Broken families – broken offspring

Illustration: Illustratsioon: Eero Barndõk

Last week, fiery discussions erupted in public and social media after ETV Eyewitness aired the story of a «bad» but basically just deeply troubled kid.

Who’s to blame? The state cares for none! Bad kids need a good whipping, stop pampering the baddies. Such as been the conviction of numerous ones to speak out.

All data point to quite an abundance of troubled kids and families in Estonia. The system to help them is far from effective yet. Unanimously, the public voices say it is fundamentally wrong to make kids culprits in their sad state.

«Help is needed by parents and the family – and then the kid gets help as well,» claims family therapist Kiira Järv. «We need to think otherwise! Lots of parents do not know the generation to generation basics – how to recognise a kid, how to establish themselves, set boundaries, offer the kid love so he receives it.»

According to Jõgeva town government social department head Anneli Lääne, there’s an unbelievable lot of problems with some young mothers. «They can’t even cook food; a young family does not know they need to get up at 8 to take the kid to kindergarten – not sleeping till ten while the child has gone with empty belly for hours,» she said.

Dare to ask help

Since last fall, Jõgeva town has offered family therapist aid to such that cannot cope and the kids thus suffer.

«We are not trying to bring the families back together, just to make the parents see the kid has got caught in their fights and offences, but the little one needs both mother and father,» said Ms Lääne.

How can a small town financially afford such services?

This year, the city government has allocated €7,000 to hire family therapist, till the end of the school year. «It’s a matter of priority,» said the social department head. At any rate, as proven by the Jõgeva experience, kids can be helped by mending relations between parents.

«The first times they come, the parents just talk and talk till they run empty, having had no outsider to talk to – big grown men have opened up,» added Ms Lääne. She sees the need to also have psychologists available, and support persons for longer-term stability.

«Why blame the parents if they honestly don’t know how to raise kids and have no clue where to get help,» said Ms Järv, the family therapist. «One needs to go after the sense of responsibility in the parents: if you are not making it, seek help instead of saying my kid is bad and stupid.»

She said it is taking time to change the understanding in society that only mother is considered a parent. «If father isn’t involved, nothing will change – fathers are excellent helpers,» she said citing experience in her work.

While the talk is on about early identification and prevention i.e. training parents before problems arise at home, the various specialists available are still mostly busy putting out the fires.

«Sure there’s some families that cannot be helped – either the train has left, or the parents will not cooperate. There’s no magic wand specialists, such as are able to solve any problem,» admitted Piret Hallast, working at Tartu County juvenile committee since 2006.

The vicious circle

Said committee sees the kids from troubled families, such as have committed their initial breaches of the law.

«The troubled families will often close up, trying to cope and unwilling to accept help,» said Ms Hallast. «Our advantage being, our decisions are mandatory. And once we see a family is not cooperative, we may rule that they need at least ten sessions of counselling. Sometimes that helps. But it is very hard to sway parents.»

The juvenile committee experience confirms: often, the difficult kids come from divorced families.

«Lots of parents are of low education, jobless, the alcohol factor. Even so, there’s many a family with the father and mother highly educated, outwardly the picture is perfect, but there’s something badly wrong and hard to immediately crack even at the committee what is really going on,» described Ms Hallast.

Actually, there are hundreds of family therapists, psychologists, various organisations helping troubled families and kids in Estonia.

«There are big holes between the various fields of practice, the systems do their part but end up quarrelling as none of them succeeds. A school will berate child welfare, the child welfare will berate the family doctor, and all are berating the parents – a viscous circle,» said psychologist Tiiu Meres.

«The system needs to set to work in unison – the initiatives are many and that is positive, but it is important that specialists in education, social sphere and health care cooperate,» said social ministry children and family department head Anniki Lai.

Till it gets good

There is a state level push happening, actually, towards cooperation – to begin with, 2016 sees the entry into force of new Child Protection Act and, via National Social Insurance Board, a national child protection system will be created. With European (largely Norwegian) financial aid – €6.5m – education, social and justice ministries have initiated science-based cooperation programmes for early detection of trouble. In Ida-Virumaa, for instance, programmes for parents of pre-schoolers are underway.

Said programmes, to be continued out of state budget once the aid runs out, are for the long haul help aimed at positive results. 

-------------------------------------

Family therapy for cases extremely severe

A few weeks ago, multidimensional family therapy training was launched regarding helping those at high risk by Kees Mos, a therapist in Holland for a decade. «This is no panacea, but we do think that by small steps we may get to big change,» said Mr Mos, a Dutchman. The training is for assisting such as have already broken the law and it is basically therapy or jail.  

«Often, the parents have totally given up and aren’t even trying to improve relations with the teen. They have lost hope, but we train them to be observe a situation, set boundaries, how to be more joyful, warmer,» said Mr Mos. «This is no four day course – to get a result, it may take two years, say.»

Something will change

Psychologist Tiiu Meres, among the first to get the training, said that multidimensional family therapy has lots of sound mind and a human touch.   

«For starters, there is lots of listening to the youth and his family, getting into their lives and trying to consider all, the good, the bad and the ugly,» she said. «The idea is acting like an interpreter between parents and the kid. Also, a therapist will find stuff neither party is able to talk about, and help unearth stuff in the past when they still got along,» described the psychologist.

Mr Mos says it does not always work, citing the Dutch success rate of some 60 percent. «With the rest, the result may be worse but something still changed – depends on what one calls success. I had this boy who did the hard drugs but when we were finished he was down to cannabis at the week-ends. For us, this was quite an achievement,» said the trainer.

Months of effort

Justice ministry criminal policy department project manager Kristel Kraas says National Social Security Board has four key therapists employed, Ms Meres being one. These are networking and are ready for the initial cases. Come spring, three therapists more will be added.

«One therapist will deal with five to ten cases at a time and works with these for six to nine months,» said Ms Kraas. Within the project launched by financial aid, they hope to deal with 80–120 youth and their families.

The training of four teams costs close to €580,000 in training fees and salaries. «In the future, the program is calculated to cost €450,000 a year – dealing with one family will be €1,900 a year,» explained the project manager.

Ms Kraas said this will probably be much more effective for the society as contrasted with prison – reality-to-be for the youth involved in the program.