Let’s face it life is a complex system. It tough enough dealing with friends, family, work, and the activities of living. When you factor in global economies, regulations, and “well intentioned” government policies and agencies life can become a nightmare. It seems that the folks in positions of authority in Lawrence County, PA have reached a level of unintended consquences that belong in a Benny Hill sketch. The full picture is here. The short version: Pregenant women eats a bagel prior to delivery of baby. Women’s urine test comes back positive for opiates (the bagel had poppy seeds). When the woman returns home from the hospital with the baby she is met by the children’s welfare agency, and a couple of the Neshannock township’s finest. The four visitors size the three day old child and place her in foster care for 5 days before admitting a mistake and returning the child.
When I am working with systems, and data one of the biggest things that I see over and over is people taking a result and running off like Chicken Little without the most cursory of sanity checks. In this case, we what is perceived as a well intentioned law, administered by authorities in the jursidication that for probably 9x% of the cases for which it is invoked works. The child is taken from a high risk situation and placed in a marginally lower risk environment. But, folks have to use common sense. They have to look at the data and the mission before they execute it. Chances are, the last point that the team seizing the child had to make that go/no go commitment was on the doorstep of these folks home. C’mon, is it a nice place, a good neighborhood, well maintained? How much effort does it take to look around, make a judgement, huddle with the rest of the team and say, “guys, let’s take a second look at what we are doing and come back tomorrow if we still need to”.
This is just like walking out to the parking lot to your car, look around if there are three guys angling to arrive at or near your car and the hair on the back of your neck is standing up…. turn around and go back to the office or store or whatever. If your driving down the road and there are a bunch of wires running from the dead dog up ahead, get out of dodge.
Sorry – I got to ranting there. People, please use your common sense and help others around you to use theirs as well.