by
Roy Thorne
I
don’t really know what my parents expected of me, but when
I went to college, I met my Tutor - along with a bunch of other
first years that he was meant to keep an eye on - and he asked
us each in turn what we wanted to do by way of a job when we had
finished.
One
said he wanted to become an Anglican priest. “Ah, well,
in that case you’ll be a bishop”, the Tutor said.
The next said he was thinking of applying to join the Foreign
Office. “Ah, an ambassador”, said the Tutor. And so
on, round the room. I’m not sure where the rest ended up,
but I am sure that the Tutor was right to instil in us the self-confidence
that each of us could make his mark and achieve our goals.
Nearly
half the young people in this country go to university these days;
47%, I was told the other day. Yet of children leaving care, the
figure is a miserable 1%. That can’t be right. I’ve
heard it said that Social Workers seem to expect children in care
to leave school as soon as they can, because they see them as
people who can’t achieve, people who won’t pass exams,
or won’t be interested in trying to, members of the underclass.
What miserable expectations.
A
friend once said that the best thing she was able to give her
children was self-confidence in their early years. They knew that
they were valued, loved and wanted, and that gave them the pizzazz
to go out and do their own thing as adults.
A
lot of the young people we care for never had that start. They’ve
got a mountain to climb - or perhaps a swamp to wade through -
if they are to leave behind the abuse and the lack of love they’ve
suffered. They’ve been told, either directly or with unspoken
messages, that they’re rubbish, that they’ll fail.
Give a dog a bad name…
They
get the message that they’ll fail and they do. Unemployment.
Drugs. Failed relationships. Offending. Homelessness. Having children
of their own, to start the cycle all over again.
Our
job is to tell them they matter, that they are valued, that they
should value themselves, that they can achieve. We know that they
may fail, or that they may need to copy Bruce’s spider and
keep on trying, and trying again and again, until they do succeed.
We
can talk a lot about social work theories, or about care planning
systems, or about resources. Of course they all matter, but if
the children are to succeed it’s the commitment that counts,
that will help them climb the mountain or fight their way through
the swamp. It’s up to us as people, to get through to them
as people. We need to have great expectations for them.
“What
do you fancy being? You want to work with children? Ah, in that
case, a Director of Children’s Services!” Why not?
