Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Call All the Way from Idaho

Most of the time, our cases (domestic violence) are routine and the media isn’t interested in them. That’s just the way it is. However, recently, we got involved in a very high interest case. I’m not going to write about that (sorry), but I am writing about all the public attention.

I answered a called from a woman in Idaho. She wanted to let us know about the strong opinions she and all her 30 co-workers have. I listened to her and I thought her concerns were normal and valid. My response? I told her that many of the issues she was concerned about are the same ones we are concerned about. And – we have a team that includes social workers, investigators, and lawyers. We often make these kind of hard decisions together. I like to think that even if we (sometimes strongly) disagree, that eventually, we come up with the right answer. What I told her I wanted her to know was that we take our work seriously and we sometimes have to make hard decisions based on the information we have. I understood if she didn’t agree.
The Idahoan continued to talk about all the things that are wrong in general with our system – again – yes, I hear you. Finally, I said to her – You know, I’ve worked here for more than 10 years, on thousands of domestic violence cases, homicides, you name it…pause…but this is the first time I got a call from Idaho from someone about one of our cases. Silence. Then, she started again…

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I saw this very interesting website:
survive and thrive:
www.surviveandthrivecoach.org.uk
and went to one of their workshops, which was an amazing experience.
Dr Eden Fazel has written several interesting books which are on the website...
thought to share
Alys