UPLIFT THE CHILDREN'S VOICE....CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

At the end of his key-note presentation at the Capetown NACCW Conference, Lorenzo Davids threw us a parting shot. "You know the "starfish story?" He said,".....It's a delusional social construct....while we pat ourselves on the back". In child and youth care work, we all know the starfish story.... the "saved that one" story. the saving children one at a time story.

Then I found this. "We must stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in" Desmond Tutu.

Our children and young people are growing up in a  country of large scale poverty, unemployment, crime, violence. In all of this, they are the most vulnerable. In fact, we can say that among the oppressed, they are the most oppressed. That's why they land up in our programmes where we pick up the washed up, help them and throw them back into the sea of despair, the valley of tears... maybe better to cope with the tide, backwash and breakers. I've heard it called benign child and youth care. I've heard it called docile child and youth care.

If the state and the times in which we live seem overwhelming to us, imagine how it must be for the children and young people. I fear hopelessness and a cycle of social destruction. 

As child and youth care workers we have to see ourselves very differently from other social service professions - and we are!  It is time that we change our approach. And we must!

The question as always is  - "So what must we do?" How do we approach what is experienced as the unapproachable in the best interests of the children and the young people today for tomorrow.

Minister Frazer- Moleketsi, when she was moved from Welfare to Public Service said she would make sure that every decision  made from a Local, Provincial to National level will be in the best interests of children. We can't say that it happened. Adults it seems, are not always the best people to address the best interests of young people. 

Let me share an experience.

I walked off the street into a Kindersentrum, a Children's Centre in Cologne in Germany just outside the old city. Coming up the stairs there were two large panels - obviously children's art work. I was told it was the result of a children's group art work project. The left side depicted the city as conceived by adults for adults. The right side showed the city as conceived by children for children. I wish our local, Provincial and National decision makers could see this. The contrast. Wealth driven, high density overcrowding, crime ridden retail dominated centres characterised the adult view. All of this was redisigned by the children and young people in their view of a city to create space, play parks, green areas, water, easily accessible colourful stalls, schools painted as attractive places for children.  

Their message was clear. Adult minds are drawn to design for wealth, power, possession with little to no thinking about the children and young people. The children and young people are oppressed and silenced by minds dominated by  many adult's values of personal gain above all else. Truth is Geraldine Frazer- Moloketse's attempt to  put the best  interests of children and young people as central was doomed from the very start.

So again, as child and youth care professionals, what do we do? We do put the children and young people at the very core. I think we must shift, from benign, docile, "saved that one", to a Lorenzo Davids and Tutu way of thinking. I call it "going upstream" Then: Gustavo Gutierrez, He says."The poverty of the poor is not a call for generous relief, but a demand that we go and build a different social order." 

 Going back to the Kindersentrum panels Who better to give voice to a better social order than the ones who suffer most as a result of our present order. Who better than the ones who will inherit the social order for themselves now and their children, Who other that the young people themselves. Thing is.... they can do it.They have innovative solutions that we  lost to the world, long ago. Kiaras Gharabughi, the key-note speaker at the most recent NACCW Conference in Durban will agree. He said, and I'm not quoting, "Young people have innovative solutions to problems that adults do not have."

The shift in the approach is for us first to empower, assist and support young people in our programmes to have an understanding of the social forces which brought them into the programme in the first place. The societal dynamics of    oppression. Then to facilitate a dialogue with the oppressor in order that the politicians and decision makers hear the voice of young people and their struggles and the young people  enter into the mind and strategies of the oppressor. I'm thinking that the areas upstream that young people need to be helped to understand in order better to understand their position are: banking, politics, education, big business, war and peace. As child and youth care workers we are really good at facilitating dialogue and restorative justice. This is exactly what we need to empower children and young people to do in order that they contribute their voice into the development and growth of a better world for themselves and others, both for now and for a future. They need to contribute in the making of the shift from the left panel to the right panel.

What I an saying is not new There are two Child and Youth Care movements of which I am aware. On is called Radical Child and Youth Care, the other, Restitutional Practice. In both it is the child and youth care worker who who connects its practice  to connecting young people and children to the social and economic structures that affect them negatively, to grow their understanding of the mind of the oppressor, to let the leaders in those structures have access to the mind of the young people and children, to facilitate dialogue and to support a process of restorative justice.

I started with Lorenzo Davids. Let me finish with this quotation he posted on Facebook. It spells out much of Radical and Restitutional child and youth care work. The author isn't cited. The bracketed addition is mine. "Peacemaking doesn't mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of discerning evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight, but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love ( lead by children and young people) that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressor free".    
















  

CHILDREN IN CRISIS....OUR CRISIS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

In one way or another the programmes and settings in which children and young people are placed are either funded or at least partly subsidised by the state. There are reasons for this. The State is the ultimate parent...the final well-being/welfare of the Nation's children is the State's responsibility which in truth it does not have the financial or human resources to provide. Even the so called fully financed Child and Youth Care Centres and the community based services of the Isibindi project are clearly under financed. Just listen to the noise... Vacant posts unfilled or frozen, salaries ceilinged and more and more! We are doing what the State can otherwise not really afford to do.


We keep on saying that Child and Youth Care Work and child and youth care workers in the country right now are in crisis There is no doubt ...we know ...it is so. No need to go over it all again. The question now is whether we are experiencing in South Africa, crises in the well-being and lives of our nation's young people and children.

Let us focus on the state of our children and young people for a moment. Dare I say that the effects of under-service and possibly the standard of service is showing. I think of it as a crisis.    It must be addressed. The signs and the symptoms are there.
Here are but a few:
Gangs, gang violence in some communities;
In Gauteng alone i know of 42 organisations which provide diversion programmes to young people in trouble with the law. Some have residential with terms ranging from 6 months, a year and up to five years. Why are so many needed? ... And it's said that juvenile statistics are under reported.
I saw a comment in social media from a highly respected social service practitioner that our recivisity rate is high. I don't have statistics but I am aware that statistics of the return of children or young people into the same programme from which they were disengaged are not always kept "Oh it's you. You back again!" I used to call them the "many happy returns". Return rates into the system are masked especially when the child or young person was subsequently placed elsewhere. I trust the comment that they are high. If young people return, it's the programme quality and appropriateness which has to interrogated.
Comments are constantly made that children and young people are not showing the benefit of programmes and that young people often have  extended stays in institutions.
We have a very concerning problem of assaultive behaviours in Child and Youth Care Centres .. among young people themselves and toward staff.
Assualtive behaviour in schools.
Major behaviour management issues in schools.

Where is all this going?

Surely as child and youth care practitioners and professionals we have an obligation to voice our concern with the highest possible national welfare authority. I'm thinking of course ideally with the Minister of Social Development. How good it would be if we could capture the ear of the President! 

To get there I'm thinking that if the main players in the child and youth care field in this country were to have a co-ordinated voice, surely, a cry on behalf of the children cannot be ignored....and we do have such child/client focused structures. Let's call it something like National Co-ordinated Body for Children.

There are a number of existing entities which we, and the 
State may have perhaps come to misunderstand as a voice only for the social service professional worker. In this instance obviously..the child and youth care worker. Independently,  individually and with a misinterpretation of their agenda, these just don't seem to have impacted enough on strategy and planning for the countries children and young people.

Let's have a look at them. Their very names I think, mask their  purpose for existence.

The mission statement of the South African Council for Social Service Professions (SACSSP) reads "to serve the best interests of the Social Service Professions and service users by regulating, leading and promoting the Social Service Professions in an innovative and responsive manner.  ( My italics). 

And the National Association of Child and Youth Car Workers (NACCW) has a vision. "Healthy,development and improved standards of care for vulnerable children" It further describes itself as "an NPO which is "a training provider and an advocacy body for children".

I'm suggestion that, put these bodies together with others into a      co-ordinated voice for the state of our countries children and perhaps we stand a chance of being heard

Here are some ideas for the participants in such a envisioned National  Co-ordinated Body for Children:

The SACSSP, which will include the Professional Board for Child and Youth Care Work, the NACCW, the Department of Social Development - especially in it's role as the National Youth Development Plan (NYDP) and the National Development Plan (NDP). Together with Isibindi, the NPO and Community Based Organisations sector, the Human Rights Commission, Child and Family Welfare. The main players in child welfare like The Children's Institute ( University of Capetown ( and others).

The question then is, who or what could co-ordinate such a body. This could be somewhat naughty but how about UNICEF or the SA Community Chest. Right now it seems that I am dreaming dreams - any suggestions?

Now to the child and youth care worker crisis. If the current situation of the children and young people is addressed in a time-framed National strategy The critical role of the child and youth care worker cannot be ignored nor put onto the back burner.  We have to be part of any National solution in the best interests of the child.
   


  

TRAINING PEAKS AND PITFALLS.....CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

To whom this week's blog is addressed, I'm not sure. On reflection, definitely child and youth care workers who are either in learning   (learners), trainers/facilitators.or especially perhaps intending to become learners.Then possibly child and youth care worker training providers, child and youth care worker learning material developers.

 The Professional Board for Child and Youth Care Work (PBCYCW) and the South African Council for Social Service Professions (SACSSP) are mandated in terms of the SACSSP Act 110 of 1978 to accredit service providers and learning materials. This accreditation is designed to regulate, monitor and ensure the standard of provision of knowledge, content and practical is acceptable for the registration of social service practitioners....that, in Child and Youth Care, they are suitably qualified to give quality service to the children and young people in the system.

The accreditation of service providers depends on having/employing/using qualified child and youth care workers at the appropriate professional level to manage child and youth care educators, and it's service provision. Also to be part of the development of the learning materials, to be there and able to monitor trainers and facilitators, to internally assess and to moderate the assessments of child and youth care workers.

Child and Youth Care learning materials have to be submitted to the SACSSP before they can be used/ and/or distributed for the training of child and youth care workers.

A shift in the educational level for the Child and Youth Care qualification from level 4 to level 5 has brought about a situation in which the service providers have to make submissions to the PBCYCW and to SACSSP. There has been a submission influx. Important to know that the new level 5 qualification allows university entrance.

Some service providers develop there own learning materials, some buy ready made packages, some have been and will no doubt use what is called "generic"learning material available through the Health and Welfare Education and Training Authority (HWSETA). All must be accredited by SACSSP. All must measure up to meet the level 5 curriculum outcomes.

Quality Assurance is a mandated responsibility of the PBCYCW, the SACSSP as well as the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO).

You have the picture. Regulation and monitoring ensures quality education and training and exposes bogus service providers and sub- standard learning materials.

This is what must be. It gives child and youth care workers assurance of a quality accredited recognised qualification. It provides a set of cautions and a guide to avoid financial loss, the disappointment of not being eligible for registration and so, not being employable.

This is a short list of cautions ..a sort of checklist. Is the service provider a registered company, or a registered non- profit Organisation (NPO)? Is it accredited as a service provider with the SACSSP? Is its learning material approved by the PBCYCW and SACSSP? 

There's more to look out for. Are the facilitators qualified and registered with the SACSSP as child and youth care workers? Are they trained trainers? Do the internal assessors and moderators hold the required registration with the HWSETA? 

On completion the statement of competencies should not be delayed.  You can ask past learners about this.

Over the past while some service providers have slipped through the system. Now, more particularly as a new curriculum at level 5 has to go through the accreditation system, this should really not happen, but the cautions are real and need to be thoroughly checked out by learners.

At level 4, learners are talking of a number of disturbing training  experiences. Here are some of the comments: 

There have been instances of delayed or non- forthcoming result schedules. A group of child and youth care workers I know said that the facilitation was done mainly in the old "chalk and talk" style, or that the learning material was used as a textbook....... read it!   It was a complaint that the knowledge component was OK, but the link with real practice situations was thin. Workplace/practice experience examples were limited.

A PBCYCW  concern was instances of learning materials which draw primarily, not on Child and Youth Care literature, nor it's  discipline, nor its recognised  practice, but on other other fields like ECD, Health, Community Nursing, Home Care and Care-giving

Other of my own experience is that facilitators and the developers of learning material sometimes use spoken or written language in English at a level which could not be easily understood or may be misunderstood. Also, that learning materials are not always learner friendly. Also that learners are frequently not challenged to analyse or create. That often they don't get exposed to the full range of  cognitive learning exercise as in Bloom's Taxonomy. Internalisation, and the exploration of shades of grey - the possibles and probables, the nuances and richness of child and youth care work seem often to get lost or misty. In Child and Youth Care practice demands that levels of thinking get stretched. We have to know how to read between the lines.

I do have confidence that the new upgrade to level 5 and the new round of accreditations as well as the upgraded clear and relevant curriculum outcomes and quality assurance will change the landscape where it has to be changed.

Lastly and importantly. There are available, excellent service providers and learning materials with very carefully and trained facilitators and administrative back-up.

Look out for them. 

Ask around.

Be cautious and do your homework.       
    

WHATS THE GAME PLAN?...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Time has come for this to be said straight out...alluding to it, suggesting it, implying it... no longer. There is strong evidence. Child and youth care is under threat. Pointers are that we may possibly be part of a strategy, a plan to reduce us. I don't want to say remove us, but we who remain to be an extension of the arm of other social service professionals. A lesser social service practice or to be replaced.

Let me set out the pattern experienced over time in our journey along in a time-line.which suggests a series of underlying strategies. 

The first professional Board for Child and Youth Care (PBCYCW} in 2005 set it's goal at having Ministerially approved gazetted regulations for the registration of child and youth care workers as professionals. The regulations require that the scope of practice of the professional at each level be very clearly articulated and set out. Every set of draft regulations got no further than the then Council. They were sent back time after time for review and redrafting. The main argument, lead by the then Minister's representative on Council , was that the scope of practice of child and youth care work and social worker overlapped with insufficient differences to allow for the registration of separate professions. I can't say exactly how many scope of practice workshops we attended. It was extensive. And so was the delay.

At the same time the then Minister of Social Development was under pressure to resolve what was called "the social work crisis"- a very real shortage of social workers. The issue was salaries. He had some ideas to resolve this. One of these was to have a generic worker. I can't remember the title given to it. It was then called "The Cuban Model". The Professional Board for Child and Youth Care Work rejected it.

Then came bursaries Social Work. Nothing for Child and Youth Care.

There followed a term when no election was organised/held for a Professional Board of Child and Youth Care Work. How and why that could happen can only be assumed. The South Africa Council for Social Service Professions requires it statutorily. On paper statutorily there was Board, but it was said that without warm bodies, the PBCYCW did not exist...non extant. 

The National Department of Social Development came to a form of rescue. It funded the idea of an interim Child and Youth Care Committee to continue the work of the Board unconnected fro Council. Everything needed to register child and youth care workers as professionals at two levels was completed at the time. Uninterrupted  we did our best work. It was at one of those meetings that a tame National Department lawyer said that we had been trapped because the Minister had been saying "No" to child and youth care workers, then "Yes" "You were on, then you were off. He frequently changed his mind". ......the story was out. We were played in a bigger game.

The 2011 term of office elections for a PBCYCW were duly organised and held. A Board was elected. But, the minutes and so the work of the interim Committee were not accepted as it was a disconnected, independent body.  Back to the new Board to have approved .... this time with a headstart. Amongst ourselves we had agreement on what the critical requirements for registration, scope of practice and code of ethics should be, but the backwards and forwards pattern continued. In all this time child and youth care workers were unregistered, unrecognised as professionals.

 At one time the thrust was that child and youth care workers should be registered at the Auxiliary level only. Professional level, it was said should wait an undisclosed period of time in years. This was the historic 16th draft of the regulations. The then Council sent this set of regulations to the Minister for signature unapproved by the Board.  The PBCYCW then demanded an interview with the then Minister.. It was suspended for a year. We met in private board rooms at our own cost,, kept minutes and forwarded them to the then Council. Again unaccepted as discussion or decision as in any way official. Connections of connections were used to halt the 16th draft. A meeting with the Minister was arranged, the 16th draft halted and the suspension lifted.

A bigger game plan over this period was obvious, but held by whom? Academics? or whom?

Now came what looks like a reprieve if seen outside a possible bigger National political plan. But I'll come to that.

The then Minister of Social Development made it very clear that she wanted child and youth care workers to be registered as professionals and that the delays were unacceptable.The 18th set of approved regulations were submitted for Ministerial approval. Done and dusted? Oh no they sat in the National Department without the minister's signature for 14 months. The story we got was....."awaiting the Minister". She later apologised and said directly to us that such a delay was unacceptable. In October of 2014 they were signed and gazetted. At the same time she undertook to train 10,000 child and youth care workers for and in the community based child and youth care setting of the Isibindi project in the more rural, outlying areas. This was rolled out...it happened. The National  Department then adopted the Isibindi project by agreeing inter alia to fund it Nationally and to pay the National Association of Child and Youth Care Workers, who had designed and developed the model, to undertake that training for a period of five years. It was a good growth period for child and youth care in South Africa.There were complaints however that the Department of Social Development were appointing auxiliary social workers in the positions of supervisors and project managers. The reason I heard directly in one Province was "We payed to train them. We must employ them". 

The contract  with the NACCW came to an end in March 2017. The State now owned the model, claimed it as a National model and went to tender for the training.

This was when the cracks started to show. I'll list them           (again)  But first, when the ground opened up and swallowed child and youth care workers many child and youth care workers took a look in the rear-view mirror. They say they saw then a bigger picture. The term of office of that Minister had ended. The glance backward raised concerns that the Isibindi adoption was initiated to meet a bigger National agenda. They feared they had been used again as little pieces (pawns) in a bigger board game. In the same way as the earlier social work crisis put child and youth care in the game, so did the 10,000 story. The speculation was/is that every Ministerial Department was under pressure to meet a job creation target because of the high rate of unemployment country wide.  The Isibindi 10,000 child and youth care workers on learners stipends seemingly did this for the Department of Social Development. There is a new Minister. In fact there have been two since.

This now is the now

There were delays in continuing training. They were told and experience the non availability of funds in what are called "dry seasons". Some have not been paid for 6 months or more. A move was made to get a National data base of unemployed social workers - there are unemployed child and youth care workers.National strategic plans were developed to advance the social work field. There is yet no such plan for child and youth care work. Community development work is being prioritised for professionalisation and funded... no prioritasation of child and youth care work. There are still no child and youth care workers in high level decision making positions at national level. Posts for child and youth care workers have been advertised and then frozen. Child and youth care workers are being paid learner stipends even if qualified. There are behaviour management problems in schools. The main drive is in most provinces to get social workers into schools. Quite right and good, but child and youth care workers are also need in schools right now. - no such impetus... no  political push. Government, even the President mentions Isibindi in high level speeches but do not in any way recognise the role of child and youth care workers in the model. The Deputy Minister angered child and youth care workers in July at the NACCW International Child  and Youth Care Work Conference by referring to them as support workers who should not complain of salaries or no pay.

It's like this. Child and youth care workers in South Africa are reading between the lines... and so, I must say, am I.  It's like this? If we have been played so often because of behind the scenes political agendas, considering the present signs .. is this happening again and what is  the agenda? The suspicion is that a new agenda underlies the current child and youth care situation. This time the excess bursary trained social workers are unemployed. Child and youth care workers in the field suspect that they are again being played to meet two prioritised objectives. One  -to employ social workers . Two - to again absorb ( subsume) them into the fold of a single social work profession. 

They are asking  "Are we again being used as small players in a bigger game? 

What's the game plan?