Can we learn from Community-based care in Africa?.

In "those" days large groups of boys slept and lived shoulder to shoulder in crowded downstairs dormitories. the girls, the same, one floor up. 15 - 20 in a dormitory wasn't unusual . Mass dining for 60 or more  was in the basement.

The move to group homes was seen to be a better therapeutic option but largely resented by the dormitory dwellers who feared a loss of anonymity. But there you are... small is beautiful in child care.

Either way, dormitory or small group living , child and youth care workers were to be very skilled in therapeutic and developmental group care and management, whilst at the same time skilled in practicing  individualised intervention and forwarding the developmental programme objectives with each child. To live, care for and  work therapeutically with a group of troubling children and young people is a close, intense ... dare I say "clinical" exercise 24/7. and it needs that staff be organisationally supported with information, "treatment" guidelines and operationable development and management plans for each child. It has meant that a whole methodology built up for child and youth care practice which historically we have seen come out of residential settings. In this methodology, and in some facilities a strength-based Assessment profile based on a really sound holistic framework can take a child and youth care worker innumerable hours or more of hard work, gathering descriptive data  , commenting in check-lists, and collating reports. Huge resources and large sums of money were poured into residential care services. Even in "those days" R3000 (ZAR) a month per child was not unusual. Morning after morning staff attended and contribute to case studies, family conferences, Individual and family developmental planning meetings, case reviews and assessment meetings. Then they go back into the group residential life space  with the children and end the day with log-writing and reports. I have no doubt that it is still like that.

This was what I knew, and I thought always that what was learnt in the technically powered, intense "hot-house"  effect and methods of practice in residential care became the model from which all other child and youth care work in all the other settings must learn. I thought of it as the  Formula One Racing Circuit of child and youth care. You know, where millions is spent, High tech is used and in the end what is learnt or developed will benefit the motorist in the street... eventually... it just has to be adapted and adjusted to suit the other settings.... like community-based care.

For me, community -based care contributed little to nothing to residential care service methodology and practice. Learning in this field was a one way street. Community-based care must use residential facility thinking. .. that's it !!

But my view has changed.

NOW, with my years in community-based experience, especially in the African context, I see the short-term, intense, "hot-house" residential services CAN find much to learn from community-based child and youth care.

By its very nature, community-based care builds competence and develops skills with children and their family that are designed to help them cope in the immediate and distinctly local environment.The work done with the family and child is highly and specifically contextually relevant. They are helped to cope and learn competencies for what they actually do and have to encounter in THEIR  life-space. What I experienced in the residential setting was that though this was alluded to, the main thrust of the coping a child learnt  in the residential setting was often focused on how to cope and be competent in the contingencies of group living in that residential facility. Necessary but not always that helpful in the village.

Community -based care has an ongoing "now" focus. It has to do with the realities if being a young person in "this" community and in this way becomes distinctly African, using African solutions, African ways of problem solving and African thinking both socially and spiritually.

Community- based care works daily at the integration and re-integration of children and young people into the essentials  of community living, supports them into community schools and into the social mores, folkways and institutions of community life. It works at making good the social losses or community rejection  that the child experiences in that community because of its behaviour .It  focuses on restorative justice in and with the child's community.

Daily interaction with the child in the family setting means that the family and often community is super-involved in the developmental processes and ensures that the responsibility and authority of family in neither removed nor violated

There is considerable use of creativity and local resources..

It seems to me that how we take what can be learnt from community based care and shift  thinking and methodology to accommodate its lessons into Residential care will be the challenge.