Hidden Deprevation - Hidden abuse

To Elizabeth today for church with Ruth and Neil the job share priests and their children Christina and Hamish. Elizabeth is an interesting place, it was developed in the 1950’s as a new town on the same model as those in Britain with the promise of employment and the development of new factory sites. Most of the people who came to Elizabeth were immigrants and the brighter ones quickly developed and moved out as did the businesses. Like many new towns in Britain it is now regarded as a deprived area. It is one of the poorest communities in South Australia although it doesn’t appear so as the housing stock is quite good and the public realm, standard but good. Ruth explains that the depravation is all behind doors where there are third generation unemployed. I wonder if this makes it better or worse for the people of Elizabeth?
The congregation was an interesting mixture including some of the newer inhabitants of Elizabeth town a family from Burundi who were identified as refugees. I talked to one lady who worked for Anglicare in Barossa as an outreach worker in domestic violence. It seems that one in four people in Australia has experienced domestic violence, so the depravation really is hidden. She talks about how Anglicare works on one year contracts and how difficult that is for the workers but helpful for the organisation in that it can easily move on those not suited to the work. Interestingly she said the one year contracts were also difficult for the clients who find that people come into to the area to help and are then moved on. So many people had come and gone with programs to help or to challenge that the first thing people always asked in Barossa was: “When are you leaving?”
So much then of what’s going wrong is hidden away and so much of the help that is given or available is hidden too.
For the church here much of what has been hidden is now being brought into public everywhere i go people mention the Paedophile scandal that has been rocking the churches. At the moment the Pope is here and has sort of apologised. The anglican church and the government appear to have made a better job of it and now as far as I can see are being exmplorary in their practises.
I wonder whether regeneration projects can be designed to go beyond the surface to reach the hidden pockets of derprevation in our communities in Yorkshire? Can you design a community so that abuse is harder to take place?
Perhaps if we get better at being community we might not say as they are here: "We would have stopped it, if only we had known."