Government Vs The Family Unit

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The activities of child services in my country are quite awful and lack professionalism, but what could be expected from an underdeveloped society?

Looking at the lead cause of poverty in my country, one can see that it stems from adults who dive into parenthood without appropriate plans put in place. It's even worse when these categories of people give birth to multiple children with little or no resources to cater for their needs.

Over the years we've seen the government adopt a lot of birth control strategies. In my state there used to be free maternity healthcare for mothers who have four children or fewer. However, this did not deter some individuals from birthing more children locally, children they can barely fend for.

There is a lot of work to be done by the government because they are the highest authorities to ensure sanity and peaceful living on earth.

In my opinion, the government, through child services, getting involved in the family unit, especially in third-world countries, can never be taken too far.

I do understand that as humans we have free will, but in this free will there are limitations such that if one's right to free will causes another to be restricted, such rights should be taken away by the government.

What do I mean by this? Children are the future. For a sustainable economy, every child needs to be given the utmost care, love, and available resources, but then we see adults birthing just because they can without the capacity to provide a decent living. At a tender age, we see children from such adults engage in all sorts of illicit acts, and we share a society with them.

I'm pretty sure that if these criminals and other categories of individuals who are security threats to the nation had a better childhood with responsible parents, we wouldn't have to deal with any societal vices.

Other times, we see these children hustling to feed their home. They are found engaging in all sorts of manual and child labor just for survival when they should be receiving quality education and living in a conducive environment. Some of these parents even give their children away for others to cater to.

There was a time in my job as a social worker when thirty-three youngsters, including children and teenagers, were brought to our orphanage by the authorities awaiting trial in court.

The story was that each of these youngsters was given away by their parents to a woman who runs an illegal homeless shelter. She rented a two-room apartment where she keeps these children. Sometimes, she sends them out to beg for funds; other times, she uses them to solicit food items from kindhearted individuals.

The heart-wrenching part of this story is that these children are not even adequately cared for, not in morals and definitely not in well-being. For the few weeks they stayed at our orphanage, it was hell, as the teenagers started influencing some of our children negatively. At a point they started sneaking out of our orphanage to go cause trouble in town, and when we discovered it, we wrote to the Children Affairs Commission that we could no longer have them in our custody.

It's even worse that all through the time that these children were in our care, not once did the commission assist with finances or food items. All the challenges put together, our resources were stretched thin, and when the commission refused to honor our letter, we hired a coaster bus and took the children straight to the government complex where their office is situated.

It was a battle, but in the end, they only accepted the teenagers and kept the children with us, as they claimed our facilities were the most convenient for seeing to the children's needs. Although they gave us some funds, it was very meager. Regardless, we took the children back pending the court proceedings.

At first we didn't believe the story that the parents of the children gave them away until it was time for the court proceedings and we saw some of the parents. I couldn't explain exactly what I felt, but it was anger laced with sadness. Some of the parents even came to the court drunk, and it was just pitiful that such irresponsible people were allowed to be parents.

While I thought the children would be adopted into better homes, the court ruled that the children be handed back to their respective parents. It was quite an emotional moment as the children cried to remain in our custody.

I could only imagine the trauma a child must have been through to choose to remain at the orphanage and not with their birth parents. We did try to plead with the court to take full custody of the children, but our plea was denied.

In the end we went back with five children, three whose parents did not show up and two who vehemently denied their parents and even threatened suicide if they forced them to leave with their parents.

Writing this prompt, I wish child services could do better in the family unit. I wish every child could be given a home conducive to their well-being. Maybe, just maybe, we won't have a lot to deal with economically as a nation.