Movement for Children's Rights: The Village It Takes

By K Williams

A new take on the meaning of children's rights. The book shows how human rights are actually human needs, which form a social immune system that keeps the illnesses of maltreatment in check. Without those needs being met, our development as human beings becomes distorted.

The only real way to meet these basic needs for children is to meet these needs for the rest of the family too. "Child" is a euphemism for the true human identity in all of us. We heal our own inner child in tandem with witnessing and allowing health in the younger ones.

This book gives a groundbreaking solution to the problems of child maltreatment. If you have ever imagined our world without child abuse, this is your book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781300851035

Book preview

Movement for Children’s Rights; The Village It Takes

By K Williams

Movement for Children’s Rights;

The Village it Takes

First Edition

Copyright © 2024 Kathy J. Williams

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-300-85103-5

Imprint: Lulu.com

CIRCLE OF SAFETY

To be able to provide for the safety of children, we must first understand just what safety is.

We are beginning to appreciate what constitutes danger for children at home. Physical assault, emotional or verbal assault, forced or inappropriate sexual activity, and deprivation by neglect are some ways children are hurt.

We may believe safety is, then, simply the total absence of these types of events. That would, of course, describe one sort of safety, just as eliminating all virus and bacteria from the world would create a sort of health for people. It is not, however, a useful model for creating safety or health, because we cannot even begin to do it.

Does this mean that children cannot be safe from the dangers of abuse and neglect?

No. Just as people can be healthy and vital in a world full of viruses and bacteria, children can be safe in this world full of people, many of whom might be inclined to cause harm at times.

What makes a person healthy is the immune system: a routine set of responses inside the body that contend with virus, bacteria and injury in a successful way. What makes a child safe is also a routine set of responses, an immune system of sorts, that we may call the Circle of Safety.

There are four discrete steps in the Circle of Safety, four steps or four stops where the safety of a child is made or is broken. The first is circumstances.

The circumstances that are relevant regarding abuse and neglect are: how are the other people in the child’s home, who are those people, and what routines do they do, together with the child.

A person who succumbs to an impulse to attack a child physically, verbally, or sexually, or who fails to function to provide for that child is a person under stress. Asking how a person is, boils down to this: how much stress are they suffering from?

One way of describing character in a person is by describing how he or she breaks down under stress. This is the