Institutional abandonment

The media nowadays often bombards us with stories about a phenomena that we generally refer to as abandonment , this term is used in different contexts to suggest the idea of departure , the brake of a vital link between two entities , it can be about a parent that abandoned his child and so on .Themes that describe child abandonment are very spread in the media , but if we analyze more this concept of abandonment don't we come to the conclusion that we narrowed it original meaning ? 

What dose it mean to be abandoned nowadays? Dose this concept apply only in the context of person to person relationships? 

Can't we talk about abandonment when we are referring to institutions and the relations that they have with their clients/service costumers ? Dose institutional abandonment only apply to public institutions? We can define abandonment as the intentional ending of a relationship between two people , a group and a individual , a group and a other group , a institution and a individual or a institution and a group , where one of the sides had the obligation to care and overlook after the other . 

The relationship that the sides have is characterized by a  constant exchange of information which benefited the construction of a productive link between the sides that would have a future positive impact on both of them. 

When we talk about abandonment it is important to notice that the sides that take part in this relationship don't share a similar status , one of the sides must have a higher status then the other that will subordinate to it . 

The one with the higher status will have the obligation instituted by law or social norms to care ,protect and help the other side to have a healthy development over a certain period of time . 

Abandonment is the abusive brake of this connection by the side with the higher status , such phenomena is regulated and sanctioned by both judicial and social norms. As I said , abandonment is often linked to parents-children relationships , this perspective is largely debated today in the scientific community and it takes a special interest for those who work in  social work. 

But can we validate the concept of institutional abandonment as a meaningful concept? In order to make this concept valid with must state that it can be applied only to public institutions and ones with a law regulated mission to satisfy certain needs of the communities in which they operate. Their main goal not being that of gaining financial results over their activity and the services that they provide to be of general interest . By law this institutions have the duty to satisfy certain needs of the communities in which they operate which are o general interest .

 Commercial societies , on the other hand , don't have duty of providing services of general interest , their main focus are target groups and the generation of good financial results. Institutional abandonment is characterized by a number of factors :

1. illegal aspects - when a public institution refuses to  do its duties that are regulated by the national legislation it defies its status , the consumers and the state authorities with a superior status which analyze its activity.

2. decrease of the institution's representation role for a group/community/society - this can have very negative effects at a social level , when institutions with high symbolic and representative statuses such as city halls or embassies labeled as incompetent or corrupt it triggers very negative feedback from the society because they represent the people and they are holders and ambassadors of the national culture , having to highlight the most positive aspects from a society to the international community.

3. A brake of the communication channel that the local communities have with the central power -A blockage at the local level can be the effect of corruption at the central level and it can be meant to hide all sorts of illegalities and eventual information leaks . 

4.Lack of trust in the political class's power .

5. Handling complex social issues on their own - Example : In cases where the locals have problems with organized crime and don't trust the local police to handle the phenomena often they get organize in groups and they have face to face battles with the criminal bands. 

Institutional abandonment can be defined not only by the lack of interest of the public institutions towards the need of the consumers , it can be also characterized by very low quality services that lack any kind of efficiency that result from intentional actions.

 A good example can be public schools where teachers don't come to classes or don't respect the national curriculum that results in low scores at national and local evaluations. 

As a conclusion we can state that institutional abandonment is a concept that can be apply only to public institutions or NGOs , structures that have the legal duty to care upon the citizens from a community and to satisfy their general needs trough public services , it is characterized by the systematic and conscious lack of communication , secrecy and very low service quality which many times have a source institutional corruption , the short time effect of it is the exiting of the state's regulatory and normative power from the life of local communities which can lead to serious social unbalances .