It has been a wild and sad week in Halifax with the death of a young man in police custody, a young child being stabbed, and a young woman with severe mental health issues causing unbelievable harm. These incidents are horrific, tragic, and reflect intersecting systemic failures of policy.
It is possible as social workers, we may work with service users or work in contexts where conversations about these issues may take place. It is also possible that we may be having these conversations with our loved ones. As social workers, how might we consider these incidents? Is it possible for us to see the interconnections of injustice in these incidents?
As social workers we strive to see issues in context. So, what is the context beyond sensational headlines, kneejerk responses, and calls for justice?
In one situation, a young man is dead because police responded to a mental health crisis and responded with force. In another situation, a young child is tragically stabbed, multiple times, by a young woman in the middle of the day. That young woman was seemingly lost without support and resources to address her mental health. In all three situations individuals have been failed by systems and society.
The young man, dying in police care, was denied support and help. Instead, he was put in a position of increased risk and ultimately died because our responses to mental health issues are lacking. He died because the people who respond to mental health crises in the police force are ill equipped to engage in a trauma-informed and socially just way. The police force, whether regional police or the RCMP, is built through frameworks of power, enforcement, and domination. There is growing evidence that clearly highlights we need community-based and non-police interventions for mental health and that involving police can increase risk in mental health crises (Livingstone, 2021).
The young child was failed by our society when they were not protected from someone who potentially, with care and support for their mental health issues, could have been less of a risk to the public. The young woman, who caused unbelievable harm to a young child in the middle of the day, was failed by society before she caused this incredible harm and forever changed the trajectory of the child and family’s life. However, she is being failed in our response to the incident as well. She is being failed in the way many are calling for her to be “locked up forever” or be killed. She is being failed now in the court of public opinion, further supported by the words of Tim Houston, as she is framed too simply as someone who chose to carry out an unthinkable act.
Is it possible that we can see all three as victims in an unjust and unwell society? Can we have empathy for all three? This isn’t to say that the young woman is equally a victim as the young boy she stabbed, or the young man who died in police care. This isn’t to say we should hold all equally in our empathy and critical thoughts. This isn’t to say that we should not hold the young woman accountable or strive to find some sense of justice after an incredibly unjust act. However, it is to say that perhaps our understanding of justice and empathy could expand. Maybe, if we try, we can consider that in all three people there is and was the potential to do better for them. All three people were harmed, not just by the actions of other individuals, but by the inactions of government and leaders to actually resource and support people who experience mental health crises.
As social workers our role is to work across micro, mezzo, and macro systems through a social justice lens. We work within and around systems that are inadequate in addressing complex and tragic situations for accountability rooted in social justice. What might have happened if both the young man who died in police care and the young woman who attacked a child had received adequate and timely care prior to these situations? What might be possible if community-based organizations and helpers were resourced adequately to provide responsive and emergent care for people experiencing mental health issues? Could these tragedies have been prevented? As social workers it is our responsibility to ask these questions and advocate for better policies, resourcing, and interventions that are grounded in socially just and evidence-informed practices.
This has been a tragic week in Halifax and Nova Scotia, and we live in a time where tragedy is all around us. The crises are multiplying and layering themselves in terrifying ways. Yet, if we give in to moral panic and reinforce the idea that our neighbours and community members are the threats rather than the lack of resources and support for all of us, then we truly will keep failing to make a difference.
Our systems and policies are failing people and as social workers we must be critically aware while striving for better. It is easy to feel demoralized and hopeless. It is harder to believe we can do better. I’m going to keep trying to believe we can do better. I hope you can too.
Thank you for acknowledging and supporting the role of social workers in doing our best to make the world a better place when it feels so dark. We need to bring the light of compassion and solutions.
Thanks Christina!