What do we really Need?

Marianne Winters is a leader in the movement to end and address sexualized violence and is passionate about a vision of a movement that is inclusive, current, responsive and proactive. She is the Project Diva for Graphix for Change and consultant and trainer for Praxis for Change.

What is is that we need?
I’ve been thinking alot about social services, their systems, rules, forms, processes, people, institutions, and all of it. I’m thinking about it alot now, not because of any academic or intellectual endeavor, but because I’m in the thick of it right now. Within the last month, stuff ... really big complicated stuff... happened in my family. The end result was the doubling of my family and household when we welcomed our niece and nephew into our home after the illness and death of their mom. So, here we were (and in many ways still are) in need as a family. But, of what, exactly, are we in need? We went to court and were told “you need to complete this stack of papers”. Okay we said, as we turned around to stand at the only counter we could find and began to fill out the forms seeking to be appointed as legal guardians. Then there was the endless instructions, you need to sit in this courtroom, no this one, no back to the first one. Then, at another agency we were told, “you need to fill out this form and bring this list of documents”. It went on like that - schools, health care organizations, state institutions. All the while they almost had me convinced. Maybe if I just focus on the forms, fill them all out correctly, bring the documents, pieces of paper, paper that proves that other paper exists. You get the idea. Then I stepped back for a minute because someone said to me, intending it as a compliment “oh, maybe you could be my guardian, you’re doing such a great job”. I think I hurt her eardrum when I kinda yelled “no, be my friend - there’s no paperwork and it’s what I really need”. It made me keep thinking about the difference between social change and social service. I’m convinced, now more than ever that what people need is not just a social service, but institutions, organizations, well-trained people, procedures that understand that we all bring ourselves and our real human needs to human service organizations. People aren’t sick, addicted, poor, victimized, isolated, disabled, uneducated, or oppressed because they lack social services, it’s because our social system lacks many of the things that people need. My problem is not that I lacked a service, it’s that my life, and the lives of these beautiful children have been altered, turned upside down, never to be the way they were. There’s good and bad in that. There’s change, sadness, joy, anxiety, trouble, transition, hope. All of it. So, I’ll stay committed to the systems change work and will never again look at a form, or a process, or a social service the same way that I did before.