• There are many governmental and bureaucratic barriers that make gentleness hard, not impossible, but unnecessarily difficult. Some of these are:
  • Congregating large numbers of people together so that warm relationships are hard to establish,
  • Looking for ways to control instead of to nurture,
  • Using behavior modification analysis and planning as the be-all-and-end-all of what we must do,
  • Training caregivers in practices that are perceived as violent —the use of physical management, chemical restraint, and punishment-based intervention,
  • Writing policies that encourage congregation, segregation, and control rather than interdependence, companionship, and community, and
  • Pushing people into independence without needed support systems.