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Preventing Family Breakdown

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Noel Timms
Noel Timms*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

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’ “What’s the use of preventing a man from stumbling when he’s on a sinking ship ?”

“Because if he breaks his ankle he won’t be able to swim”, I suggested.

“But why try to save him from breaking his ankle if you can try to save him from losing his life?”

“Because I know how to do the former but not the latter”, I told him rather testily’.

The Net, by Iris Murdoch, p. 112.

This appears an unambiguous title; we talk frequently, both about ‘prevention’ and ‘family breakdown’. Yet if we reflect on each of these terms there are good reasons for doubt and uncertainty. Does the death of a father constitute the breakdown (or break-up?) of a family? Has a family in which the eldest child is unloved by mother and overprotected by father broken down? Or a family from which the mother is away in mental hospital, possibly for a short time? In brief do we use the term to refer to the lack of the physical wholeness of a family or to a failure in one of the essential functions of the family? If we refer to both these features at the same time it is likely that the term is being stretched beyond its usefulness.

If we turn to the other term in the title, prevention, the lack of clarity is much more in evidence. The idea of prevention has a long history as far as public provision for social welfare is concerned. It is possible to observe at least three stages in the development of this idea. Firstly, it was considered that people should be prevented from recourse to dependence on such social provision as existed by the availability early in life of certain guiding influences. Thus, education was seen ‘as one of the most important means of eradicating the germs of pauperism for the rising generation and of securing in the minds and morals of the people the best protection for the institutions of society’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 43 , Issue 510 , December 1962 , pp. 508 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Kay Shuttleworth, Fourth Annual Report, Poor Law Commission, 1838.

2 B. & S. Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, Longmans, 1911, p. 224.

3 J. Heywood, Children in Care, Routledge, 1959, p. 179‐180.

4 Report of the Committee on Children and Young Persons, H.M.S.O., 1960, p. 5, s.8.

5 L. Rapoport, ‘The Concept of Prevention in Social Work., Social Work (U.S.A.) Vol. 6 No. I, Jan. 1961.

6 H. R. Leavell & E. G. Clark, Preventive Medicine for the Doctor in his Community, McGraw‐Hill, 1958, p. 21.

7 ed. G. Caplan, Prevention ofMental Disorders in Children, Tavistock, 1961, p. 402

8 E. M. Bower, ‘Primary Prevention in a School Setting’, in Caplan, op. cit.

9 L. Eisenberg & E. Gruenberg, ‘The Current Status of Secondary Prevention in Chdd Psychiatry’, Am. J. of orthupsychiatry, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, pp. 355‐367.

10 D. Donnison and M. Stewart, The Child and the Social Services, Fabian Society, 1958, p. 7.

11 N. Timms & F. Itzin, ‘The Role of the Child Care Oficer–An Empirical Approach’, Brit. J. of Psychiatric Social Work (1961) Vol. VI.

12 R. Rapoport, The Community as Doctor.