#care system

[thatpollguy]

Would you consider fostering a child in the future?

I have already fostered one or more children

Yes, I would consider fostering one or more children

No, but I would consider adopting a child

No, I wouldn't consider fostering or adopting a child

Voting ended onNov 21, 2025

[djuvlipen]

Romani children are disproportionately represented within the UK care system (x).

It is the exact same thing all over Europe (x).

Romani children who are put in the care system are less likely to be adopted than non-Romani children, they are more likely to spend their entire childhood in an institutional setting and to face poverty and exclusion once they turn 18 and leave the system (x).

It's not because their parents are abusive - it's often because the State and local authorities blame us for the poverty they are putting us in, holding us responsible for it and making us pay for it by taking kids away

A couple of days ago, the police barged into a Romani household and ripped five children away from their parents and manhandled them in broad daylight. They did this because one of the children had to go to the hospital and they simply assumed their parents must beat them (without opening any investigation whatsoever).

A 15 year old died trying to escape.

Romani people rioted a couple of days ago and British media has been twisting this and complaining about "a criminal minority" that has been "causing unrest" (x). Leftists and non-Romani antiracist activists have been silent because it's always fancy to oppose police brutality and racism unless it's for the Roma

[18thcenturythirsttrap]

Horrific, unregulated, and very profitable. The companies making cash from England’s children in care | George Monbiot

Councils are sending vulnerable kids to homes ran by money-grabbing cowboys and private-equity vultures, says Guardian columnist George Monb

There is no place for a “market” here. Children are not a commodity to be bought and sold. Private profit and public service are always oil and water. But if there is one service above all others that capital should never be allowed to get its filthy hands on, it is children in care.

This is a horrifying but necessary read. CW for mention of csa, child abuse and trauma.

[antonsautismlife]

What has happened since Tuesday

Since Tuesday a lot of stuff happened. As I already posted my mom told me on Tuesday that I will move into another care home than the one that was planned at first and I will move in there on 4th April.

➡️♿️🏡🆕️

I didn't react with a meltdown or crying at first but I had a lot of meltdowns in the last days and I even destroyed my phone in a meltdown on Wednesday. Luckily I had enough money in my room so the boss of the care home drove Wednesday in the afternoon to the electronics store in the next city and bought the one I wanted. Since today I also have a out door phone case the protect my phone from meltdowns.

😭🤜📱🆕️📱

On Thursday I and the boss of the care home tried to talk with the boss of the new care home on the telephone but I had a meltdown. Than he talked with her alone and he was good in advocating for my needs and that are important for me. Then my accommodations were sure (It's logical a home for disableds but disabled people have different needs so they need to be treated differently in some things.) But I still was scared because I didn't know exactly how moving will look like and how the measurements of my room will be so I couldn't plan furniture. Now I know all these stuff.

📞😭🧔🏻‍♂️💬♿️👍😨

I think the new care home will be better than my current one or at least as good as my current one.

But I'm also scared. I want to share some facts about my new care home.

- The organisation is specialised on intellectual and psychiatric disabilities (Autism is a psychiatric condition according to the Austrian system of disability categorisation.)

- The care home is in a single family house and only 5 residents live in it

- While day 3 caretakers are at the care home and 1 while night. In the night the caretaker sleeps but the residents of the care home are allowed to wake them up if they need help. That are much more caretakers than in my current one and in my current one live much more residents.

🆕️♿️🏡👍

- The care home is specialised on people with severe emotional regulation or behaviour disorders.

- I don't need to go to a special workplace / day centre at the new care home and if I want I can go but the special workplace / day centre of the organisation has only open from Monday to Thursday and only from 8 a.m to 12 p.m which is much less than my current one. (I will not go to the special workplace/ day centre at first but when I'm at the care home for a while I will talk about it with the caretakers or boss of the care home.)

- It's unfortunately much more further away of my family than my current one but I hope it will be better although these fact because the new care home is especially for people like me.

🆕️♿️🏡👍

[sunkenteethfawn]

starting of with archiving a great sunday picnic with my lovely friends. it was a sunny day, not too scorching hot but the sky was clear. we went on a picnic at a local urban park. we brought fruits, cake, and sweet beverages. we talked about life, tech industry, ex lovers, family, and we even got a quick tarot reading.

this is the kind of day that has been my "reset sunday". it never felt right for me to just stay inside at home (i couldn't process my feelings and couldn't fully rest at a place where i had to constantly in a fight or flight situation). so going out, laying on a grass and taking a power nap under the sun never fail to uplift my spirit.

i wish to talk about "taking a rest" from the hectic routine that i sometimes called life. throughout my life, i have always been in a surviving mode. things are keep happening and sometimes i dont have the control to stop them from keep happening. and yet, with so little time to process—i still have to put my mind to find a way to survive. to pay the bills, to provide food on my plate, to overthrow the government.

this body has so little time and limited space to actually rest. to actually heal. but i am heavenly blessed with people who always have time to take care of me. i am blessed to say that i am properly being taken care of by my loved ones.

i hope while you're reading this, you also in a place where you are being properly taken care of. where people notice things about you. where you're not being neglected.

[ukrfeminism]

1 in 6 new mothers ‘only given a day’s notice of care proceedings’

‘The fact this has become commonplace is deeply worrying,’ expert warns

One in six mothers involved in care proceedings over the last year were given just a day’s notice of a court hearing to decide whether their newborn child would be taken into care, according to research.

The vast majority of such women in England and Wales receive less than one week’s notice, new analysis shows.

Work by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory work also found the number of newborns being taken into care had risen dramatically in recent years. “Newborn” in this case refers to babies under two weeks old.

In England the number of newborns involved in care proceedings annually surged by 20 per cent between 2012-13 and 2019-20 – increasing from 2,425 to 2,914, the Nuffield researchers found. In Wales, the numbers shot up by 40 per cent, from 145 to 203.

Lisa Harker, director of the group, told The Independent it was hard to pinpoint a specific reason for the rise. Ms Harker, whose organisation looks at the experiences of children in the family justice system, said it was partly linked to rising poverty levels across the UK.

She added: “We certainly see a pattern of higher babies being taken into care in areas with higher rates of deprivation.

“We also know many of the mums whose babies are taken into care have serious mental health problems such as anxiety and depression which are treatable mental health conditions. Part of the explanation is the serious unmet need for mother’s mental health support and the lack of available services.”

Ms Harker warned separating a mother and her baby was “deeply traumatic for all involved” and had repercussions that lasted a lifetime.

While urgent action after a baby is born can be needed in cases where there is an “immediate safeguarding need”, there is nevertheless “widespread concern” that the volume of cases is rising, Ms Harker added.

She said: “Not only does it seem that chances are being missed to work with vulnerable mothers much earlier to give them the best chance of staying together as a family, but when that is not possible, the process is often not being managed in a sensitive or humane way.”

The study found the majority of mothers involved were left with a very short amount of formal notice. Researchers discovered more than four out of every five cases in England in the last year and three-quarters of cases in Wales were heard with less than a weeks’ notice.

Ms Harker said: “The fact this has become commonplace is deeply worrying. The legal process is very short notice. We hear directly from mums that the process is overwhelming and emotionally traumatic. It can be difficult to fully participate and understand what is going on.

“As you can imagine it is very likely to be close to the birth, so they may well be in hospital or have recently returned home, and then they have to prepare and get proper legal representation in place.”

There is “clearly a need for a national conversation” about how vulnerable families can be given greater support, Ms Harker added.

The report warned urgent hearings can make it very tricky for parents to have time to “effectively instruct a solicitor”, while the social worker who represents the child does not have a great deal of time to look into the case before making a recommendation to the court. Researchers used eight years of court data covering more than 21,000 babies in England and Wales.

Mothers living in the northeast of England and Yorkshire were substantially more likely to have a care application made for their child just after she gave birth than in London, the study found. Researchers raised fears problems with the current system could infringe the human rights of parents.

Professor Karen Broadhurst, a lead author on the report, said: “Deprivation twinned with a lack of services is a perfect storm when it comes to keeping families together.

“Earlier research has suggested that the greater availability of preventative services in London, such as mother and baby placements and the quality of legal advocacy, had resulted in fewer infant cases being issued at birth, than in the North of England or Wales.

“The greater use of short-notice hearings in England and Wales requires further analysis – I see the statistics as a first step in working collaboratively with professionals and family members alike to understand this trend and to consider whether there are alternatives to issuing care proceedings so soon after birth.”

A spokesperson for the UK judiciary said it welcomed the research, adding that it “provides a helpful statistical perspective on an area of great importance in the family courts and will be the basis of further in-depth analysis, qualitative research and review”.

The spokesperson added: “The fact that hearings take place within a short time of a child’s birth tells us nothing of what occurs at those hearings; it should not be assumed that urgent court hearings and legal orders necessarily mean separation of mother and child.

“Judges are mindful at all times of the best interests of the child and a decision to separate mother and child is taken only after examining the available evidence and considering all other options.”

—

Bolding for emphasis my own.

[pandoriasbox]

Jade’s SSO Rambles - 8 Updated Care/Bonding System

(Please keep in mind that these are my thoughts and opinions at the time of writing these rambles. I may change my mind in the future.)

Some time after I sorted out my thoughts on the current care system I took a step back and finally fit the pieces together regarding how I think a new “care” system could be implemented into SSO. Some of this is pulling from ideas for my own personal horse game concept but I don’t think that’ll be an issue. My game is intended to be a single player experience with a very different horse system to SSO’s collect ‘em all style of horse models.

We are very long overdue for a better care system and I certainly don’t blame the team for taking their time on it. I would prefer to wait over having something so integral to the game’s core be rushed and sloppy. I just hope that I can toss my own two cents in and propose some decent ideas that might help facilitate a better experience.

A final additional note before I begin, I do have ideas for how to expand on the care skill I will be lightly brushing over but I plan on doing a separate ramble on it. Primarily it involves some suggestions for improving the skill and making it more useful and interesting than its current implementation and expanding on ideas for the Rescue Ranch and Jorvik Rangers.

Regardless of System Adjustments (From Previous Ramble)

Remove designated care areas (stable interior, outside of stables, ranch rp areas, ect) and let the player do basic care actions such as brushing, hoof picking, watering and feeding anywhere.

Remove the loading bar and just play the animations as well as remove the blinking/fading black screens. If necessary clip the player into place like when mounting and simply let them move from where they are after the animation. (Unless it could cause issues with players clipping through walls.)

Keep a simplistic means of doing horse care for roleplay and accessibility. (I don’t think the mini games are a bad idea but I think something simple that is a single click or click and drag with animations should be kept in.)

Bonding System Overview

Horses do not need daily care to maintain happiness which is removed along with the debuffs for not caring. Any care performed instead builds up the horse’s “bond” with the player. Bond does not give buffs to speed or anything that actively affects racing or PVP gameplay. Bonding is also earned by actively interacting with the horse. Your current ridden horse does not lose bonding even when dismounted.

The bond level is only decreased while the player is in game and not actively riding the horse. I would argue that technically horses in the pasture should be allowed to maintain their bond level and only horses kept active in the stable should be affected. (Pasture horses are resting and this would allow players to build up bond with their sometimes 100+ horses without feeling punished for having so many.)

Having high bonding with a horse primarily affects the player when they are actively riding the horse. This could result in bonuses such as earning more horse experience, getting a boost to endurance/horse HP and maybe your horse even can randomly find items for you. I also like to think if potions were added to the game that those (and visual effects like powders) could have extended use on high bonded horses.

Benefits

Treats/Feed Boosts

Increased Bond (Points)

Speed Boost

Agility Boost

Jump Boost

Endurance/HP Boost

High Bonding Benefits

Boost to Horse Exp

Higher Endurance/Horse HP

Horse Randomly Finds Objects

Potions and Powder Effects Last Longer

In general I think switching to a “bonding” system is far more friendly to all players but especially children. It avoids this idea of abusing your horses if you don’t care for them and that your actions could cause unhappiness for your animals. It also removes the guilt of not paying for stable care and as I mentioned in my other care ramble allows players to spend more money on buying more horses without feeling guilt of getting additional horses.

This system would also make it easier to manage large amounts of horses and make it more enjoyable to switch between all of them. For me I generally feel trapped into only riding a few at a time because I cannot afford stable care. That means I either plan out who I ride or suffer through a heavily debuffed horse since both stable care and vets are too expensive and I personally don’t have the time to care for more than 5 horses.

The suggestions I will bring up could give players better means to interact with their horses and control their play style, adding more to how players think about interacting with the game while still giving them reasons to log in often. At the same time though players aren’t being punished (or technically rewarded) for not playing the game either.

Loss of Bond and Freezing Bond Level

Loss of bonding over in game time only occurs on horses who are stabled and not pastured or not your currently ridden horse.

While the player is in game stabled horses’ bond levels will slowly decrease. This can be paused for the day by doing any action that increases bonding. (For example just running around and petting or feeding each stabled horse once is enough.) When the server ticks over to the next day the bond will begin decreasing again while the player is in game. It’s best to do this as soon as you jump on to play to freeze the horse’s current bonding level.

For players who do not wish to actively interact with each horse I believe having a feeding system (not unlike Amelia’s idea for a silo) would work well as an automated bonding action to freeze your background bonding loss. I will go into this more later in the rambles but it would activate with server rollover and not require the player to initiate it so they can have hands free care without requiring SC.

Bond loss due to time in the stable unridden should not be a rapid loss, it should take around 3-4 days worth of not caring for your horse at all while playing the game to completely lose bond level. Bonding should be able to be relatively quickly increased but require more effort to do so faster.

Whenever your actively ridden horse is injured to the point of having no HP left that will reduce bond level by quite a bit. You put your horse in harm’s way and did not protect them therefore they feel less of a bond with you. Whenever your horse is injured enough to remove HP that may also slightly decrease bond as well.

Increasing Bonding

Primarily bond would be improved via interacting with your horse with the main ways being feeding, watering, grooming, petting and racing/training. When racing/training bond is gained (and any bonus exp is earned) with the horse whom you turn it in with.

I think a new feeding system should be implemented along with this idea where instead of doing “stable care” and paying SC to activate it the player has the option to use their feed room to craft food for their horses and choose a feeding schedule for them. Scheduling feed would be similar to stable care where the player simply picks how many days they’d like it active and can cancel the current feed (while keeping in mind they won’t get anything in return for doing it.) The amount of feed needed increases along with how many days the player’s horses will be fed. This should not be affected by the stable size or number of horses in the stable however.

Horse feeding would only apply to horses currently stabled and not affect pastured horses. Doing a mass stable feed allows the player to either choose between doing a basic feed to maintain bond (increasing it by 1pt) or to apply bonuses such as improving how much bonding it provides or adding boosts to stats.

Feed can be obtained via either crafting it (free but more effort) or purchasing it from a food vendor with shillings or SC. Standard feed can be bought with JS or SC but specialized feeds might require SC. All food can be crafted but not everything can be purchased. Crafting requires more effort on the player’s part as they need to collect the ingredients in the world (or save some from events such as free food from the Winter Village. Or maybe we could have our own farms and gardens someday.)

Any stat boosts should be relatively small however and not able to stack. If there is stacking it should only be with different boosts. For example if a player has a horse on a feed that boosts speed then feeding them a treat that boosts speed should not add more speed. However the horse in speed boosting feed could have a treat that boosts jump. Potentially they could be fed multiple treats but only be buffed once per stat.

In addition to feed I think having craftable treats would be wonderful for expanding horse care and adding more a personalized experience. If trading is ever implemented players could sell or gift horse food they made to others. Even without trading this could be a small way for players to make money and convert materials they find in the world into shillings through the effort of crafting.

When feeding your horse however there should be a limit and using feed counts as one point of feeding for that day. The player can continue feeding their horse treats but after say 5 feedings they no longer boost your horse’s bonding. This may also be something to keep in mind with grooming where doing the main grooming actions only give bonding once per day but can be performed countless times. (Such as brushing, hoof picking and using the wash stall.)

I also think it might be cute if your horse has a preference for a specific kind of food each day which is randomized. If you can guess what type of food it is (like a treat with apples in it or just apples) then it could give an extra bonding bonus. I wouldn’t go with horses having perma favorite foods because I know I personally like to imagine my horses liking certain things then I feel disappointed if they don’t follow my idea in game. This also could encourage players to try feeding their horses a variety of treats as well, encouraging them to find and create each recipe.

Horse Food and Recipes

I think starting out the player should have access to some basic options such as being able to feed their horse a few standard food (+1, +3 or +5 bonding effect per day for feed or per treat) and maybe a basic speed boost recipe for feed and treats.

For advanced recipes the player will need to complete mini quests and befriend/increase reputation with the NPCs or groups around Jorvik. For example, after helping Ed Field fix up the inn and revive it he has enough rep with you that he decides to give you a nutter butters weird horse treat or feed recipe. Other options could be a questionable but safe smoothie from Tim or Jamie Olivetree giving you a horse biscuit recipe that with some tweaking the player is able to figure out how not to burn to a crisp. Marly’s family could give rewards unique to each of them including his sister offering a gourmet one.

These recipes would be unlocked following a mini quest given by the NPC and then become permanently available in the crafting part of the feed room. In general it’s a nice way to both give players more reasons to interact with the world and reward those who get invested in it. It also helps flesh out the NPCs and the world we are living in while adding some more holistic aspects. To me it would feel like I’m truly making friends and finding a home in the world of Jorvik through small things such as NPCs appreciating my help so much they gift or help me out in turn. This would also be something that requires the player to work for the more “powerful” items in the game AKA the ability to properly buff your horse outside of tack.

Quick Care Skill Notes

I think I will leave an in depth discussion on improving the care skill to another ramble but I wanted to cover a few ideas and how they might factor into this new bonding system

Players with higher care skill would have automatic bonuses applied to their bonding with all of their horses. For example let’s say every 5 levels of care the player gains an extra +1 with all bonding increases. A player at level 1-4 in care would receive no benefit, one at level 5-9 would get +1 and 10-14 would get +2 and so on. So if brushing only gave +1 bonding usually then a player at level 10 would get +3 bonding with their horse.

If more aspects were added to horse health and we were able to heal our horses with bought/crafted first aid kits then having high care could result in both gaining more bond back as well as improving how much your horse is healed.

Potentially a player with high care skill could have a chance of producing better quality feed and treats with a basic treat that normally only gives +2 could have a 25% chance of being boosted to a higher quality such as giving +5 bond instead.

Overall I’m incredibly happy with what I was able to come up with and even if none of this makes it into the game I do hope that my discussion can help inspire the team or anyone else who reads this when it comes to thinking critically about game systems. I do hope it helps with brainstorming and thinking about how to address interconnected systems within SSO itself though and can provide some benefit to the team. 

Silo idea mentioned can be found in Amelia and Leila’s interview! I also want to mention that the recipes idea was most likely pitched to me by my friends but I apologize for not recalling who as both @sso-ali-archdotter and @centeris2 have been integral to helping me flesh this idea out and I want to thank them profusely for listening to my endless jumbled rambles. 

I also hope you all enjoyed reading through my thoughts on a bonding system and found it intriguing! Let me know if you have any thoughts by leaving a reply, reblog or ask! Likes are always welcome as well and thank you for taking the time to read through this huge discussion!

[noodlesandwiches]

So to all you pro-life/anti abortion/every life matters people out there; how many young vunerable people have you taken out of your local care system and welcomed into your home?