The Social Fabric is what each of us as stakeholders in a society/community are charged with to weave and maintain. Social fabric is woven and layered with protective factors. Protective Factors when present and active within a family make people feel safe and cared for. When protective factors are present within a community it goes without saying those within that community feel safe and cared for as well. While social scientist agree that there are 5 factors which constitute protective factors; Parental Resilience, Understanding Child Development, Social Emotional Competence of Children, Social Support, and Concrete Support. At the root of Protective Factors lies “Social Connections”. It is the loss of social connections that have contributed to the erosion of the social fabric and ushered in the senseless violence and chaos within our communities. The fact that we rarely speak to one another explains our lack of connectivity with one another. When you have social connections you look out for your neighbors and they in turn look out for you. Often times in our communities we don’t even know our next door neighbor by name. If an issues comes up and we see their children getting out of control, we dare not correct their children and they don’t correct ours. Why is that? It is because we do not have a social relationship with the family right next door, and thus no connectivity with one another. While we sit in our demarcated asylums they sit in theirs, with neither reaching out to connect. They are more than likely as afraid of you as you are of them, but you may never know it.
Every family have their very own parenting curriculum written often by frustration and exhaustion and and most would more than likely welcome some type of respite and encouragement, but none is forthcoming. So if the parents are unable to parent properly what do you expect from the children. There was a time when parents got together over the clothesline and talked to one another, exchanged pie recipes, and parenting tips, shopped together and for one another and solved issues jointly. They were connecting with one another, which is often a lost art in many cases in today’s society. The connectivity is what we need to reintroduce to reweave the social fabric which is heavily worn and tattered at this point.
Clifton Smith, LCSW, LCAC, CCTP
Written 2015