Re: Virtual Services for Children

[Dorothy Forbes <df20@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just some thoughts...
1)  A website may give the false impresssion that counseling is widely
available and easily accessible.  In fact, it will only be available to
children who have a computer available to them--and whose caretakers make
it available.
Are  access sites envisioned within schools?
2)  What about security (from perpetrators/voyeurs)?
3) A child's successful utilization of this program will depend upon the
child's literacy and the ability to express ideas, feelings, thought
processes.   "Computer counselling" would be used by the brightest/most
highly skilled children --and the children who already have considerable
resources available to them.   What about children who lack these abilities
and resources?
4) Children from low-income families may not be able to participate.  Money
will be needed for a computer, internet connection/provider, etc....  How
could these funds be provided (if access is to be home-based?)
5)  If these children are already isolated (in some sense) from nurturing,
supportive adults, isn't there a risk of extending and supporting this
deprivation by replacing human caring and warmth with a "cyber-friend"?
(The thought that a child might eventually come to believe that making
positive contacts with the human/everyday world is adequately accomplished
through a machine--or that (essentially) anonymous contacts are the
best/safest--is scary).
6)There is a real potential of unaware/unchallenged manipulation of these
children, despite all good motives.
I'd be interested in hearing how these questions could be resolved...
Dorothy

Dorothy Hathway Forbes, M.A.S.S.
Family Life Development Center
283 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall
NYS College of Human Ecology, Cornell University
Ithaca, NY, 14853
E-mail:  df20@cornell.edu
Tele:  (607) 254-5450
Fax:  (607) 255-8562
"Twenty Five Years of Strengthening Families and Communities"