SERFAC is holding a Rally
on Sunday, 17th November, 2013 at Marina Beach from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm onward.
This Rally is to Revitalize Children's Right- on behalf of National Children's
Day (14th Nov'2013). We would like to invite you and your children to take part
in this Rally Procession. For details and more information please feel free to
call 044-64625913, 044-65150118, 044-65150117. Thanks!
SERFAC BLOGS
Saturday 26 October 2013
Wednesday 23 October 2013
Tuesday 15 October 2013
Thursday 3 October 2013
Sage Publication: Nurturing Families around the World
NURTURING FAMILES AROUND THE WORLD
Building a Culture of Peace
Edited by
Dr. Catherine Bernard President and Director, Service and Research Institute on
Family and Children and John J Shea Practice Pastoral Care and Counseling,
School of Theology and Ministry
Nurturing Families around the World: Building a
Culture of Peace aims to offer insight and tools to initiate the
healing approach, so that the family finds a creative rebirth. This change in
the structure of the family can initiate change within a larger community, a
creative rebirth of the entire social community and neighborhood communities so
that a new kind of connectedness, mutual caring, empathy and healing is
nurtured and fostered.
This book
offers profound insights into ways and means of resolving issues of violence
and conflict around the world- we must start resolving it now and in this life.
The main argument is that families and societies can be provided with the
fertile field of a positive culture and civilization that respects diversity,
human dignity and uniqueness.
CONTENTS
Preface/Introduction
Dr. Catherine Bernard/ Nurture- Key
to the Security of the 21st Century Family Joan Haliburn/ Polishing the Jewels of Humanity: Sharing
Responsibility for Children Victoria
Wyszynski Thoresen/ Children’s Emotional Well-being in the Era of
Globalization Sami Timimi/Intimacy:
Stabilizing and Strengthening Family Life Beverly
Musgrave/ The power of the Individual in Building a Culture of Peace John J Shea/ Future of the Family and
the Family of the Future: The Unity-based Family and the Advent of a
Civilization of Peace H B Danesh/
Index
Wednesday 2 October 2013
Family: Heart of Humanity
This volume
is a compilation of key papers presented at the global conference titled “In Defence
of the Family: Family, Children and Culture,” held in Bangkok in June 2011. The
event marked the 25th anniversary of the Service and Research
Institute on Family and Children (SERFAC), headquartered in Chennai, India.
SERFAC was established by Dr. Catherine Bernard, MBBS, MS, and collaborators
from diverse backgrounds from India and around the world, committed to ensuring
the well-being of families so as to address the contemporary moral, spiritual,
institutional and technological crises affecting families, children,
communities, nations and global society.
An
internationally registered non-governmental organization, SERFAC, which enjoys
Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC ( the Economic and Social Council) of
the UN, works towards creating awareness and sensitizing society to the fact
that a healthy family life and its allied institution of marriage constitute
the most important resource base and natural environment for the well-being of
its members, particularly children.
Families
and children across the world face a multitude of ever-changing challenges in
an increasingly internationalized culture due to globalization.
It is vital
for society to respect the autonomy, integrity, solemnity and sacredness of
every unborn child, of every person, individual and family, and for every
nation to work towards a meeting at different levels. A dialogue must occur to
enrich and celebrate this diversity of family, children and cultures, in order
to make the world a more humane and civilized place in which to live. In this
way, we can ensure a promising future for humanity.
The Service
and Research Institute on Family and Children has made a start in this reversal
process by identifying and working with the smallest, yet, at the same time,
the most potent social unit- the Family.
Dr.
Catherine Bernard, MBBS, MS, India, Founder- President-Director of the Service
and Research Institute on Family and Children ( SERFAC), Chennai, India. Dr.
Catherine Bernard belongs to Congregation of Sisters of the Cross of Chavanod,
France. She is a Medical Doctor by profession and holds a post graduate degree
in Religion and Religious Education from Fordham University, New York.
Dr. John
Shea, PhD, MSW, USA: Former Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Care and Counseling,
in the School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College, Massachusetts, USA. He
has over 30 years’ experience in the field of counseling. He is an
international lecturer and speaker and has authored several books and numerous
articles that focus on spirituality, experiencing and adulthood.
Both Dr.
Bernard and Dr. Shea are contributing authors in this volume. The authors of
the other papers contained in the book are all eminent and experienced
professionals in their respective fields.
Available
at
Cambridge Scholar Publishing
PO Box 302
New Castle Upon Tyne
NE6 1WR
United Kingdom
Call us: +1 919 783 4013
Email us: orders@c-s-p.org
Three principles of human security
Three principles of human security to guide
social development: Ref: United Nation International Year of the Family 1994,
Occasional Papers Series, Families: Agents and Beneficiaries of Socio-economic
Development, No 16, 1995
Three
intersecting concepts of justice: intergenerational equity, gender equity and
social equity are used in the present paper to develop a framework concerned
with the key principles underlying human security.
Intergenerational equity
The concept of
intergenerational equity highlights the cross-generational flows of material,
emotional and cultural resources generated by families and by their work of
care and nurture in all its dimensions; for children, young people and other
family members made vulnerable by age, disability or severe illness. This contribution,
in the so-called private domain, is of such magnitude that it demands not only
reciprocal public responses in recognition of it, but also a fundamental
reconceptualization of family policies not as social expenditure but social
investment. Such policies would include family payments, health and welfare
services for women and children, recognition in the workplace of the family
responsibilities of employees and the expansion of adequately remunerated
employment for both men and women. The consequences of such a reframing would
see good family policy not as a drain on national budgets, but as social
investment and a key element of economic and social development. As such, the
three false and misleading dichotomies of : (a) the public and private spheres
of life and their social contribution; (b) independent labour force activity
and the dependency of family- based carers; and (c) economic policy and
family/social policy must be abandoned and replaced by the recognition that family-centred
policies are central to social and economic development.
It is the very
recognition of the material and symbolic value of the intergenerational work of
families, and their production of public goods that calls forth and legitimates
a public policy response in both national and international programmes of
action and social development.
Gender equity
In recent
decades, theories and practices of economic development have been challenged
for failing to serve women, especially poor women, and in so doing, missing
vital opportunities to invest fully and equitably in social development and the
well-being of all members of the population, particularly children.
The principle of
gender equity is therefore intrinsic to the rationale of placing families at
the heart of social development. Women are the major producers of the
family-based services of care and nurture as well as the contributors to all
aspects of the formal and informal sectors of the economy. Ignoring the role of
families is to obscure the work largely carried out by women in their kinship
and local networks and therefore to miss a fundamental human investment
opportunity.
Social equity
The third of the
intersecting concepts is social equity, which calls for the redistribution of
income and resources to those families whose experience of inequality is
greatest, and carries with it the most damaging consequences for the life
chances and opportunities of their children. These include families who are
unemployed, who have low incomes, who are headed by women, who are migrants and
refugees, who have been displaced by war and civil strife, or those families,
particularly indigenous families, who experience the deeply entrenched
disadvantages of discrimination.
At a systemic
level, social equity calls for measures that empower families as full
participants in the processes of economic and social life. Fundamental to such
empowerment are forms of social protection that would entrench the right to
employment and the right to an adequate income during periods of unemployment,
under-employment or withdrawal from the work force to fulfil family caring
responsibilities. The other major foundation of social protection for families
is access to secure and affordable housing. Paying proper attention to social
equity would also prompt action regarding economic policy to stimulate job
creation and growth, to establish measures to ensure that low-income families
do not bear the costs of industrial restructuring, to support women seeking to
participate in employment if that is their choice, and to address
gender-related wage differentials.
A more socially
just distribution of resources to families, and in particular to families who
are disadvantaged by social and economic processes, will only occur if strong
and sustained investment is made in the provision of employment, education and
training; affordable housing; redistributive family income support; good and
sufficient health and welfare services for families, women and children; and
services for care of the disabled and the elderly. When such investment is made
as the key input to social, economic and family development, families and their
individual members are enabled to be full participants in the life of
employment, community, politics and civil society.
The exclusion of
families from traditional economic development paradigms reveals the
limitations of ignoring a whole sphere of production. If there is no
recognition, or insufficient recognition of the contribution made by families
to social and economic development, then there are no institutional responses
that might begin to redress those inequalities in the course of life (differing
levels of economic welfare at different stages of the family life cycle), and
vertical inequalities ( inequalities of income and wealth between families).
The interactive nature of the principles of intergenerational equity, gender
equity and social equity thus dissolves the distinction, indeed the dichotomy
of private and public spheres of activity and responsibility, signaling that
the two are intrinsically interdependent.
VIOLENCE
IN THE FAMILY: (United
Nations International Year of the Family 1994, Occasional Papers Series, Family
and Crime No.3 1992)
Prevention of domestic violence is of
utmost importance. Recourse to physical force by parents on children and by
spouses when dealing with each other promotes the use of violence outside the
family.
Verbal and emotional maltreatment and
abuse can be as intimidating, demoralizing, damaging, troubling and terrorizing
as physical abuse. Verbal insults and humiliations, repeated constantly in a young
lifetime, are what socializes children into violence and sets them apart from
the other youngsters who learn quite different lessons in their family and
social interactions.
Violence causes feelings of entrapment,
degradation and humiliation. Self-blame is common to all victims of family
violence. The deleterious effect of violence in the family underscores the need
for effective preventive and treatment strategies. Once family interactions
become dominated by violent processes, the situation is difficult to alter.
However, numerous programmes around the
world prove that families can be helped even in these situations. Activities of
immediate protection and assistance include shelters, emergency telephones,
self- help and governmental groups for battered women and children, and therapy
programmes. For offenders, only limited therapeutic treatment is available.
In some countries, self-help efforts
have been the response to perceived police inactivity or insensitivity to the
occurrence of domestic violence. Numerous countries have voluntary mutual
defence groups. In one community, “habitant groups” take measures to prevent
domestic violence from escalating by placing the victim with another family for
a short period and disciplining the offender. “Neighbourhood watch” programmes
and other community self-help programmes can effectively expose and intervene
in maltreatment, diminishing the level of tolerance for it. The importance of
providing immediate protection has been borne out by cross-cultural studies
highlighting the readiness of kin and neighbours to intervene in violent or
potentially violent situations in societies with non-violent child-rearing
practices and relatively low incidences of wife battery.
Special measures have been introduced to
protect children from both domestic abuse and violence outside the home.
Examples include neighbourhood car pools organized to drive children to and
from school and extracurricular activities and the designation of certain homes
in the neighbourhood with special decals as safe houses where a child in danger
or fear may seek refuge and assistance.
What complicates the prevention of
violence is the fact that violence in the family is frequently influenced by
broader cultural patterns. Research suggests that battery in the family is
related to the general level of violence that exists in a particular society.
Violence constitutes an abuse of power. It often emerges from the desire to dominate, degrade, subjugate, possess and control others. In the long run, the promotion of human rights, better education and the improvement of the status of women are needed, as well as a change of attitude towards domination, be it sexual or any other kind. Training individuals in the dynamics of successful family relationships includes the promotion of gender equality, equality in partnership between spouses and the teaching of coping skills. The starting- point is to strengthen the strong and well- functioning aspects of families.
Available
to purchase at
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
PO Box 302
New Castle upon Tyne
NE6 1WR
United Kingdom
Call us: +1 919 783 4013
Email: orders@c-s-p.org
Thursday 19 September 2013
SERFAC's PROGRAMMES
SERFAC:
SERVICE
AND RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON FAMILY AND CHILDREN (SERFAC)
was inaugurated at the First World Congress “Family and Culture” on November 1,
1986 in Chennai, India. SERFAC was established by Dr. Sr. Catherine Bernard a
physician, and collaborators from diverse professional backgrounds from India
and the world. The entire team is committed to the well being of families:
moral, spiritual, institutional and technological crises brought on by globalization
that affects families, children, communities, nations and the global society.
Operative
Methods and Action:
SERFAC offers a platform of ‘Hope and Possibility’ to
parents, care-givers, policy makers and professionals that there are positive
and constructive alternatives to the increasing episodes of violence experienced
in society. Violence is institutionalized in nations and the world community most
of which originate from experiences of family violence and breakdown.
Therefore minimizing violence starts in the family with
focus on couples especially young couples through programmes: pre-marriage
guidance some of which focus on young adults and teenagers through educational sessions
such as on human sexuality, relationships identity etc. and for children by
educating parents in responsible parenthood.
SERFAC’s programmes are pre-emptive and pro-active i.e.
focuses on the strengths and positive rather than the problem and the
consequences eg. understanding the cause of child abuse and how it emotionally
destroys the child as a person. Consequently why a healthy family environment
is important to prevent child or domestic abuse/violence. This is done through seminars
and training programmes is educating parents on the importance of child protection is. It also explains to parents and
elders where to begin and direction to move so as to offer children of
different ages ‘safe place’ for their development.
What is explained above is one such programme. SERFAC
similarly does this in all its programmes. Build on the strengths for it
believes that building on strengths empowers people and families and
consequently minimizes violence and other related problems. This approach is diagrammatically shown in the following:
Summary
of this approach is as follows:
1. Family formation, nurturance and
socialization
a. Support
of family values, preservation and protection of culture
b. Family
Life Education and education for living.
c. Pre-marriage
Guidance (available online also)
2. Family functioning: care and
protection
a. Interpersonal
communication and guidance for marriage
b. The
gift of children- Birth regulation and natural family planning
c. Family
and career- Distinct roles and financial management.
3. Family resilience and spirituality
a. Family
stress, trauma and bereavement
b. Stressors
and pressures against family life.
c. Family,
society and globalization
4. Family support and enrichment
a. Giving
children a voice
b. Listening
c. Single
parenting
d. Nurturing
family and intervention
For further details Contact:
Dr.
Catherine Bernard
Director
SERFAC
1/157,
Manimangalam Road, Varadarajapuram
Chennai-600048
Tel:
44-64625913, 44-65150118
Tuesday 17 September 2013
Essential Economic Tasks of the Family
Essential Economic Tasks of the Family- A Business Model for
Workwhile Investment: Using the Epigenetic Model of Erik Erikson's Stages of Development.
Essential
Tasks of the Family Stages of Development
(Stages 1-4 are to be negotiated during childhood)
Nurturance Trust vs
Mistrust (negotiated in 1st year of life)
Transmission of Values Autonomy vs Shame & Doubt
(Usually in 2nd year of life)
Initiative
vs Guilt (usually between 4 & 5th years)
Transmission of Culture Industry vs Inferiority (usually
negotiated in the primary School years)
Stage 5
Identity
vs Identity Diffusion (negotiated in Adolescence)
Primary Tasks of the Family During
Stages 1-6,
Socialization
Education
Employment
Stage 6: Self Actualization
Actualization
of Adolescence/ Beginning of Adulthood Employment, Sustenance and Development
Secondary Tasks of the Family Flow from
effective living of Essential and Primary Tasks supported by Environment and
Social Support Systems.
Stages 7 & 8 : Adulthood-Generativity
vs Isolation
Emergence Responsibility,
Creativity, Productivity and sustainability of Investment- Linkages in Business
success.
SERVICE AND RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON FAMILY AND CHILDREN (SERFAC) IS ONE OF THE FEW ORGANIZATIONS IN THE WORLD WHICH WORKS WITH FAMILY AS A SOCIAL UNIT. THE PRIMARY TASK OF SERFAC IS TO REVITALIZE THE FABRIC OF THE FAMILY TO LEADING TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY.
ONE OF THE MAJOR PROGRAMMES OF SERFAC IS IN CHILD PROTECTION.
www.serfacglobal.org
www.serfac25plus.org
Defend Family
SERFAC is a conducive place for human and spiritual experience.
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