The most vulnerable group in society

It always worries me that children by law are vulnerable until 16 (for most legal purposes) then overnight they become adults & are assumed, especially young men, to be among the most hardy groups in society.
There are lots of 14 year olds who are pretty clued up, well-supported & wouldn't consider they needed extra protection. Then there are the 17 & 18 year-old care leavers (for example) who might not have any supportive adults in their life or much experience of a "normal" home life, who will be vulnerable to exploitation while they work it all out.
I agree "vulnerable" is over-used generally.

Totally agree with you. The word 'vulnerable' has been weaponised and devalued. It now means nothing, merely that there is a pressure group behind a particular group of people.

I think the term vilnerable was high jacked long ago by various factions, and seems to have really lost its meaning.

Lots bandwagon jumping, poir me and me as well

Maybe we need to redefine what we mean by this term and use diffrent words and adjectives which neet an agreed criteria

Food for thought ?

I think children under the age of around 10 are particularly vulnerable. Not saying young teenagers aren’t, of course, but at least they are able to express their views and feelings to a certain extent.

nanna8

Perth is very isolated and they were very lucky with that. We had a really awful premier over in Victoria, I could cheerfully have throttled the so and so ( along with most of us here )

Indeed! A young relative had to be escorted by armed police to visit her dying father in hospital.

And Queensland was just as bad.

WA did not allow mothers to accompany sick babies to hospital. It was very distressing for both mothers and babies.

Totally agree anotherbirdlady

Assume the polar opposite to anything Carole Malign says ... therefore the answer is children.

I think that there are both vulnerable cohorts of people, for example Care Leavers, imo, having worked with, are a very vulnerable group, bar a few if the luckier ones. Then there are vulnerable individuals throughout society in many different, diverse groups from children, to the very elderly, the disabled to the very cash strapped.

That’s my own opinion anyway, just based on my life experiences.

It was state by state management in Australia, which makes sense given the size of the country. WA closed its borders early and firmly, which was the saving grace I think, well done them. My BIL had to come back to the UK part way through as his dad was seriously ill, and he had to have quarantine in a hotel for two weeks when he got back to Perth, but it was worth it.

Perth is very isolated and they were very lucky with that. We had a really awful premier over in Victoria, I could cheerfully have throttled the so and so ( along with most of us here )

It depended where in Australia you were though nanna8. Our family in Perth kept us all going with their tales of living an almost normal life, with just a few week long long shut downs, we asked them to post regular pictures of what they were up to so we could see normal life.

You wouldn’t have wanted to live here during the pandemic. We were not allowed to go more than 5 km from our houses and couldn’t meet anyone outside one designated person for over a year.
I’d say little children,too. Also people with a disability who have cognitive impairment. Medically it is different,of course.

During the pandemic I was still below retirement age. My job was as a Learning Support Assistant in a secondary school. We were all working from home, but contacting some of our special needs students by email weekly to check on their wellbeing. There were rotas for working in school in person, supervising the children of key workers and some of our special needs students got doorstep visits by staff who voluteered. I was not put on the rotas for the key worker children, and despite volunteering, was told I coudn't do doorstep visits either as I was classed as vulnerable. This was because I was over 60 and diabetic. However I was doing doorstep visit to friends and going for walks with friends in the open air at various times, always within government guidelines. I didn't consider myself vulnerable! I was doing my own supermarket shopping, joining the socially distanced queues every few days.

I complained, and was eventually added to the rota for one single session! I was due to retire in the summer of 2020 but decided to delay until the October half term as I wanted to see my colleagues again and have some sort of send off into retirement. No-one suggested I shoudn't return to school that September despite the fact that we were dealing with crowded corridors of students who wouldn't wear their masks properly - far more risky than anything I'd been 'protected from' during spring and summer.

The problem was lumping everyone over 60 with any sort of condition into the 'vulnerable' category. Yes the term 'vulnerable' is overused!

The phrase 'vulnerable' is a trigger phrase used by special interest groups to emotional blackmail other people to prioritise them over everybody else.

It is a word that has lost all meaning, like a blown egg.

Where is the confusion? I guess protection isn't offered to groups who are not threatened, but it has been spelt out that some members of those groups are not vulnerable at all.

In a Venn Diagram of someone's life they might be in a group marked vulnerable in some intersections, but not in others, if that makes sense. So the person isn't vulnerable per se, but in certain circumstances they may be.

I am wondering whether there is some confusion here between vulnerable and protected groups. When we talk safeguarding we having several protected groups included the ones mentioned in the OP and yes they are all considered vulnerable. Carers is another group.

AnotherBirdLady

Obviously children are vulnerable by virtue of their powerlessness, but the vast majority of them have powerful protectors and advocates in the form of their parents, wider family and even society in general. In my opinion, the most vulnerable in society are adults who, by virtue of physical or mental disability, whether associated with age or not, are just "hanging on" with little or no support. The person who falls in their home and is unable to call for help. The mentally ill person who starves to death because their benefits are cut off. People without a family network as a safety net. As welfare services are cut to the bone this group is getting larger.

You make an excellent point there.👏🏻👏🏻

Jockytaff

To Doloki - is the 'g' on your keyboard broken?

I was wonderin’ about that 😁

You won't get any argument from me about the way language is being used to obfuscate and remove nuance. I think it's very dangerous.

As I said in the OP I think that when we accept a concept such as that a group is 'the most vulnerable in society' it becomes impossible (or difficult) to criticise them, or to suggest that some may be capitalising on that definition without being assumed to be uncaring. We saw that writ large on trans threads on here.

I think vulnerability was fairly tightly defined during Covid. Only certain conditions qualified. I agree that self-interest showed through though. I well remember a spat on my local FB page between a young mum and an older woman. The young mum had very small children and no car, and was used to getting regular grocery deliveries, which continued during the pandemic. The older one was affronted by this as (despite having shopped for her own until lockdown) expected to bump a regular customer off the list to be given a slot. She kept saying she was vulnerable, and accusing the young woman of not caring about vulnerable people, but because she was in her 60s with no qualifying medical conditions she wasn't deemed to be vulnerable and didn't get one, which I think was fair (assuming what was said on FB was true).

Cabowich
Good post.

Ilovecheese

I consider small children to be the most vulnerable in society, with absolute conviction.
They have no voice and no power of any kind.

Absolutely right!

I agree with GrannyGravy13 when she says 'I think vulnerable is a word bandied around so much nowadays that it’s becoming meaningless'.

Its use became prolific during covid. I could not believe the number of previously fit people who declared themselves to be vulnerable. Because of reasons such as their age, the fact they'd broken their wrist, or even because they had to catch a bus or train. People seemed to compete over who was most vulnerable.

It is the word of the decade. Followed closely by unprecedented. I'm amazed by all these unique events we are experiencing.

The favourite phrase by politicians seems to be Let me be clear. When I hear that, I feel the last thing I am going to get is clarity.

Not that I'm cynical. I am veering off topic, though, so will shut up.

Most children have loving parents, but a lot of elderly don’t have anyone, so I would say elderly are vulnerable to neglect, abuse, scammers, etc.

I’ve been thinking on this, to me the most vulnerable are the unseen, they only come to light during or after a tragedy.

Obviously children are vulnerable by virtue of their powerlessness, but the vast majority of them have powerful protectors and advocates in the form of their parents, wider family and even society in general. In my opinion, the most vulnerable in society are adults who, by virtue of physical or mental disability, whether associated with age or not, are just "hanging on" with little or no support. The person who falls in their home and is unable to call for help. The mentally ill person who starves to death because their benefits are cut off. People without a family network as a safety net. As welfare services are cut to the bone this group is getting larger.