Perhaps the main highlight of this website “MENZ’, for me, was the connection to men caring about families dealing with Child, Youth and Family Services aka CYFS.

That was back in 2006 when people were silenced because of the shame associated with CYFS intervention and I remember how I followed the link of one writer’s name to a website and how I signed up (joined), wrote a comment and received a phone call a day or two later from a northern regional manager saying, “I need to see you. Is today or tomorrow good for you?” and how I replied, “Cheeky, you haven’t even asked if I want to see you”.
The meeting went very well, by the way. He was lovely and very helpful. Not long after, 2 large boxes holding up to 5,000 pages of my family’s case were delivered to my door and the man who had to proof-read it (so I did not get information that harmed another’s privacy) told me he cried while reading it and at the end he was wrapped the family came back together.

You can imagine how impressed I was because of my experience.

“¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦

Anyways, things progressed and some pretty damn amazing things happened over the years. I could spend hours writing about the things that happened and the incredible people involved who volunteered 10’s of 1000’s of hours advocating for cases, protesting, writing petitions, communicating with politicians and so much more as well as spent a lot of money travelling, etc.

One of the sad things that has happened is ‘personalities clashed’ ideas clashed, agendas clashed, and more. It has damaged our work.

……

Heads up, that I am going to be contacting a few of the early pioneers and over the next few weeks to try and re-energise and motivate you to get refocused. All the effort you’ve put in over the years is being recognised right now and you have the ability, because you see things from a much bigger position, to help the overhaul going on in CYFS at the moment to make a true positive difference for the innocents involved.

NOTE: Of course I won’t be involving religious groups and wish them the best.

What I am particularly looking for is:

1. Somewhere where people can make complaints. (social workers, lawyers, families and community groups, etc)
2. Somewhere where cases can be accessed for study
3. Somewhere for people to put suggestions

These are to add to the already fabulous websites that care for individual cases, petitions and much, much more. I personally think we need a team to work together and that’s what I would like to put together.

If you’d like to help or already offer something that people can use or have suggestions, please leave a comment. Otherwise, get in touch with me at [email protected] or wait for me to contact YOU.