Good Intentions

Good intentions aren't good enough. Those who are granted responsibility always have the best intentions, because they don't need to take responsibility. Professionalism ensures that they never have to put their own neck on the line, it means that so long as they follow the formula for interaction with a child, they can never be held personally accountable, and everything they do for better or worse is with "the best intentions." This is probably most true for social workers, but could also extend to anyone who has been given a role of responsibility over a child. Those who act on good intentions do such because they don't have to act on good works.

The term good intentions, or best intentions, is a meaningless platitude. All it means is that someone intended on doing the right thing regardless of the outcome. If the outcome is that an innocent person is murdered, does it really matter if the culprit, in their own minds, had the best intentions for doing the murder? After a family has been split up by the state in a case where no abuse or neglect has been observed, where only the social worker's personal prejudice is the deciding factor, should their best intentions grant them immunity to the harmful effects they've caused? Should vigilantes be let off the hook for harassing the current occupants of houses that used to be owned by registered sex offenders, just because they had the best intentions?

Someone who decides to love a child openly doesn't get the benefit of the doubt though, nor should they, or anyone else. If an independent agent steps over the line in a child's life and begins to impose, it doesn't matter what their intentions were. A CL's best intentions are not considered by society, nor should they be, only their outcomes, and neither should society's "best intentions" be granted as excuses for its own inadequacies.