In the thick wood of course work

Taking a break to write in my blog.  I've spent all morning concentrating on Social and Legal Issues in Childcare.  As part of this module (unit 3 Child Protection) I have to fill in a sample form reporting child abuse which led me to investigating who is the principal social worker in navan and who is the public health nurse in the area where I work.  I found telephone numbers but I will have to call on Monday to find out the names.  I've also been reading about the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Equal Status Act 2000 which come under the section of equality in childcare (unit 4).  Both acts outlaw discrimination on nine distinct grounds:

1) Gender

2) Family status

3) Marital status

4) Age

5) Disability

6) Sexual orientation

7) Religion

8) Race

9) Membership of the traveller community

Task 2 of my assignment will see me investigating my own work place, evaluating it in relation to child protection and equality.  In Task 3 I have to write an overview of the childcare sector and discuss one aspect of social policy.  I will probably write about the E.C.C.E. scheme which came into operation in January of this year.

Then onto the final module, Supervision.  The deadline for submission of my folder is Friday August 6th. 

I've been printing out a lot of useful templates but I'm finding the use of questionnaires a little bitty in gathering information.  I will of course want to read back over all of my work to correct it and make it the best it can be considering the fact that I've not had as much time as I would have liked to have had to spend on it

It is also difficult to sit down and concentrate, focusing on what each assignment is asking me to answer.  I do seem to find that I need to understand each topic as best I can before answering.  Hmm it's back to reading, sifting and organising I think now. 

Off topic I see that Michael Farry has been commended in the iYeats Poetry Competition, well done Michael! and Kate Dempsey will be the featured reader in the Whitehouse Bar, Limerick this Wednesday!  I read a poem in the Whitehouse last year which I had published in Revival poetry journal.  It's a nice spot.  Kate was a featured reader at the Boyne Readings earlier in the year and I reviewed her Good Sherry Trifle Pamphlet in the past.  It would be interesting to hear her read again.  Michael is working on the next issue of Boyne Berries magazine.  The next Boyne Writers meeting will take place on Thursday 5th August.

Good Sherry Trifle

"True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings."

I spent some time this evening reading Kate Dempsey's poetry pamphlet Good Sherry Trifle which Michael Farry passed on to me at the last Boyne Writers meeting.

The first poem I was attracted to was The Flight of Swallows as I love the physical form of the swallow and have they returned yet this year?  It is horrible to see a bird flying into glass:

"...And she's flown so far

from that baked Sahara fringe,
to this cold north; all so pointless - breaking

on my frayed-sash window.  And me,
my mouth again a soundless O."

By Strawberry Beds is a fresh and energetic piece with great description of Dublin City:

"The Chapelizod ponies drink, heads shaggy to the water;
they examine their reflections,
flicking their manes like schoolgirls."

Each verse in this poem offers something within it so you'll just have to look it up for yourself.

While it Lasted leaves me thinking.  I'm not quite sure what the poem means yet, maybe I'll read it again and again sometime and I will understand it more. 

The Light Fantastic offers a comical and unusual picture of cows in the countryside.  It is too a very good poem.  This image in the first verse is lovely:

"a heavy pause rested
like the silence on an empty beach
after a surfer's wave."