a monthly column from members of
SIRCC
This
month’s column is from
Max Smart
Max
Smart is a residential unit manager who works for East Lothian
Council
For the sake of Ryan
Ever
had one of these moments with young people, when they pipe up
and say, “I hated you when I first came in (to the residential
unit) but I quite like you now?” I’m sure most child
and youth care workers have. It’s an enlightening moment;
a confirmation that sometimes staff and kids have been on a simultaneous
journey of getting to know one another.
I
had one of these moments recently, with an angry 14 year old lad
we’ll call Ryan, who, over the previous six month period,
had begun, just begun, to feel safer in his world. Prior to this
he had been hostile to adults, keeping them at a distance, seeking
to prove that just like every other adult he’d known, you
would let him down, reject him or hurt him, just like those who
had come before.
Now
this isn’t a happy-ever-after tale; this young man still
has many trials and tribulations to encounter before he is able
to feel emotionally healthy again. I hope to travel some of the
road with him, to support, encourage and connect further, but
I recognise that the road ahead will be rocky. The thing that
might make the journey bearable for Ryan might be the embryonic
relationships he is forming, and the trust in himself and others
he is developing. To youngsters in Ryan’s situation the
world is a hostile place, and trusting others to keep you safe
and secure is a luxury ill-afforded. Ryan has learned through
bitter experience to rely purely on himself.
Relationships
are supposed to be the life blood of residential care, yet many
youngsters in residential environments report that they continue
to feel disconnected from adults, including those providing care.
Forming safe and secure connections with young people must be
viewed as a fundamental goal of the art of care.
Larry
Brendtro (1969) referred to disaffected youth, as “relationship
resistant” children with no reason to trust adults. Brendtro
noted, “Many of these youths seemingly could not care less
about obtaining the adult’s approval or disapproval. They
appear immune to the usual social rewards of praise, attention,
smiles, as well as the usual social punishments of disapproval,
scoldings and frowns”. Writers such as Brendtro may have
penned this description in 1969, but it bears a remarkable resemblance
to a description of “Ryan’s World” 2005.
Brendtro
and others come from the child and youth care (CYC) tradition
in North America, an approach I believe offers some insights into
residential practice in the UK today. I first encountered the
writings of exponents of the CYC tradition such as Larry Brendtro,
Al Trieschman, Fritz Redl, Henry Maier, and Thom Garfat, on the
MSc. in Advanced Residential Child Care at the University of Strathclyde
in Glasgow. I have been inspired by their thinking and I want
to share some of it here. Thom Garfat’s writings have particularly
interested me and his observations about child and youth care
training in Canada has particular resonance with the appropriateness
of social care training here.
Garfat
(1998) noted that “Child and youth care workers received
no formal training in child and youth care practice – on
how to do what it is they were employed to do”. In my experience
the same could be said for residential social work training in
the United Kingdom, and it is this lack of appropriate training
that leads to a lack of understanding about how important safe
adult-to-child and child-to-adult connection is. De Civita (2003)
describes connectedness as the experience of “strong,
reliable interpersonal relationships”, and it is these interpersonal
relationships that workers should seek to create.
So how do we connect with youngsters who usually have had the
roughest deal in life? First we need to be patient. We need to
understand concepts like that of the rituals of encounter
(Fulcher, 2003), through which caring adults attune and pick up
on the needs of vulnerable youngsters and convey “appropriate
messages to strengthen purposeful communication”.
We
need to scan the horizon with our relationship radars, actively
seeking points of connection and interest, it could be anything,
a song, a computer game (whether it interests us or not), a board
game, the “What football team do you support?” question,
anything that engages you without threat or authority in the youngster’s
life.
Connection
could even be found in a task as simple as straightening a youngsters
bed, something that creates a dialogue between you and the youth,
something that “two can join in mutual interaction that
is positive and relationship building” Maier (2003).
Secondly, we should start each shift with new hope. Renewed hope
for and in young people is important, a belief in the concept
that every day is new Gannon (2004). In a world where youngsters
usually come into residential care with a list of previous failures
in their lives stapled to their background reports why should
we be surprised when the youngster loses hope in themselves or
others as to anything ever being different?
Hope
is a connecting mechanism, which can lead to relatedness. Ricks
(2003) notes that, “It is through relatedness that I’m
touched, celebrated, rejected, enlivened, hurt, come to love,
and am known by myself and others.”
Residential
workers should seek out hope and hopeful messages for and with
young people. We need to open the communication channels to convey
hope of possible change and to offer emotional alternatives to
youth, even when a youngster has been rejecting of us. To start
the next shift with a mood of optimism that things can be different
today is a clear message of a spirit of hope that can be contagious.
Thirdly,
we should combine the “hanging in and the hanging out”
with troubled youngsters, (Garfat, 2003). Hang in there, when
times are tough, not taking the easy route to reject and to seek
another resource. Garfat (1999) describes this aspect of quality
child care as “staying the course, not giving up, and staying
committed”. The cogent message to a youngster is “that
you are worth more, that our actions are motivated by our wish
to care for you and to continue caring for you, to keep you safe
until this troubled period is past”. This message is so
tangible to young people in adversity, as Garfat puts it, “when
someone says – we believe in you and then proves it through
their actions it acts as a bridge between the adult world and
that of the child.”
And finally, to hang out with youngsters in our care, to seek
connection and interest in their worlds can equally foster the
child’s interest in yours. So for the sake of the Ryans
of this world, let’s continue to seek out those connections
that let us into one another’s worlds, and maybe, just maybe,
create the start of a sense of belonging that has previously been
absent.
References
Brendtro,
L. (1968) in Trieschman, Whittaker, J.K. A. & Brendtro, L.
(1969) The Other 23 Hours Aldine de Gruyter, New York.
pp. 52-53
De
Civita, M. (2000) Promoting Resilience. A Vision of Care.
Reclaiming Children and Youth Volume 9, No.2. p.78
Fulcher,
L. C. (2003) Rituals of Encounter that Guarantee Cultural Safety
Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, Volume 16, Issue 3,
pp. 20-23
Garfat,
T. (1998) The Effective Child and Youth Care Intervention:
A Phenomenological Inquiry
Garfat,
T. (1999) Hanging – In : Editorial : Relational Child
and Youth Care Practice
Gannon,
B. (2004) Every Day is New Child and Youth Care, Volume
22 No.4
Maier,
H.W. (2003) Why Doing is Preferential to Talking The
International Child and Youth Care Network. Issue 54
Ricks,
F. Charlesworth, J., Bellefeuille, G. & Field, A. (1999) All
Together Now: Creating a Social Capital Mosaic The Vanier
Institute of the Family.
Many
of these ideas and the works of the writers referenced here can
be found on cyc-net.org
