Wednesday, October 26, 2005

You ARE the System

I watched a Hallmark movie last night about a judge who did foster care for a teenager. It fit in very well with my blog from yesterday, because she did something that was not “the way you’re supposed to do it” and of course, since it was fiction, it turned out great.

I am not necessarily saying it was a great movie, but there was a great line in the movie. The judge (jacklyn smith) had to rule on the case late in the day and since the foster parents were unwilling to keep the girl one more day, she had to put her in a detention center for three weeks during a court recess.

Her ex-husband confronts her about her choice in making this girl go to “prison” for nothing. The judge says, “it’s the system . . . there’s nothing I could do” to which he replies, “you ARE the system.”

What if each of the professionals in the child welfare/foster care/adoption world believed that? What if we stopped blaming the system and acknowledged our part in it... would we then see it change?

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