How social services are paid bonuses to snatch babies for adoption

National disgrace: The number of babies taken from their mothers and put up for adoption is rising sharply
For a mother, there can be no greater horror than having a baby snatched away by the State at birth.
The women to whom it has happened say their lives are ruined for ever - and goodness knows what longterm effect it has on the child.
Most never recover from this trauma.
Imagine a baby growing in your body for nine months, imagine going through the emotion of bringing it into the world, only to have social workers seize the newborn, sometimes within minutes of its first cry and often on the flimsiest of excuses.
Yet this disturbing scenario is played out every day.
The number of babies under one month old being taken into care for adoption is now running at almost four a day (a 300 per cent increase over a decade).
In total, 75 children of all ages are being removed from their parents every week before being handed over to new families.
Some of these may have been willingly given up for adoption, but critics of the Government's policy are convinced that the vast majority are taken by force.
Time and again, the mothers say they are innocent of any wrongdoing.
Of course, there are people who are not fit to be parents and it is the duty of any responsible State to protect their children.

Read more...

• The baby snatchers: Now teenage mother faces battle with social services to keep newborn child
• I had to flee Britain to stop my baby being snatched by the State
• MAIL COMMENT: The shameful secrecy of the adoption system

But over the five years since I began investigating the scandal of forced adoptions, I have found a deeply secretive system which is too often biased against basically decent families.
I have been told of routine dishonesty by social workers and questionable evidence given by doctors which has wrongly condemned mothers.
Meanwhile, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been given to councils to encourage them to meet high Government targets on child adoptions.
Under New Labour policy, Tony Blair changed targets in 2000 to raise the number of children being adopted by 50 per cent to 5,400 a year.
The annual tally has now reached almost 4,000 in England and Wales - four times higher than in France, which has a similar-sized population.
Blair promised millions of pounds to councils that achieved the targets and some have already received more than £2million each in rewards for successful adoptions.
Figures recently released by the Department for Local Government and Community Cohesion show that two councils - Essex and Kent - were offered more than £2million "bonuses" over three years to encourage additional adoptions.
Four others - Norfolk, Gloucestershire, Cheshire and Hampshire - were promised an extra £1million.
This sweeping shake-up was designed for all the right reasons: to get difficult-to-place older children in care homes allocated to new parents.
But the reforms didn't work. Encouraged by the promise of extra cash, social workers began to earmark babies and cute toddlers who were most easy to place in adoptive homes, leaving the more difficultto-place older children in care.
As a result, the number of over-sevens adopted has plummeted by half.
Critics - including family solicitors, MPs and midwives as well as the wronged families - report cases where young children are selected, even before birth, by social workers in order to win the bonuses.
More chillingly, parents have been told by social workers they must lose their children because, at some time in the future, they might abuse them.
One mother's son was adopted on the grounds that there was a chance she might shout at him when he was older.
In Scotland, where there are no official targets, adoptions are a fraction of the number south of the border, even allowing for the smaller population.
What's more, the obsessive secrecy of the system means that the public only occasionally gets an inkling of the human tragedy now unfolding across the country.
For at the heart of this adoption system are the family courts, whose hearings are conducted behind closed doors in order to protect the identity of the children involved.
Yet this secrecy threatens the centuries-old tradition of Britain's legal system - the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
From the moment a mother is first accused of being incapable as a parent - a decision nearly always made by a social worker or doctor - the system is pitted against her.
There are no juries in family courts, only a lone judge or trio of magistrates who make decisions based on the balance of probability.
Crucially, the courts' culture of secrecy means that if a social worker lies or fabricates notes or a medical expert giving evidence makes a mistake, no one finds out and there is no retribution.
Only the workings of the homeland security service, MI5, are guarded more closely than those of the family courts.
From the time a child is named on a social services care order until the day they are adopted, the parents are breaking the law - a crime punishable by imprisonment - if they tell anyone what is happening to their family.
Anything from a chat with a neighbour to a letter sent to a friend can land them in jail.
And many have found themselves sent to prison for breaching court orders by talking about their case.
As High Court judge Mr Justice Munby told MPs last year: "It seems quite indefensible that there should be no access by the media, and no access by the public, to what is going on in courts where judges are, day by day, taking people's children away."
However, it is not only secretive and publicly unscrutinised family courts that are creating an injustice in our adoption system.
There is a more worrying factor involved. Look at the official figures. Why are they so high? Is it really true that more mothers are becoming potential killers or abusers?
Or are the financial bonuses offered to councils fuelling the astonishing rise in forced adoptions?
John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP campaigning to change the adoption system, said yesterday: "I have evidence that 1,000 children are wrongly being seized from their birth parents each year even though they have not been harmed in any way.
"The targets are dangerous and lead to social workers being over-eager.
"The system's secrecy hides any wrongdoing. One has to ask if a mother is expected to have problems looking after her baby, why doesn't the State help her instead of taking her child away?"
The MP's concerns are echoed by the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS), a body which advises new mothers.
Spokeswoman Beverley Beech insists: "Babies are being removed from their mothers by social workers using any excuse.
"We strongly suspect this is because newborns and toddlers are more easily found homes than older children. They are a marketable commodity.
"I know of social workers making up stories about innocent mothers simply to ensure their babies are put up for adoption.
"Suitable babies are even being earmarked when they are still in the womb.
"One baby was forcibly removed in the maternity ward by social workers before the mother had even finished the birth process and produced the placenta."
Her words may be emotive. But are they true? Six months ago, I wrote an article about a young couple - who must remain anonymous because of family court law - fighting for the return of their three-year-old daughter.
She was taken within weeks of birth and is about to be adopted.
Astonishingly, a judge has issued a Draconian order gagging them from revealing anything, to anyone at all, which could identify their daughter until her 18th birthday in 2022.
Immediately after the article was published, I heard from 35 families whose children were forcibly removed.
The letters and e-mails continue to arrive - coming from a wide range of families across the social classes (including from a castle in the heart of England).
An e-mail from one father said: "Please, please help, NOW. We are about to lose our son . . . in court tomorrow for final disposals hearing before he is taken for adoption ... we have done nothing wrong."
Another father calling himself "James" rang to say his wife's baby was one of eight seized by social workers from hospital maternity units in one small part of North-East England during one fortnight last summer.
A Welsh man complained that his grandson of three weeks was earmarked for forcible adoption by social workers.
The mother, a 21-year-old with a mild learning disorder, was told she might, just might, get post-natal depression and neglect her son.
To her great distress, her baby was put in the care of Monmouthshire social services within minutes of birth.
The grandfather said: "Our entire extended family - which includes two nurses, a qualified nanny and a police officer - have offered to help care for the baby.
"I believe my grandson has been targeted for adoption since he was in the womb."
A Worcestershire woman told how her daughter's baby was snatched away by three police officers and two social workers who came to the door of her house.
The girl has now been adopted.
The mother's failure? She was said to be too young to cope.
Yet - a little over a year later - she had another baby, a boy, whom she was allowed to keep, in the same home and with the same partner.
Why on earth did she have to lose her little girl?
The grandmother emotionally explained: "All the family came forward to offer to help look after my granddaughter, and all of them were told they were not good enough.
"The social worker told us to forget her. He said: 'She is water under the bridge.'
"We think they wanted her for adoption from the beginning."
No wonder she, and thousands of other parents, want a shake-up of the heart-breakingly cruel adoption system which has ripped apart so many families - and which continues to do so.

This article is taken from- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-511609/How-social-services-paid-bonuses-snatch-babies-adoption.html

In squalid Haiti camps, rape stalks women: Amnesty

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – An Amnesty report laid bare horrific accounts of rape in Haiti's squalid refugee camps a year after a devastating quake left many struggling to rebuild their shattered lives.
They are women like Guerline, who two months after losing her husband when their home crumbled to the ground in the devastating quake, had to watch as her teenage daughter was raped in a makeshift tarpaulin camp in Port-au-Prince.
"Four men raped her. She is 13 years old," Guerline told Amnesty International researchers, who compiled the report, published Wednesday, after interviewing more than 50 women and girls in Haiti's post-quake camps.
"They told me that if I talked about it, they would kill me. They said that if I went to the police, they would shoot me dead.
"I'm scared. There is nowhere safe where I can live, so I had to keep quiet," said Guerline, who, like all the women interviewed for the report, was given a false name to protect her from reprisals.
Guerline was raped on the same night as her daughter by hooded men in the tent city. She can't get the events of that terrible night out of her head.
Amnesty said little is being done to help her and other victims of rape and sexual violence, old woes for Haiti that worsened after the earthquake killed over 230,000 people, injured 300,000 others and flattened large tracts of the capital.
The destruction and death meant many women and girls lost the family and community networks that used to shield them from the threats they now face. Precarious living conditions in the camps further worsened their already dire situation.
"The lack of security in and around the camps is one of the main factors contributing to sexual and other forms of gender-based violence," the report said.
But the government, which was also crippled by the quake that brought down the presidential palace and scores of other official buildings, has made little progress in resettling Haitians or ensuring they are not in danger in the camps.
A year after the quake, some 1.05 million Haitians still live in 1,200 such camps. Most of those displaced by the quake are women.
"There is no security for women and girls in the camps," said Gerardo Ducos, Amnesty International's lead Haiti researcher.
"Armed gangs attack at will, safe in the knowledge that there is little prospect that they will be brought to justice."
Most rape victims are assaulted by armed men and gangs of youths who roam the poorly lit, overcrowded camps after dark.
Few of the rapes are reported to the police or health authorities, either because the victims fear reprisals or because they don't know who to turn to for help.
Women who did report a rape to the authorities said they were either told that nothing could be done for them, or were asked to pay the police -- with money they don't have -- for inquiries.
As a result, few of the women's attackers are ever brought to justice and they continue to prey on women and girls with impunity, the report said.
Myriam was raped when she was 11.
Marie was raped by three men just steps from the main police station in Port-au-Prince.
Suzie was gang-raped in front of her children.
"Women victims of rape should go to hospital, but I didn't go because I didn't have any money," she told Amnesty.
"I don't know where there is a clinic offering medical treatment for victims of violence," Suzie said, unaware that the Haitian government runs a program for victims of rape, mostly free of charge, at Port-au-Prince's general hospital, which is a 15-minute walk away from where she was raped.
Marie said she would have "loved to go to the police but they don't listen to what you are saying".
And Myriam's aunt, who has been her guardian since the little girl's mother went missing during the quake, didn't take the young victim to hospital "because you need money".
She didn't go to the police because she didn't know who had raped her niece.
"The only thing I do is go to church and pray," she said.
The grassroots Commission of Women Victims for Victims, a women's group run by survivors of sexual violence, registered more than 250 cases of rape in several camps in the five months after the quake, but Amnesty believes that number is just the tip of the iceberg.
This article is taken from- http://asia.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110106/twl-haiti-quake-1year-women-rape-4bdc673.html

Television effect on Society

Science provides us various wonderful things which make our lives easier, happier and healthy. Television is one of the most important parts in our daily life. It is a sign of scientifically improvement. It was invented by John L. Baird of England in 1926.  It came into India in 1965 but it was only after the 1982 Asiad Games that it became popular in the country. Television works very effectively or positively as well as harmfully in our daily life.

Positive effect for society:

In today’s life television effects very positively and influences our society in various types of culture. Television gives us several information that we can make ourselves active in our life. There have lots of positive effect from the television in society.

We can know about weather changes of every day which is very important to us. In our life everyday many events occur around us and we can reach to them by television. We can be well-known about business or financial market.

Television is the mass world in a small place around us. We can see or listen about every event in far of our hand within a second. It is a dictionary which works as eye for collecting information. Society is always influence the media because it needs for improvement of science. May be it has many unpleasant side, but we can’t live without it.

Television for entertaining:

Television is the way of massive entertainment. So many programs are televised in every day. It is the important source of entertainment. We can see dance, dramas, films, fiction features and children programs also like as cartoon, various types of games etc. It helps us improve our personality, style, activities by seeing different interview of some famous person. Many programs give us some massages fight against the social or political evils. Not only tat we can be relaxed or fresh after our long hard day by seeing some fun filled programs. Television helps us to stay tension free and touch with day to day. Teenagers also enjoy it for the enjoyment and information.

Disadvantage of television:

Sometime it becomes an idiot box because it has so many disadvantages. If somebody watches T.V. for long time it means he/she is wasting their times. It effect on eye-sight, students also affected by it. They remember all programs and say instead of their lessons. Many people like to see only those programs which give fun that bringing down the educational   importance of television.

Violence of television on children:

In present life violence stay in everywhere, like – school, back alleys, on the street even in home. There is television is the main and mass source of violence. Some children who look the realistic worlds of violence on T.V. are pulled by some demoralizing results. It is proved that children are fascinated by their big colored and glamorous box and imitation of actor/actress in it.  They also are trying to do those actions which impress them and they wanted to be a hero like those showing character. In this way there makes a casual relation between violent activities and children and in after life this casual relation may be serious.

Its necessity:

Television is the most important in our life though we know that there have some problems. Television is the process of education, promotion, amusement and communication. It is true that there is more number of advantages than the number of disadvantage. We can get more knowledge from television. In our daily life we can grow our knowledge about the wild area from discovery channel or animal planet channel.

There are different types of games and there rules that television shows by which we can encourage our children to play vivid games. We can know about weather, daily news (good/bad) etc. We are also known about our daily life information. Not only that we can daily life information but also about land, water and all planets, satellites etc. We can get information of books and suggestion of exam from educational channels.

We should use it properly that we can learn something good from that. It‘s good or bad side depends on uses of us. So there needs to make it better and progressive. We should not open adult channel in front of kids because it leaves bad effects on them. We should encourage children to show those important channels which will grow their knowledge.

Netherlands embassy to fund study on child labour

HENNAI: North Chennai, home to a fishing harbour and several cottage industries, is also among the areas where child labour is rampant. Noting the high incidence of child labour in the area, an NGO, Karunalaya Social Service Society, has decided to launch a project to create a child labour-free zone in North Chennai industries and prevent school dropouts in slums, streets and housing tenements.
Results of the `50-lakh project funded by the Dutch embassy, will be used to undertake rescue and rehabilitation operations, under the National Child Labour Project. Karunalaya has been working with streetchildren and working children for 15 years, but a recent literacy awareness campaign showed that there was still a long way to go before all children in the area are put in school.
"We found godowns closing on GA Road, which is similar to T Nagar here, because news spread that there was a child labour raid. We realised that there was little chance of such kids being rescued unless we made public the number of such children and which industries employ them," said Karunalaya director N Paul Sunder Singh. So, the NGO, with financial support from the Dutch embassy, is launching a study on the number of child labourers, their ages, family backgrounds, and which industry they are employed in.

This article is taken from- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Netherlands-embassy-to-fund-study-on-child-labour/articleshow/6951263.cms

Twilight Zone / Safed, a war story

A campaign of racism and anti-Arab incitement is turning one of Israel's holy cities into a ticking bomb
By Gideon Levy

The telephone rings. "Hello, this is Mustafa, I'm calling about the apartment." The response comes quickly and emphatically: "No, it's already been rented." Or, "I only rent to women," or "I only rent to families." Or, in an angry tone: "Heaven forbid, do you want to stop me from reading the Torah on Shabbat," or "I'm afraid of the rabbis."
For an entire hour, student Mustafa Shahin, a resident of Sakhnin who studies sociology and human resources at Safed College, made telephone inquiries - in vain. Because he is an Arab, the rental listings on the college bulletin boards are irrelevant. Mahmoud Abu Salah, Shahin's representative in the student union (there are a total of eight representatives, but only one is an Arab ), says that he sometimes introduces himself on the phone as "Tomer" to get the conversation started. Now everyone has started calling Mahmoud "Tomer." But that doesn't mean people want to rent to Arab college students in Safed.
The city is roiling: It recently hosted an "emergency conference" of 18 rabbis and 400 of their followers on this issue. There was an armed attack on an Arab student apartment. A Jewish legal ruling was handed down by the city's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu. Mayor Ilan Shohat and veteran resident Eliyahu Tzvieli, who rented an apartment to Bedouin students, have received threats. The message is: Arabs, go home.
In response to plans for establishing a medical school in Safed, flyers were circulated last week by some sort of "campaign headquarters," declaring: "The smokescreen called a medical school obscures an evil scheme: to establish a refugee camp for psychotic, sadistic and debased Arabs, whose deceptiveness is, and always has been, aimed at tempting [Jewish women] and cruelly abusing them. On orders of the great rabbis of Safed, may they be blessed with a long life, we declare our protest and vehement resistance, and reiterate that it is forbidden under the law of the Torah to offer these people apartments for sale, rent, work or any form of entry. Our city will not succumb to wanton behavior - go back to your own locales and do not defile our camp."
The language of this flyer slams the Safed College Internet site, which touts "a city that blends academia, tradition, kabbala and a magical atmosphere."
Abu Salah reads the flyer and puts it in his pocket without uttering a word. For the time being, he and his peers are showing restraint, but a time bomb is ticking here. Safed is a war story in the making.
Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria was born on Safed's slopes, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was born nearby. Today, the town's artists' quarter is being snuffed out by ultra-nationalist zeal. On Jerusalem Street, where Safed College is located, there is a Rav Hesed supermarket; a Galgal Hakodesh store that sells Jewish religious articles; and a furniture store with a special "bride-and-groom" deal for furnishing an entire apartment for NIS 8,888.
Safed College, operated under the auspices of Bar-Ilan University, has 1,700 students, and the whole campus seems to speak Arabic. Indeed, when we visited the institution last week, it seemed to have an absolute Arab majority. The most obvious exceptions were a policeman and a prison warden, both enrolled as students, and two lecturers who wore skullcaps and ritual fringes. Strolling around the sun-drenched campus, with its olive and cypress trees, were dozens of Arab students from the Galilee. Some, but not all, of the female students wore traditional head coverings; male students had hair gel. On the lawn, next to the modest library, a student set down his jacket, and kneeled to pray in the direction of Mecca.
The whole area is full of surreal contradictions: There is the bearded driver who shouts threateningly, in Arabic, at what he calls "el Yahud [the Jews]" - a group of Arab students, who cross the street and stare at him apathetically. The campus seems tranquil, while the city seethes with racist hatred. One sees Bratslav Hasidim and newly Orthodox and other pious Jews roam the streets along with hijab-clad, traditional Muslims.
A recent editorial, titled "The Ishmaelites," in the Hamevaser newspaper proclaimed that one of the city's rabbis conducted an inquiry and discovered that funding from the European Union and Saudi Arabia finance the college's Arab students.
"I wish they did support us," reflects the student activist, Mahmoud Abu Salah, aka Tomer, with a wistful smile. He embodies several contradictions: He claims that he served in the Israel Defense Forces as an undercover soldier, yet he is the student union delegate of the "Arab sector" (an Israeli expression ), and his dream is to become the state comptroller or an ambassador. "I don't have any problem representing the state - this is my state," he says wanly.
Not exactly minted in the "Danny the Red" mold, the young man allowed himself to be photographed in a triumphant pose, alongside the memorial to the "Liberators" who expelled his forefathers from the city. A second-year law student who already has a degree in social work from the college, he wears preppy white shoes and a Puma belt.
Abu Salah has already resided in four apartments in Safed. At present, he is compelled to commute each day from his village because it is nearly impossible for Arabs to find a room to rent in the city. Out of the college's 900 Arab students, he says, only a few live in rented apartments, not including the 120 who live in the dormitories.
On a recent Saturday, Abu Salah met MK Ahmed Tibi in Jenin's market, and asked the parliamentarian not to visit the college.
"We don't need Arab MKs here," he explains now. "We keep things quiet on our own. I think the college should take care of things here. I don't want to organize demonstrations; I want to keep things calm. I stay silent, but the college has to do something. That's what I told the college president. We have never encountered racism on the campus grounds - so they [Knesset members] can come make the rounds in Safed, but shouldn't come here." This week Abu Salah met the Arab students' representative at Netanya Academic College, and learned that it is also nearly impossible for Arab students in that coastal town to rent an apartment. He says he has Jewish friends who signed a rental contract in the name of Arab students. But after it was discovered, the landlord was threatened; he was told that his own house would be burned down if Arab tenants were to remain in the Safed apartment.
Abu Salah: "Rabbi Eliyahu thinks that we want to return Safed to the Arabs. They think that we want to remain in the city after our studies. But only a few [Arab students] remain here on Saturdays. An [Arab] student comes here solely for the purpose of studying. After that he'll go anywhere, to get the hell out of here - what is there for us in such a poor town? A student spends an average of NIS 50 a day in the city, not including rent. We help Safed's economy. I'm not even talking about the money they make from parking fees. Most come to study here, and are not looking for trouble. Nobody comes looking to compile a criminal record ... They [those who object to the Arab students] want us to organize; they want to remove us from here. But we want to be smarter than that, to show them that we exist, without causing an uproar," explains Abu Sabah.
During his studies, he says, he has been employed in two local hotels, Rimonim and Canaan Spa, working as a shabbas goy - someone who assists devout Jewish guests on the Sabbath. He has provided similar services for neighbors: "I would return home, and a neighbor would tell me, 'It's cold.' At first, I didn't get it. What was I supposed to do, warm him up? But they spoke to me with gestures, so that I'd understand what they meant and light their furnace on Shabbat."
He also has stories of residents spitting at Arab students, and of students entering stores and being told that they were "closed." He has heard chants on streets, like: "An Arab is a son of a bitch." I asked him how he would respond were someone to call him a dirty Arab. "I would ask him, am I really dirty? I take a shower twice a day and dress better than you," Abu Salah quips.
At Hummus Atika, an ultra-Orthodox waiter served a smooth, kosher version of the chickpea paste, which was actually pretty tasty. The restaurant walls were covered with colorful portraits of past and present rabbinical sages, including the late Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, father of the Safed rabbi who is spearheading the Arab expulsion.
Haaretz's Galilee correspondent, Eli Ashkenazi, told us he heard recently from Eliyahu Tzvieli, 89, the resident who was threatened after he rented an apartment to Bedouin students, that an Arab student entered a falafel joint Tzvieli rents to a Jewish proprietor, and ordered a meal. "I'll give you poison," was the response. Tzvieli tried to cancel the rental contract for the falafel stand, but was unsuccessfulThe student Mustafa Shahin lived last year in rental apartments located off Safed's main pedestrian thoroughfare, and also in the Canaan neighborhood. This year, he spends 70 NIS a day on bus travel to and from his home. He has phoned dozens of landlords, explaining, "This is Mustafa, I'm calling about the apartment." He was always rejected.
He phones a man named Viktor, who has an apartment for rent.
"Only women," says Viktor.
"But I live alone," pleads Mustafa. "I don't make trouble and keep quiet."
Viktor responds: "I have a problem. I would take you, but there are the rabbis. They give me problems. I would rent to women, I'm not afraid, but not to men. Good luck, Mustafa."
Then there was a "fully furnished" apartment.
"Good afternoon, this is Mustafa, I'm calling about the apartment," the student says.
"Try calling at night, I'm driving right now," replies the landlord.
After several more fruitless phone calls, Mustafa gives up. Some students come up to us and relate their own experiences. A college bulletin board lists some living-room furniture for sale, and a wooden kitchen cabinet. Mustafa calls up, but is told the furnishings are no longer for sale.
this article is taken from- http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/twilight-zone-safed-a-war-story-1.324313

Crisis hotline brings graduate student back to MSU campus

Whitney Applebaum always has been fascinated by people.
When the social work graduate student received a flyer about volunteer orientation for the Listening Ear Crisis Intervention Center, 333 W. Grand River Ave., she knew she had to get involved.
“I was always one of those people that had everybody in crisis coming to me saying, ‘Help me fix it,’” Applebaum said.
As an East Lansing native, Applebaum began volunteering at the confidential and nonprofit center with a 24-hour crisis hotline when she was in high school.
Nine years later, Applebaum now serves as an in-service coordinator and a member of the training staff as she completes her degree at MSU.
“I can’t live without it,” she said. “When I moved away from here for undergrad, I never found my people again. It’s a unique breed of human that volunteers at a crisis center and donates four hours a week to helping other people.”
Although she completed her undergraduate degree at Central Michigan University, Applebaum said she commuted to volunteer on weekends during the semester.
The center, which also provides sexual assault and walk-in crisis counseling, is comprised completely of volunteers, the majority whom are MSU students completing a minimum of four-hour phone shifts per week.
“We get mostly psychology majors who have an ambition to become a therapist later in their life or pre-med students,” she said. “We have other majors interspersed in there, but mostly it’s people from helping fields.”
Volunteers must undergo intense training of about 65 hours before they begin their shifts. Applebaum said training mostly consists of breaking into small groups and learning skills people are unaware of, such as how to feel with another person and vicariously experience devastation without trying to remedy the problem.
“Our training is a ridiculous commitment, but I’ve had trainees say it’s the most life-changing experience they’ve had so far,” she said.
Patrick Sandoval, a psychology junior, first volunteered about three years ago and initially was trained by Applebaum.
“(Applebaum) is very good at what she does because she knows the technical aspects of training very well,” Sandoval said. “She knows the rationale behind what we do.”
Sandoval said the technical aspects of training are important for being able to give nonjudgmental feedback to volunteers and for growing to the extent of their abilities.
“It has given me an appreciation for what counseling is and what crisis intervention is,” he said. “That it is indeed something I want to pursue as a career.”
The center receives calls from all across the U.S. and listens to people who are dealing with a range of issues, including suicide, substance abuse, financial crises, sexual assault and relationship problems.
“We don’t give advice; we just help people explore where they are in that moment and try to de-escalate the intensity of their immediate negative experience,” Applebaum said.
One of the skills taught in training is how to feel less compelled to provide a solution to someone’s problem, she said.
“We’re there because we’re fix-it people, but you can’t fix it,” she said. “Ultimately, these people are responsible for their own actions and behaviors.”
Applebaum’s mother and East Lansing resident Eve Applebaum said the center has given her daughter a sense of camaraderie as she has watched mentoring relationships turn into friendships.
“Having gone through some rough times herself and in her family, she’s able to empathize,” she said. “Our whole family is kind of like that — we’re very pro-volunteerism.”
Although Whitney Applebaum said burnout from the crisis calls can be normal, but for her, volunteering isn’t about the phone calls.
“It’s about the people I work with,” she said. “There are truly caring, wonderful people in the world that are willing to dedicate their time and energy to helping other people and each other.”
By Meagan Choi
This article is taken from- http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/11/crisis_hotline_brings_graduate_student_back_to_msu_campus

Email's slow death - set to be replaced by social networking

By 2014, email will be surpassed by social networking as the dominant form of communication in the business world, Gartner has predicted.

Greater availability of social-networking services, coupled with changing demographics and work styles, will lead 20pc of employees to use social networks as their business communications’ hub by 2014, the analyst said.
Analysts said this is one of a wide range of capabilities that have emerged in communications, social web and mobile, enabling richer interactions among people and expanding collaboration to a broader level.
“In the past, organisations supported collaboration through email and highly structured applications only,” said Monica Basso, research vice-president at Gartner.
“Today, social paradigms are converging with email, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles.
“However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organisations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success,” Basso said.

‘Cloud’ sourcing

While microblogging on platforms like Twitter and Facebook are reshaping enterprise communications, business communications are evolving. Newer employees will enter the workforce with a predisposition to communicate via a social network, but they will use email in parallel — optimising the business need with the communication modality.
“The rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode,” Basso said. “Email will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering, while social networks will develop richer email capabilities.”
Vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will add links to internal and external social networks from within e-mail clients and servers, making services such as contacts, calendars and tasks shareable across email and social networks.
By 2012, Gartner said contact lists, calendars and messaging clients in any smartphones will be social-enabled applications.
Collaboration is slowly moving to the cloud, and Gartner analysts expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social-networking services.
Organisations will deploy hybrid models where some services live on premises and some are in the cloud. Gartner predicts the percentage of email accounts on cloud services will grow to 10pc by year-end 2012, up 7pc from 2009.

Mobile convergence

From a vendor’s perspective, the market is consolidating around Microsoft and Research In Motion (RIM), the two market leaders. Gartner forecasts that by 2012, RIM and Microsoft will own 80pc of the enterprise wireless email software market.
Communications and collaboration are critical to business success, and any organisation should invest in these areas to pursue innovative organisational and work-style change. “Even in an economic downturn, innovation is a must for any organisation to prepare for recovery and further change,” said Basso.
“The reality is that mobile collaboration will increase for all categories of workers, and organisations can either take the lead, or be led by their users,” she said.
“The most progressive organisations won’t be afraid to explore the innovative communications and collaboration models enabled by new devices and social services allow their employees to generate innovative ideas by experimenting with them.”
Basso provided an example of this collaboration by highlighting Ocè’s use of Yammer. In this situation, employees spontaneously adopted the enterprise microblogging service that is now helping capture and spread knowledge, accelerate decision making, improve customer responsiveness and support continuous learning.
This article is taken from- http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/18892-emails-slow-death-set-to/