A CRY FROM THE HEART OF A SOUTH AFRICAN CHILD AND YOUTH CARE WORKER

There was a very moving cry on social media this last week. A child and youth care worker expressed anger with herself, with God and with her unpreparedness despite her education, theory and training to effectively deal with a crisis in the life-space of a child. The emotion of anger was clearly a composite of feelings....empathy, confusion, guilt, helplessness, inadequacy,....trapped in "not knowing", and I'm afraid to say, possibly a level of fear that she will be held personally responsible by the organisation, for the child's acting-out

Her pain, her cry, her self blame , I thought, was precipitated if not exacerbated by three contributing issues.

The first is the shock when it becomes evident in the actual working situation that child and youth care is not what you thought it is. The impact on the child and the child and youth care worker of the effect of trauma in the lives and so on the behaviour of traumatised children is scary. To live, work and to be a supportive help in a climate of pain and crying out is not easy.

It frequently becomes complicated because of the reasons we have for coming into the profession and the work from that first decision. We can be enticed into the work because of the idea that it is "noble" to be a helper of neglected, abandoned and abused children at risk. If we have an expectation that it will feel good  DOING good - it frequently doesn't turn out like that until we make the shift to feeling good about our good professional practice. Our expectations and reasons for becoming a child and youth care worker have to be a matter of very careful reflection and intro-spection. The good news is the the qualities of the therapeutic personality and character CAN BE LEARNT ... and this is where training and education come in. I tried to find out as much as I could about what to expect  I'll never forget Ernie Nightingale ,a South African doyen in the field. "I cant tell you what it's like  until you experience it. It's not a Sunday School picnic". He was of course right. Trauma, theory has it, establishes neuronal pathways that drive feelings in traumatised children. Feelings drive thinking. Thinking drives behaviour. It takes considerable professional knowledge and skill to rebuild neuronal pathways that result in more positive feelings, and so a more positive world view.

So its easy to feel inadequate even if we do have qualifications and training in child and youth care work. It is the age old story of the application of theory into practice. And I must add..... especially if the lecturing /training staff don't have considerable first hand experience of the realities of child and youth care work. Book learning is useful but simply not enough.

There has been research in child and youth care work ( I confess to not remembering when nor by whom!) which showed that a person with no training takes 5 years to reach an acceptable level of practical competence. A person with training takes 3-5 years, and a person with a university degree takes 2-3 years. 

So, there is inevitably a gap between training, education and competent practical handling of the more critical incidents in the realities and situations that can arise in the life-space of traumatised children and young people.

This brings me to the second issue.

Organisations have to understand this. Firstly because of the tension that it creates between more experienced , possibly lessor qualified staff and the fresh graduate. But because organisations should be providing supportive help. There is this concept called "what works" otherwise known as praxis. Good theory informs good practice , but, equally, good practice informs  good theory. The better child and youth care organisations work to develop procedure manuals based on the combined wisdom and experience of child and youth care workers on what practically has been found to work within the theoretical and ethical models they adopt. Some organisations call this their protocols and some their guides. Essentially it sets out what can and what has been found to work when dealing with any number of predictable circumstances in the life-space.  It is constantly reviewed and updated. The procedure manual provides at least a first line of approach to fresh appointees. But it must be accompanied be regular in-house training and good regular supervision.

This is what, for me, appeared to be missing and needed as an essential for the child and youth care worker who cried out last week. I don't particularly like the term supervision but I guess we are stuck with it. It sounds like a top down process and this can easily, in a hierarchical system become "snoopervision". I prefer "intervision" Supportive personal intervision. I do hope that she was given that.

Then the third issue. What she faced was point blank school refusal. We have to expect as child and youth care workers that we are going to experience school refusal in the same way as we must expect many other somewhat predictable acting out behaviours. This is not the place to give guide-lines on specific behaviours .... these should be discussed as a full team and set out as a guide in the procedure manual, but enough to say that school refusal is a psychological crisis and has to be handled as such . But in the experience of a starting out child and youth care workers can very easily be interpreted as an act of defiance, confrontation and rebellion. The setting-out child and youth care worker without professional team support may well feel powerless and inadequate. I read into that emotional cry a fear of having to face ridicule, a possible dressing down and at worst having to face disciplinary action and possible sanctions..... it happens. !!!  

The cry of that child and youth care worker was a cry of  her growing pains, a cry for informed help and support and a preparedness to put out there her personal, raw vulnerability. It is to be admired. It is a cry for us to organisationally critically assess the value we place on the inner being of child and youth care workers and their practice in the forefront of healing interactions with traumatised children    .