams as all children: a job, a home, love, and children of their own one day. But from a young age they also feel unwanted, feared, hated and regarded with suspicion by their communities. These negative beliefs can profoundly affect how they act and lead to predicted outcomes being realised. What if we had a system where instead of putting children into watchhouses because they acted out, children from complex circumstances and their families received the support they needed to thrive? You can help realise that change. Email the Premier and ask him to stop imprisoning Queensland kids in watch houses. https://lnkd.in/g_dtPsrV