Stereotypes

I attended a presentation put on by Northern Michigan University entitled Community Partnering: Collaborative Strategies for Family-Centered Services to Children.  I was interested in this topic and I need to earn continuing education units to maintain my social work license.  Patti Beekman, the presenter, came with a great background from having books published on similar topics to managing child welfare services in Ohio for many years.  I found the presenter to be very informative and I enjoyed her approach to providing the attendees with a wide array of information. 

We addressed the strengths and challenges of child protection services in the Upper Peninsula for the first part of the day, then we covered strategies to strengthen the services continuum, very interesting. Ms. Beekman provided information about why collaborations succeed which included: shared values and missions; procedures for collaboration are clearly delineated; shared trust and respect; commitment; and cross training.  I am going to seek grants from federal and state resources and I found a lot of the information presented during the workshops to be very useful for my future endeavors.

 After a wonderful lunch was provided by the university, the workshops were resumed and we were provided information about Strengths Based, Family Centered Services to Protect Families and Preserve Families.  The presenter did a good job at establishing interaction between all the attendees to keep things interesting. During this presentation we were asked to meet in small groups and discuss stereotypes.  We were given a list of characters and small groups were requested to put down the first thing that came to mind. The first one was homeless people and our group came up with lazy, scary, mental health issues, and dirty. Another one was a single mother with lots of kids and the first thing that was said was slut (we were all women at our table), indecisive, and greedy were other terms we came up with. When a single father was discussed these words came to mind: wuss, doormat, and then widower.  Gay people were on this list and we used these words because we didn’t seem to have an issue with them: good dressers and good shoppers.

And then we discussed absent fathers, and fathers who don’t pay child support: selfish was the main theme for these topics and some of the people at our table did not have anything nice to say about foster parents.  I found that discouraging and disheartening.  I feel that they are a god send; but others thought they were just in it for the money.  The last topic was white women which threw everybody for a loop.  White women have stereotypes. In fact when we came to that topic we asked the participants at another table what they were saying about that area.  They were stumped also.  Then the adjectives started flowing: controlling; shoppers; gold diggers; snobs; etc.  Why do you think the presenter put white women as the last topic? I found that very interesting and thought provoking.  This was a great exercise and proved a lot about the stereotypes that we have all been exposed to. 

One of the women at our table stated that she finds it amazing that she turned out as good as she did.  She was raised by a mother who was a drug addict.  Her and her siblings had free rein.  They had to cook for themselves and look out for each other.  She said her mother slept with all her father's friends and she learned from her mother how to steal from her grandmother and shoplift.  This woman is currently a protective services worker.  I have to hand it to her that she did  turn out quite well considering.

The presenter covered information about the impact of trauma on children of various ages.  Ms. Beekman stated that she would send me the slides to this presentation.  She had to go over this quickly because there was a lot to cover.  It was very interesting and is definitely associated with my research.

One of the last activities we were involved in consisted of us picking a side that was invoked when we read a scenario.  We either had to dislike or disagree with the topic.  One of the questions was: Abuse and Neglect are less emotionally traumatizing to a child than separation from his or her family and placement in foster care.  What side would you take?

I am very glad that I chose to take these workshops.  It was well worth my time, money, and driving in very snowy conditions.  I look forward to driving to Marquette, MI next Thursday to attend the presentations on Pain Management and Ethics given by Northern Michigan University.  I also look forward to eating at Red Lobster and doing more shopping.  I think the weather is going to be better.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.