To me, the heart of the issue of helping is: Is the help we give helping the person? If over time our helping has created dependency, then we have to be responsible enough to the person we are making an effort to help to revise our methods.
Recovering Enabler posted to us here once that when we resent the help we are giving, that is when we can know we are enabling unhealthy behaviors in the person we are trying to assist.
Again, given that we are the ones able to help, we are the ones who should then remain committed to developing a different strategy: What is the goal. How do we get there? What have we already tried? What can we try that is different than what we believed would work but only made everything impossibly worse?
It isn't morally correct to blame the person we are trying to help because what we have chosen to do hasn't helped them. If the problem still exists, then we need to find a better way to help. "Helping" so we feel better about ourselves, whatever is happening to the person, or to the group of people, we are committed to helping, doubly victimizes the person or group needing help.
Those having elected to help get to throw up their hands and say that despite all their wonderfulness, the person or group in question is still where they are.
We get to be wonderful, and they don't.
If there were an easy solution, the person would have done what needed to be done for himself and would never have required our assistance.
We need to hold faith with one another. If we are the ones able to help, we should do so, but we need to be responsible to the person we are helping. If something isn't working, we need to stop. Because we are the ones who can, we are the ones who need to come up with a better way.
Cedar