Children Belong in Families

A Remarkable Journey Towards Global Change

Mick Pease, Philip Williams

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781532644337
• eBook ISBN: 9781532644351
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

For too long, the world's lonely and vulnerable children have been forgotten and ignored. Millions of children are abandoned for a life on the streets or live with unsafe families or in soulless institutions. Now the tide is turning. Pioneers like Mick Pease and his remarkable charity SFAC lead a global movement for change. This insightful and uplifting book takes us on a journey that spans three decades and five continents. We meet judges and social workers, missionaries and aid workers, the children and families themselves. Mick asks tough questions, such as: Would you want your children in a safe family or in an institution? Would you want them to belong to something or to someone? He offers proven solutions for children separated from their families in widely different societies, from the hills of Myanmar to the sprawling cities of Brazil. SFAC supports measures to keep children in their families and communities or to find safe alternatives where this is not possible. The key is always the best interests of the child. It is an extraordinary journey from the Yorkshire coalfields to advocacy and influence in the corridors of power. It offers practical wisdom and a hope for the future.

1. The Mystery Man and the Baroness

Mick, this can work in Brazil!

“You have five days to leave the country.”

My Portuguese may not have been the best, but I understood that much. I felt the impact even more when the federal guard scribbled in my passport and pressed the rubber stamp home. Bam! One curt comment, a single jab, and our plans were squashed, our work at an end.

Brenda and I were working at a Brazilian children’s home on tourist visas. We had visited friends in Paraguay and were crossing the border on our return. Like many others, we had seen TV coverage and read news reports of the murders of street children. Restaurant owners, hoteliers, and shopkeepers were hiring armed men to rid the streets of nuisance homeless kids. They called them “the disposable ones.” Off-duty security guards, policemen even, were paid to execute these kids by night. Bang! A bullet in the back of the head, the body dumped on waste ground. No ID, no birth certificate or documents. No name.

These reports shocked the world. They shocked us too. We had to do something. Our two boys had grown up. Mark was studying and Kevin developing a plumbing business. We now had the time and opportunity to try and make a difference. I took a year’s leave of absence from my job as a social worker with Leeds City Council in the north of England. Brenda left her administrative job and we set off. The boys moved into the house and we put everything on hold.

Here we were, six months in, and the whole thing had suddenly collapsed. We were gutted. “Don’t worry,” everyone told us. “This is Brazil. They are so laid-back here. All you have to do after three months is ask the federal police whether you can stay longer. Then, after six months, you can cross the border to Bolivia or Paraguay and come back again. It’s a formality, a quick stamp on your passport and the visa is extended. Everyone does it, missionaries, aid workers. It’s no big deal, no paperwork, no fuss, no questions asked.”

Yes, this was Brazil, but this time, questions were asked. What did we think we were doing, crossing into Paraguay and then back again?

“We have been visiting friends.”

We genuinely had. We stayed a week with friends in the capital Asunción, unlike some aid workers on tourist visas who simply crossed the border, turned around, and walked back into Brazil.

We had crossed the border at Foz do Iguaçu where the conurbation extends as Cuidad del Este on the Paraguayan side and traveled onward by bus to the capital. Now we were stopped at the checkpoint as we tried to return.

“You can’t do this,” said the federal guard. “You cannot renew. You have five days to leave the country.” Stamp.

We exchanged very few words as the coach rumbled through the night and all the next day toward São Paulo. For twenty hours the vast Brazilian landscape rolled by; hills, plains, cities and settlements, pockets of forest. We were in no mood to enjoy the views, no mood even to talk. We had to leave Brazil and had no idea what we would do next. We both felt stunned, let down, abandoned, and alone.

The staff at the missionary organization we worked with were not at all perturbed.

“Don’t worry,” they said, “This is Brazil. We have contacts, we can put in a word for you. It’ll soon be sorted out. Leave it with us, we’ll go into the city and speak to the authorities.”

Days passed and no word came. We carried on as if in a daze, caring for the kids we’d come to know and love. We played games with the older children and washed and fed the younger ones. We gave them a structure and routine to establish the secure boundaries children need. Most were just ordinary kids. What they lacked was personal attention; a family atmosphere and environment. We loved those kids. I had spent weeks repainting the rusty old climbing frame in the play area. We both spent hours with Matheus, a toddler with hydrocephalus. We talked to him in his cot and pulled faces to make him laugh. Every day we took him out of his cot to learn to walk. Eventually, he reached the children’s playground and climbing frame, gurgling and chuckling with delight. It was this kind of interaction and personal connection that made it all so worthwhile.

People often talk about a “calling,” a sense of vocation. Brenda and I had felt it since we first met but had no idea at that time how this would work out. She was a farmer’s daughter from Devon in the rural southwest of England. I was a Yorkshire coal miner from the industrial north. I left school with no qualifications and no prospects. I had no interest in learning or education. We both came from devout Christian families and met at an annual preaching convention in Filey on the Yorkshire coast. It was there that I sensed some kind of “call,” an impression that I wanted to do something more than simply earn a living, something that could make a difference. From our particular church backgrounds, the expectation was that this would involve missionary work or church leadership. Neither of us had any desire to do such things. All we knew was that we wanted to do something. On the strength of this vague impression, we left our mining village and enrolled at a Bible college in the English Midlands. We had no prior academic qualifications and no idea what we were going to do afterward.

After Bible college we worked for three years as houseparents in a children’s home. From there I would go on to qualify as a social worker, specializing in child protection, adoption, and fostering.1 Gradually we began to develop a clearer idea of what the “calling” might involve; something involving children and families.

So here we were, in Brazil, fulfilling what we then believed to be the outcome of that “call.” Hands-on intervention. Working with street kids in a rescue mission. It all seemed to fit our expectations. Suddenly it was all coming to an end.

We had come to a Christian missionary complex in São Paulo State. I had been to Brazil before, initially to Belo Horizonte in 1994 at the invitation of YWAM (Youth With A Mission), a short-term mission agency that was developing an interest in issues around adoption. They wanted me to tell them more about it, how it worked in the UK, how it might be developed in Brazil. I returned the following year, imparting more information, meeting missionaries and social workers. On those occasions, I visited during my normal vacation allocation from Leeds City Council. Then, in 1997, impelled by the news of street shootings and murders, Brenda and I both came intending to stay for a year, unpaid, to try to make a difference.

We had written to some twenty-five missionary or development agencies offering our services. We wrote to all the Christian charities we could find which offered some kind of child or family care. The response opened my eyes. Most replied, but in each case, the response was broadly the same. What could they possibly do with a social worker? I wish we had kept those letters. A quarter of a century on they would appear even more outrageous than they did at the time.

What were they telling us?

If you are a car mechanic, we could use you in the mission field. If you are in primary health care or are an engineer, we could use you in the mission field. If you are an expert in agriculture or irrigation, a bricklayer and can build, a teacher and can teach English—we could use you in the mission field. But a social worker?

Yet every one of these organizations had some form of work with children or families. That was the very reason we had approached them. What did this mean? That if you were any Tom, Dick, and Harry you could work with kids? That if you were a social worker they wouldn’t know what to do with you? A bricklayer or a car mechanic, then yes, we can use your skills. We deliver health care so we could certainly use a nurse—but a social worker? You don’t have to be a social worker or have any qualifications or experience to work with kids.

I found this massively insulting, but quite apart from the affront to my professional dignity, there were more serious implications. What did this say about the level of professionalism involved? It struck me then and it stays with me now. I realized that many of the people working with children through mission, aid, or development agencies were doing so with good intentions but without the practical or professional skills required. They were working from the heart, but with no real knowledge of how to respond to kids suffering from trauma or loss. The attitude seemed to be, “Right, you are a parent yourself. You understand kids.” But there was no real insight that this in itself was not enough. These kids had particular problems. They were suffering from abuse and neglect. They needed specialist help. Something had to change.

It was the day before we were due to fly back to the UK. The leaders of the mission complex had made inquiries on our behalf.

“There’s no more we can do,” they told us. “You will have to fly back home. But you can always come back. Apply for missionary visas, come back and join us . . .”

I lent dejectedly ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Mystery Man and the Baroness
• 2. Home
• 3. Life Lessons
• 4. Following the Call
• 5. Turning Point
• 6. Moving Forward
• 7. In the Absence of Love
• 8. Children, Not Labels
• 9. The Breakthrough Begins
• 10. Love to Share
• 11. Rescue to Restoration
• 12. Putting Children First
• 13. The Lonely in Families
• 14. The Connections Continue
• 15. Onwards and Upwards
• Epilogue
• Websites
• Timeline
• Bibliography