Derrick was about 10 or 11 I remember, but small for his age which made him rather cute.Truth was that he was a really handsome boy, blonde and god looking as boychildren go He had a much older brother in care in the same 'Home". His background history was complicated and painful, like every child in care, but his biggest need was to somehow experience a safe reliable adult male figure, ... a sort of 'father' model so to speak.
I was designated that role. I was to be that figure for a period of time.
At first it was as was planned in his 'treatment programme'.- conscious, planned, professional. The idea was that that this would happen for three to six months and then I would help to make another male worker acceptable to him . We were to build on my relationship to allow him to make 'good-enough', trusting relationships with adult males.
It didn't quite work out like that. In a few months I found myself saying, "my Derrick" and "that little Derrick of mine". "my boy ". The professional relationship was becoming, No, dare I say ... had become a filial one. The staff saw it. I didn't really. At staff and case discussions it was discussed and they would warn me and say that some other male worker should be used. But by that stage I didn't care or bother myself with the warnings because I knew that I wanted to foster Derrick.
So, I took the idea to my wife..
"Let's foster one, Let's take in Derrick.. he has a mother, but I think that he is pragmatically orphaned."
Well two events happened at approximately the same time. My wife and I had two of our own biological children both teenagers. We lived in a house on campus. I was the Director of the "Home" ( Residential Treatment Centre). We called a family meeting and I put my proposal.
My own children were remarkably rational. "If we take him in as our own", they said, " He would always be a "Home boy" who we have 'borrowed , from the organisation - singled out for special care, given the best and ... you can say 'loved' more than the others". It's not fair on him, on the others nor on us who have to face the other boys every day somehow or another.It's not a good idea unless you leave the "Home" and we live somewhere else. It's not a good idea",they said.
My children were right. I couldn't argue against their logic. I could only say, But he will fit in" and He needs to be fostered" amd I really like the boy" ( I avoided the "love" word).
In that same week, Derrick was apprehended by the police and charged with malicious damage to property. Secretly he had been making his own collection of motor vehicle bonnet badges. hen he was caught he was busy breaking off the bonnet badge of a Mercedes Benz which was parked in the city street. He need it in his collection.. The incident forced him to reveal his full little hoard of broken off bonnet badges. They were mainly from luxury cars.
" Whats the bid deal/" He said. "It's no problem man" . the cars belong to 'larnies', and I hate 'larnies' (slang for rich middle class people) They just buy another one man"
It was this incident that thrust me into a reality check and I was forced to rethink about what I had been denying all along. I had forgotten that Derrick was in the Treatment Centre in the first place because he was in need of specialised residential care. he was a deeply troubled child with behaviours that typified almost every boy in the Centre. The treatment he needed was group residential treatment of the type that he would really only get in the "home". It was not the stealing incident itself that made me rethink. It was the realisation that if I 'professionally' took everything into consideration then it was clear that foster care with my family whist I was a child care worker for his friends and his group in care , .... if I took into real consideration his own mother and his brother, as well as the reality that he would be the 'chosen" amongst the others ... then it wasn't a good idea. fostering him would complicate his life .It was likely to bring him hurt rather than healing and my family was likely to get hurt too. There was a lot going for it and there would have been some benefits but the cost outweighed them. It was noble, but not the solution for Derrick.
We did not foster Derrick,
NOTE
This is a purely hypothetical narrative for the purpose of putting forward the issues of fostering a client .... Derrick is based on a combination of a number of children and does not exist as an individual. .
Monday 28 January 2013
Thursday 24 January 2013
PUBLISH..African child and youth care can teach the world
The field of child and youth care has grown primarily from knowledge and practice that comes from Europe and North America. If we take just our recognised pioneers, people like Pestalozzi, Korzak, Fritz Redl, Bettleheim , and more recently Anna Freud , Brentro, Trieshmann, Whittiker, Maier, Hoghoghi, Kreuger, Brokenleg, Garfat to name a few; these are all names of Europeans and North Americans.
Also, almost without exception, the source of growth in our knowledge has come from urban residential child care practice and from findings with delinquent, troubled or troubling youth.
It was probably Brian Gannon , a pioneer in the South African setting, who wrote :
"In the Western world, it was the problems which society saw in the poor, the retarded and the criminal which came to differentiate the literature of our field. ........the writings of Pestalozzi in the 18th century, Carpenter and Bosco in the 19th and Dewey and others in the early 20th century remain relevant"
What has happened in the South African setting is that this essentially urban residentially based European and North American knowledge, skill and practice has either been applied as it is, or somehow minimally adapted to the South African context. The result has been that the methods, Western problem solving and processes in the field as a field of study are applied directly into practice or are tweaked a little to say that they have some African relevance.. Such would be the case in the use of the "Circle of Courage (Brentro and Brokenleg) which we felt comfortable with and made central to practice because it "seemed to fit" our African context.
The point is that we don't really have an indigenous , that is AFRICAN child and youth care body of professional literature and a practice that is ESSENTIALLY African.especially in residential care.
Again attributed to Gannon
" The oral tradition of African and other indigenous child care practices reflect a gap in the child and youth care literature and present a challenge to the field of child and youth care i South Africa."
We have a specific African context in which child and youth care is practised in South Africa and Africa. Two elements of a much wider set of factors have been selected to show how they force our child and youth care to be unique and uniquely African .
The geography, demography and ecology of out country gives us settings characterised by disadvantaged people living in semi-rural and deep rural settings,. in which children are being raised and in which our work must be done.The unfortunate legacy of our past has left us with a clear link between that which is rural to poverty and lack of service provision. It is almost as if the apartheid mind regarded rural poverty as somehow noble, quaint, primitive, cultural and to be preserved. But apartheid was oppressive and destructive and its effects are still to be felt. We have an inherited paucity of services ... even basic services especially in the rural settings in which children live.
This context or life-space requires child and youth care workers to practice with African relevance and creativity In this setting has grown distinctly African solutions to an African situation. The Isibindi Model of care is a good example of this. In this way the rural African setting in our child care here has become the crucible, the hot-house of African child care knowledge, skill and practice.
The second selected element is what I call the African mind. It has to do with the amalgam of cultural values that surround spirituality, human relations, community, time, respect, language and the way we as Africans explain good fortune and misfortune ..... how we make sense of everyday events and of life itself especially social life.
Child and youth care in Africa is really only effective when it is approached through this mode. In the African context, issues and understanding have to be seen, experienced, approached through the African lens, through the 'African mind",, and through the African interpretation of meaning.
Through these two elements of our context alone, and there are many more (like our HIV/AIDS pandemic) it becomes very obvious that we have a child and youth care here that is distinctly African, .... and it works.
This places a huge responsibility on us as bearers of this African knowledge and practice to articulate our practice and theories. I know that we have an oral tradition and that we really good as African to tell our stories, but the time has come We must tell the world what works here and what doesn't. We must write it down, share it publish it.
Believe me ... Europe, America and the world can learn from African child and youth care work.
Also, almost without exception, the source of growth in our knowledge has come from urban residential child care practice and from findings with delinquent, troubled or troubling youth.
It was probably Brian Gannon , a pioneer in the South African setting, who wrote :
"In the Western world, it was the problems which society saw in the poor, the retarded and the criminal which came to differentiate the literature of our field. ........the writings of Pestalozzi in the 18th century, Carpenter and Bosco in the 19th and Dewey and others in the early 20th century remain relevant"
What has happened in the South African setting is that this essentially urban residentially based European and North American knowledge, skill and practice has either been applied as it is, or somehow minimally adapted to the South African context. The result has been that the methods, Western problem solving and processes in the field as a field of study are applied directly into practice or are tweaked a little to say that they have some African relevance.. Such would be the case in the use of the "Circle of Courage (Brentro and Brokenleg) which we felt comfortable with and made central to practice because it "seemed to fit" our African context.
The point is that we don't really have an indigenous , that is AFRICAN child and youth care body of professional literature and a practice that is ESSENTIALLY African.especially in residential care.
Again attributed to Gannon
" The oral tradition of African and other indigenous child care practices reflect a gap in the child and youth care literature and present a challenge to the field of child and youth care i South Africa."
We have a specific African context in which child and youth care is practised in South Africa and Africa. Two elements of a much wider set of factors have been selected to show how they force our child and youth care to be unique and uniquely African .
The geography, demography and ecology of out country gives us settings characterised by disadvantaged people living in semi-rural and deep rural settings,. in which children are being raised and in which our work must be done.The unfortunate legacy of our past has left us with a clear link between that which is rural to poverty and lack of service provision. It is almost as if the apartheid mind regarded rural poverty as somehow noble, quaint, primitive, cultural and to be preserved. But apartheid was oppressive and destructive and its effects are still to be felt. We have an inherited paucity of services ... even basic services especially in the rural settings in which children live.
This context or life-space requires child and youth care workers to practice with African relevance and creativity In this setting has grown distinctly African solutions to an African situation. The Isibindi Model of care is a good example of this. In this way the rural African setting in our child care here has become the crucible, the hot-house of African child care knowledge, skill and practice.
The second selected element is what I call the African mind. It has to do with the amalgam of cultural values that surround spirituality, human relations, community, time, respect, language and the way we as Africans explain good fortune and misfortune ..... how we make sense of everyday events and of life itself especially social life.
Child and youth care in Africa is really only effective when it is approached through this mode. In the African context, issues and understanding have to be seen, experienced, approached through the African lens, through the 'African mind",, and through the African interpretation of meaning.
Through these two elements of our context alone, and there are many more (like our HIV/AIDS pandemic) it becomes very obvious that we have a child and youth care here that is distinctly African, .... and it works.
This places a huge responsibility on us as bearers of this African knowledge and practice to articulate our practice and theories. I know that we have an oral tradition and that we really good as African to tell our stories, but the time has come We must tell the world what works here and what doesn't. We must write it down, share it publish it.
Believe me ... Europe, America and the world can learn from African child and youth care work.
Sunday 20 January 2013
"Cuddly Bunny" "Lobola Value" and now we are "family"
In one of our training courses for child and youth care workers there was a reading for the facilitator. It was to help embroider an exercise on the wearing of "masks". It described a young woman who grew up in a loving family with her older sister. It had to do with the way her parents valued her from the beginning....they called her older sister "the clever one" . Your sister is the "clever one" they would say to her,"but .....you, you are mummy and daddy's " cuddly bunny" She learnt from the beginning to behaves the child not as bright as her sister. After all, that was not the way she was valued and not the way to guarantee her connection with mom and dad. She was valued as the one who was somehow to be cute, crawl onto laps and snuggle up. She was, the "cuddly bunny"
Right into adulthood she rained the most approval and acceptance by being what her parents valued her to be and not the independent, intelligent achiever that she really was.
It took psycho-therapy for her to rid herself of the persona that she was not, and to rid herself of the "cuddly bunny" mask to allow herself to be who she really was.... her real "self"
The sadness of this child, trapped inside her mask, scared to drop it, not able to come out and realise her full "being", resonated with me somewhere.
The body of research called the "value of Children" or VOC investigates this phenomena and its significance for development and child rearing practices.
What follows rests heavily on two research papers flowing from the VOC research project: Sam(2001) and Ware.H (1978)
The thinking behind research into the value of children is that having children is a mixed blessing. VOC is a psychological construct to reflect why people choose to have children. That is, why do people decide about the benefit they will derive from having children vs the cost of fertility?
The VOC thinking is that parents choose to have children because the must percieve some benefit , .. that they will somehow benefit by them.
VOC identifies three areas of value or benefit within which parents believe they will derive from having children: The psychological value, (p- voc), social value (s-voc) and/ or economical value (e- voc). Various weighting in their decision to have a child or children may be given in these areas, depending on geographic, economic and cultural situations of the parents
Parents who place value on the psychological benefit they will derive from having a child,outweigh the stress and discomfort of fertility with the joy, happiness and unconditional love that they will get from it. The perception of this value often varies with the hoped for , or actual gender of the child . The first born in addition to the other psychological benefits is perceived as giving an exciting new experience to the parent(s). The second is often valued for the benefit it will bring the first. A third may be valued for providing a child of different gender to the first two if they are of the same gender and so provide the exciting new experience of the first.
It would seem that urban, Western parents often stop at this point if the value of children to them is p-voc.
Parents who see benefit in having children for their social value choose to have children because society or the culture somehow expects it. The understand society or their culture has this idea that an ideal "family" has children. Often there is a societal or cultural expectation (especially in Africa) that it is the role of women to bear children, or that children completes, binds or commits a relationship.
In many African societal/ cultural thought there is the idea that a son secures the family line and the family name.. It is said that a male cant take the risk of being forgotten by having one son only as then his name may be longer remembered and so he will be longer recognised as an ancestor.
The idea that a parent may choose to have children for economic reasons seems to be more heavily weighted in rural agrarian communities and especially in African and Asian studies. There is an old African thought that the more children a family has, the richer the family. The children are seen in e-voc fertility decision making to become extra hands in the field . They may be conceived for the direct or indirect , immediate or longer term economic support they will provide.
In South Africa there are a number of immediate economic benefits that derive from a child: child care grants, maintenance payments, foster care grants, disability grants, "damages " if the girl child falls pregnant. A girl child can provide domestic help, clean, cook and look after the your child and so allow the parent work.
Parents that place value on having a child for its economic value in the longer or long term, consider, the 'lobola' value of the girl child, care for the ageing parent (girl child), the financing of the family (boy child) ,.or the reciprocal benefit of investing in the education of a child now for support later. There are other such longer term benefits such in the cultural thinking around property rights of the male child.
There is comment that comes out of VOC research that the benefit or value to the parent in choosing to have children or a child has implications in child-rearing practices and as in the "girl in the mask" contributes to the formation of the child's "self" concept and so to the very nature and behaviour of the child.
The effect then of the VOC research on child development theory seems to deserve more attention in developmental studies, and we appear to have somehow overlooked it.
and it has particular importance in child development in Africa.
Sam.D.L., Value of Children: Effects of globalisation on fertility behaviour and child rearing practices in Ghana. Research Review NS 17.2 (2001) 5- 16
Ware . H., The economic value of children: comparative study in Asia and Africa: comparative perspectives., Papers of the East- West Population Institute . No 50. April 1978
Right into adulthood she rained the most approval and acceptance by being what her parents valued her to be and not the independent, intelligent achiever that she really was.
It took psycho-therapy for her to rid herself of the persona that she was not, and to rid herself of the "cuddly bunny" mask to allow herself to be who she really was.... her real "self"
The sadness of this child, trapped inside her mask, scared to drop it, not able to come out and realise her full "being", resonated with me somewhere.
The body of research called the "value of Children" or VOC investigates this phenomena and its significance for development and child rearing practices.
What follows rests heavily on two research papers flowing from the VOC research project: Sam(2001) and Ware.H (1978)
The thinking behind research into the value of children is that having children is a mixed blessing. VOC is a psychological construct to reflect why people choose to have children. That is, why do people decide about the benefit they will derive from having children vs the cost of fertility?
The VOC thinking is that parents choose to have children because the must percieve some benefit , .. that they will somehow benefit by them.
VOC identifies three areas of value or benefit within which parents believe they will derive from having children: The psychological value, (p- voc), social value (s-voc) and/ or economical value (e- voc). Various weighting in their decision to have a child or children may be given in these areas, depending on geographic, economic and cultural situations of the parents
Parents who place value on the psychological benefit they will derive from having a child,outweigh the stress and discomfort of fertility with the joy, happiness and unconditional love that they will get from it. The perception of this value often varies with the hoped for , or actual gender of the child . The first born in addition to the other psychological benefits is perceived as giving an exciting new experience to the parent(s). The second is often valued for the benefit it will bring the first. A third may be valued for providing a child of different gender to the first two if they are of the same gender and so provide the exciting new experience of the first.
It would seem that urban, Western parents often stop at this point if the value of children to them is p-voc.
Parents who see benefit in having children for their social value choose to have children because society or the culture somehow expects it. The understand society or their culture has this idea that an ideal "family" has children. Often there is a societal or cultural expectation (especially in Africa) that it is the role of women to bear children, or that children completes, binds or commits a relationship.
In many African societal/ cultural thought there is the idea that a son secures the family line and the family name.. It is said that a male cant take the risk of being forgotten by having one son only as then his name may be longer remembered and so he will be longer recognised as an ancestor.
The idea that a parent may choose to have children for economic reasons seems to be more heavily weighted in rural agrarian communities and especially in African and Asian studies. There is an old African thought that the more children a family has, the richer the family. The children are seen in e-voc fertility decision making to become extra hands in the field . They may be conceived for the direct or indirect , immediate or longer term economic support they will provide.
In South Africa there are a number of immediate economic benefits that derive from a child: child care grants, maintenance payments, foster care grants, disability grants, "damages " if the girl child falls pregnant. A girl child can provide domestic help, clean, cook and look after the your child and so allow the parent work.
Parents that place value on having a child for its economic value in the longer or long term, consider, the 'lobola' value of the girl child, care for the ageing parent (girl child), the financing of the family (boy child) ,.or the reciprocal benefit of investing in the education of a child now for support later. There are other such longer term benefits such in the cultural thinking around property rights of the male child.
There is comment that comes out of VOC research that the benefit or value to the parent in choosing to have children or a child has implications in child-rearing practices and as in the "girl in the mask" contributes to the formation of the child's "self" concept and so to the very nature and behaviour of the child.
The effect then of the VOC research on child development theory seems to deserve more attention in developmental studies, and we appear to have somehow overlooked it.
and it has particular importance in child development in Africa.
Sam.D.L., Value of Children: Effects of globalisation on fertility behaviour and child rearing practices in Ghana. Research Review NS 17.2 (2001) 5- 16
Ware . H., The economic value of children: comparative study in Asia and Africa: comparative perspectives., Papers of the East- West Population Institute . No 50. April 1978
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