9.2 What Children and Families Need to Be Safe
Alexandra Olsen
Safety and stability are fundamental aspects of both Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory and First Nations perspectives on needs, which we discussed in Chapter 3. In Maslow’s hierarchy, individuals need physical safety to achieve self-actualization. Similarly, the idea of safety is inherent to First Nations ideas about meeting the community’s needs, where the safety of a community is essential to cultural perpetuity.
Maslow’s theory and First Nations perspectives show us that safety can be co-created in communities and experienced individually. Safety can be a public policy goal, such as the passage of a law increasing funding for afterschool programs. Organizations, such as services provided to people leaving abusive relationships, also create safety. In relationships, safety grows from the intense love, trust, and connection between child and parent. Finally, individuals can create safety and develop through positive childhood experiences and by learning social and emotional skills.
There are different kinds of safety that individuals, families, and communities experience:
- Physical, which includes access to resources like food and water. It also includes freedom from violence and freedom from anyone touching your body without consent.
- Psychological, which is freedom from excessive worry of physical or emotional harm. This does not mean that bad things never happen. Instead, when people have psychological safety, they feel they can openly communicate with others and find solutions to problems.
- Spiritual, which is when they feel comfortable being themselves because others acknowledge, understand, and engage respectfully with them. Spiritual safety emerges in contexts where there is mutual understanding and support.
- Communal, which is when a person has a sense of belonging and attachment to their family, broader social groups, and families. It also means that people within these social groups are free to express their culture, supported, and able to thrive in perpetuity.
This chapter will explore these kinds of safety and learn what children and families need to be safe. We will look at both macro-level and micro-level aspects. We’ll also discuss how freedom from abuse and violence is integral to creating safety but one that many families struggle to obtain. Finally, we’ll examine families’ barriers to achieving a sense of safety and how policies and communities have progressed on these issues.
Macro-Level and Micro-Level Aspects of Safety
Many factors contribute to families’ and individuals’ ability to be safe. These include macro-level factors: policies, institutions, communities, and cultures that promote safety and security. Other factors work at the micro-level to create safety and security: close relationships, social service interventions, and individuals’ social and emotional skills.
Before we look more in-depth at the macro- and micro-level factors contributing to safet