“Before baobabs grow, they are small first.” “Correct! But why do you want your sheep to nibble on small baobabs?” He answered me: “Just like that!” As if it were something obvious. And I had to use a lot of ingenuity to understand this problem myself.
And indeed on the Little Prince’s planet, as on all planets, useful and useless plants grew. That is, useful ones from good seeds and weeds from bad seeds. But the seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the soil until one of them decides it should wake up. Then it spreads out and first timidly sends out a delicate, harmless sprout toward the sun. If it is a sprout of radish or a rose, we can let it grow. But if it is weed, we must pull it up as soon as we can identify it. So on the Little Prince’s planet, terrible seeds appeared... these were baobab seeds.
The soil of the planet had been contaminated by them. If we start uprooting a baobab too late, we will never get rid of it. It will fill the whole planet. It pierces through with its roots. If the planet is very small and there are many baobabs, they will tear it apart. “It is a matter of discipline!” the Little Prince told me later: “When I put myself in order in the morning, I need to clean the planet carefully as well. I force myself to regularly pull out baobabs, as soon as they can be distinguished from roses, to which they look very similar when they are still small. It is very boring, but very easy work.” ...Sometimes postponing the work has no unpleasant consequences. But with baobabs, it is always a catastrophe.
“When I drew baobabs, this made me feel that it is an urgent issue.” Antoine de Saint – Exupery; The Little Prince
Dear colleagues and supporters of social services,
when I decided whether to get involved in the initiative “Not by heart alone”, I asked myself several questions. Why? With whom? How?
I knew that the first question was the most important and that I had to answer it very honestly. I entered the social services through professional direction exactly twenty years ago. Even then I focused on work with older people. I began studying this field, visited dozens of facilities for older adults in the United States, Scotland, England, the Nordic countries, but also in neighboring countries. It is not how many countries I visited that matters, but how many insights I brought back from there. A lot. I used many of these in lectures, in writing professional literature and projects, in workshops or conferences. Insights = knowledge should serve to move from theory into practice. Twenty years of study, twenty years of writing projects and the result was zero. Nothing happened—nothing came of it. Not even knowledge from proven practice was able to be promoted into national concepts, strategies, or projects. The Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family closed the door with several locks so that we could not bring in anything systemic, long-term sustainable, and above all professionally sound. Why? If you ask yourself this for ten years, you think that somewhere you are making a mistake and you try to find openings, or you examine where you are making mistakes.
But when for several years you have not been able to communicate even the most essential matters, while other experts who move around the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family as if they were at home (because they have the key to the ministry doors) and are able to push unsystemic, non-evidence-based concepts into laws, and even implement concepts by projects worth millions of euros, then you have nothing else to do but capitulate.
But if you decide to keep working in this area, then you must find your place. And I found mine. Instead of critical remarks and writing projects that were never approved, I built a team of people around me and we started creating. My husband and I developed educational programmes, analyses, processes, methodological guides, procedural documents, and we processed thousands of data points into records in a managed documentation system.
This creative work, however, did not come from our office desks; it came directly from practice. We carried out more than 200 in-depth audits and trained over 1,300 graduates of our educational programmes. And so another ten years passed. With gratitude and humility we accept blessing from work activities, as well as from work meetings with colleagues. After these years of creative achievements, we could have said that this was the right path and that it should be continued. We wanted to continue as well. But we cannot. Why? Because of baobabs.
While we were taking care of ourselves, the planet (Slovak social services) had become infested with weeds. Imagine you grow roses and things go well. People come to you saying they also want to plant them. Their first question is whether they can buy them? We tell them yes. The second question, however, surprises us. And if we plant them, we will not have problems, right? Why should you have problems when they are roses?
You may be shocked by the symbolism of this story. Those who can distinguish roses from weeds will agree with us that today’s oversight authorities and also those who drafted the law, after spending years lecturing on the importance and impact of their amendments, and on project implementations themselves, will still face the dilemma of whether to pull out weeds or roses, since weeds are useful for example because one can hide and hunt in them.
Absurd? You are right. As absurd as the fact that in twenty years these experts were unable to prepare a concept of long-term care. As absurd as the fact that politicians approved ideological and non-economic concepts. As absurd as the fact that humanization of social services was stopped for several years and preparation of staff in social services was forgotten.
These are the reasons why I decided to invest time and my own money into the initiative “Not by heart alone.” Antoine de Saint – Exupery expressed it beautifully in words: “It is an urgent matter.”
The second question is also very important. With whom? With you. Dear friends, if you know our work, if my blogs in Prohuman (www.prohuman.sk) have reached you, or if you agree with the points of the initiative, please join us. Let us do what the Little Prince did. When he set himself in order in the morning, he also carefully cleaned the planet. He admitted that this required discipline. But he also said it would not be hard work. Sometimes, however, it is irritating and boring.
And here is my answer to the third question. How? It is enough to buy a T-shirt on which the current situation in social services and the situation we want to achieve are shown symbolically. You can also give the T-shirt to your loved ones. We make no profit from shirt sales. By wearing the shirt, you join the fight for professional and safe social services for everyone. So that we can persuade politicians together, send us your comments and proposals. Write about the problems you have to our address. And if you are not ashamed and do not fear it, show yourselves on your Facebook or ours (aopss). If they do not want to listen to us, then at least let them see us.
Thank you to everyone who works with heart in social services.
Thank you to everyone who supports social services in any way.
PhDr. Mária Kovaľová, PhD. MHA president of Asociácie odborných pracovníkov v sociálnych službách
Dear friends, there are still people working in social services with heart who consider their work a vocation. More and more responsibility, however, is being transferred to us and to family members.
The initiative for professional and quality services is advocating for:
- Sufficient funding for public and private social services.
- Methodological support and legal protection for managers who carry 24-hour responsibility.
- Staff stability at all levels.
- Raising the social status of employees in civic awareness.
- Ensuring such staff training that will increase professionalism in both managerial and professional functions.
- Creating a safe and high-quality working environment.
- A new law on social services.
One day, our loved ones and we ourselves may become recipients of social services. Let us not let go of those who work here well and with heart. Support this initiative!
PhDr. Mária Kovaľová, PhD. MHA president of Asociácie odborných pracovníkov v sociálnych službách