Meet Quality's daughter, Honor.

I submit that quality communicates value.

Last year while working I had to make the occasional stop at the child protection agency and various other social work offices. They were, without fail, depressing places. Desks were crowded into small spaces with the typical "Success" posters on the doors. The waiting rooms have some toys, mostly broken and old, some magazines, dingy chairs and more posters with the faces of Meth peering down at you.

One day I was sitting with a client, listening to the case workers in the next room talk about a new case. My client looks at me and with a tight face says, "that's my friend". That's my friend they're talking about in there, just another addict whose kids got taken away. Her own children's friends.

There was little to no to fake respect shown by either the clients or the case workers to one another. Or, might I suggest, by the government to any of them.

I believe that surroundings both reflect and perpetuate values.

The Cardinals' stadium cost $455 million. The stadium for the Cowboys? $1 billion. Maxxi, the new art museum in Rome, 150 million euros. I am not about to tell you that it is wrong to have those places (particularly Maxxi, I think it's a sweet building...). Sports are valuable to Americans. Superbowl Sunday is practically a national holiday.

What I would like to put out there, is the question of how things could change if we put more effort and quality into our government agencies and public schools. For the clients and children and also for the sake of the workers.

How could Social Work change if the Social Workers were told that they and their work, and the people they worked with, were valued? If they were given respect, might they not be more inclined to show it?

What does a dingy, cheap building/space perpetuate? Surely not value.

I have so admired the philosophy of YoungLife and the atmosphere they create at their camps. They build elaborate, resort-like camps for the kids to go to because they know it instills in them a sense of worth.



it's something to think about.