TOUCH...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

As a result of the Covid19 pandemic. Kentucky Fried Chicken recently suspended its advertising slogan, " Finger licking good" ... the touch element

In a workshop to write an Operational Manual (SOP), we discussed Child and Youth Care procedures for disengagement...some kind of farewell. I introduced the group hug. It's really a most unobtrusive, least invasive touch. A circle is formed. The participants support each other with arms across the back at the waist. "Put your left foot into the the circle. Now, at  the count of three, put your right foot into the centre of the circle...One... two.. three!"
 The circle has to tighten up at the waist to support the other from falling backward. It's fun and safe. The group hug. The circle disperses laughing

 Follow up discussions said. "No. We can't use it. It won't work. It can't work. I, as a child and youth care worker won't be part of that circle. Not with our young people . Touching each other is not OK. I don't  like anyone touching me anywhere". 
I said "Then don't join the circle" I really thought that it was safe. The hug touch was sideways on. The exercise is fun and it's only an arm around the waist, "No...Not here!"

 Brings about t he whole issue of "touch" in child and youth care work.

 There are programmes where any form of touch, child and youth care worker to child/young person is forbidden. Then there are programmes which say the young people and children need touch, ... that it is shown to be, not only a need, but done professionally, safely, touch can build connection, relationship and healing. 

 There are two, or more sides to the touch arguments in child and youth care work. The first place to start, I think is with the children/young people.

 In South Africa, we had an  extensive programme called "Say, NO".  The foundational rules for children and young people were "If it doesn't feel OK. If you don't feel comfortable, say a firm loud "NO". " NO" is a word of rejection. Then move away. Silence or responding is considered to  be consent." Children and young people were taught and rehearsed to tell the difference between "Good" touch  and "Bad" touch. They decide.  They respond "No","No" and move away.

 In general, this is good. Child and youth care workers and children, learn the touch boundaries in individual children and youth. Yet at both ends of the scale, it is more complicated.

 My practice showed sexually abused children to have very different experiences and the giving of touch. Some experienced touch to be The Way in which relationships were built, recognised and maintained. I had children and young people rubbing themselves against me as a way of making a connection. Now it was ME, as the child and youth care worker who had t decide on "Good "or "Bad" touch.  There was a syndrome, I called it the "sticky toffee paper" syndrome. As a child and youth care worker, I had to literally peel the child or young person off from being physically attached. We had to have a life-space set of procedures for teaching/ helping these young people to perceive body space, to know the body space of themselves and of others.

 There were those who physically shied away if the child and youth care worker as much as put out a hand to them. With 
some of these children, a touch on the shoulder was a moment of growth.

Remember: there was the child and youth care worker, who said "I don't like anyone to touch me anywhere".  Touch is an individual thing.

I have known organisations to set out policies on the touch issues. Things like.. "No lap sitting, no full-on hugs, Side- way hugs only. Comfort a child or young person with hand holding only, no stroking, no touching of hair or any soft part of the body. Touch only hard body outcrops only...like elbows, the shoulder tops. Some have a "No Touching at all" rule. Or, only when the child initiates a touch.

 So, now where to?  I can't pretend to have the answers. I do have thoughts.  I can't envisage child and youth care work without touch. In the same way as some programmes ban touch, some have similar opinions about the word 'love'. I'm going to loosely, connect touch and love. We all know that there are many different kinds of love just as there are many different kinds of touch. A full exploration of love types and their implications for child and youth care practice is another blog sometime. The love/touch connections in this blog, focus on three.
 FILIO: the love I have for my son or daughter, and so the touch that is appropriate between them and me.
EROS: this is sexual love, The love I have for my partner, love or desired person and so the touch that conveys just that in our connection.
AGAPE: the love of humanity.

If in child and youth care practice with particular individual children and young people, we muddle up, give mixed or even explicit messages through touch, we confuse and damage children.
 If I FILIO.. the young person experiences my me as touching asif the young person or child is my own child.... 
If I EROS...the young person experiences my touch as sexual.
AGAPE is where we belong... The love of humanity. Frequently I say of Agape.. " together we walk this valley of tears" Agape touch conveys a message of compassion.  
 .. not familial nor erotic. Children and young people know immediately the relationship and its associated touch. If they don't then as child and youth care workers, it is our professional responsibility to help them to do so. Even in a moment, a touch of Agape, 'compassion' can shift to an expression of Eros.... . This then, is what makes us professionals. We have enough in the moment knowledge and self awareness to shift or back-off.

 What has been said?
Touch and touching has been shown to be helpful in healing comforting and in relationship. It has though, to be carefully considered and professionally practiced on an individual basis of need and psycho-social condition. It is a highly skilled professional child and youth care worker, measured, intentional tool. 

 There's this saying, "the medium is the message". In the case of touch, this could not be more true.  

CULTURAL PRACTICES AND ETHICS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Discussions with students on ethics, moves to ethical dilemmas. Examples around the tensions (some say "clashes") between personal, especially religious beliefs and professional ethics are usually fairly easily resolved. If there is any discussion, tensions between child and youth care ethics and cultural practices, however, most frequently remain in tension.

Here are two examples of questions asked.

"You read in an article Sowetan Live 20 December 2018 (Mthethwa B) That the Zulu cultural practice Ukweshwama Harvest Ceremony has been revived and is to be held. Young Zulu males chase a bull and kill it by hand. In this article it is said that no blood is shed and the method used to kill the bull is  painless. It marks the group of young males as "Men", the King as being given the qualities of the bull.  

In the Dispatch Newspaper, it describes it differently. It is said that the eyes of the bull are gouged out, the tongue pulled from its mouth, genitals twisted and the bull is suffocated to death. 

A young male in your care says that his father has told him to participate in this year's Ukweshwama. as by doing so, his father will regard him as being manly.

You consider "What is the best that can come of his participation?" You consider "What is the worst that can happen? Is the young male person put at risk?" You consider whether the issues of parental and animal rights enter into  Child and Youth Care ethics.

Commonly, not withstanding, custodial parental rights, the risks of the boy getting possibly wounded, child and youth care work students say, "We feel sorry for the animal, but it's our culture, and culture comes first. Culture is above the Law".

Another dilemma exercise in Child and Youth Care ethics vs cultural practice:

There is a cultural practice in which sets of little parallel cuts are made around the naval of a very young child. Commonly called "elevenses", because they look like 11s. 

The question: "A mother tells you that the child is constantly restless and crying. She will take the child to an elder healer who will cut "elevenses" and rub a herbal mixture into the incisions. Can you agree to this? The deliberate cutting of a child's body is regarded as abuse A child and youth care worker is required to report abuse. If "elevenses" are done, will you report it?".   

The same response is the most usual given. "It's our culture. Culture comes first. Culture is above the Law."

The same response is usually given to cultural practices such as circumcision, facial markings, elongation of the vaginal labia (vaginal pulling), virginity testing, body piercing, tattoos. 

When there are tensions of interpretation some say, a "clash", of legal issues, I am told to refer to the Constitution  of South Africa to seek out the final word. 

 The issue of culture and cultural practice vs law and so the legal regulatory requirement as in child and youth care ethics has been and is an ongoing debate in many circles in South Africa. It means that it's not easily clearly resolved. Just to highlight the tension and dilemma, the Constitution of South Africa, Section 31 reads(1) A person belonging to a culture , religious or linguistic community, may not be denied the right with other members of that community...
(a) to enjoy their cultural practice, their religion and to use their language, and..........
Section 30 reads "Everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of their choice...."

Both Section 30 and 31 have however a condition attached. The proviso is that the practice may not be exercised in a manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights.The Bill of Rights says that no person, or the State may discriminate on the basis of Culture.

Rautenbach et al Culture (and Religion) in Constitutional Adjudication. 2009 Potchestroom, South Africa, say that the legal vs cultural practice issue is problematic because "culture" "tradition"and "religion" are not defined in the Constitution They say also that there is what they call a gap "between the values entrenched in the SA Constitution of 1996 and cultural and religious values, which in some instances over centuries, have brought about customs and traditions (in "traditional" communities)  which seemingly infringe on some of the Contitutional values and rights". This apparent "gap" is well illustrated in the implied values of the Constitution's Section 28 (2) A child's best interests are of paramount importance  in every matter concerning the child" and the Bill of Rights 12 (e) the right...not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading way".

The practice of Inqgithi among some traditional tribalist communities of the Xhosa people may provide a good example of the dilemma between child and youth care ethics, the Constitution and cultural practice 

Inqgithi is the cultural practice of marking a tribal member through the removal of the upper part of the little, or the ring finger from the topmost (the first) joint. Usually done on a newborn. It can also be done,for example, to a 5 year old especially if the child is bedwetting and constantly sickly. It is done to ward off disease, bedwetting and mental illnesses as well as being a tribal marking.  At an older age, the flesh of the upper part of the finger may be removed. A  "specialist surgeon" different from the surgeon who undertakes circumcision, amputates that section of the finger with a sharp knife. It is regarded as a symbol ... a body part is sacrificed to the ancestors to spare the life of a child or an affected child. Amongst those who practice Inqgithi, it is said.. it must be done to avoid the wrath of the ancestors.

 It seems,then, that there may well be a dilemma, a tension in some instances These are the balls in the air,.. some cultural practices, best interests and the Child and Youth Care value of protection from harm. As far as I know, these tensions have not been tested within our now regulated professional status. We, as child and youth care workers, are sure to encounter the dilemmas.

What do you think? How will you respond?     



      

  

WORDS WE USE...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Years back I wrote a piece called "What's in a "Name?" The thinking behind it was that the names by which child and youth care workers are called as employees and the words used in the workplace speak volumes. They speak about the character/nature of the child and youth care work they are expected to perform. I'm going to call it the 'model'.

In my very first appointment the child and youth care workers were called "sister". There was a child and youth care worker in a more senior position known as 'Matron". I was the "Superintendent", as in "Hospital Superintendent". I called it the "hospital model". The underlying thought was that the children were sick. They needed healing as in a hospital setting. And that's exactly how it worked. Children's behaviour was explained by the thought that they were unwell. They were ill. They were sent to specialists including psychologists, various medics, educationalists, socialworkers..... The 'sisters' were nurses in the ward . 

Not far, across the way, another smaller residential facility called the child and youth care workers "housemothers" and "housefathers". Heard often was "We love them good" ( It was Bruno Betlelheim in 1950's who wrote the classic "Love is not Enough" No real need to say. The expectation was that they would be 'substitute parents' and act as such. In fact the facility was called an "orphanage". But the children had blood parents.

A Facebook post this fortnight made reference to management saying to  the child and youth care workers in a Child and Youth Care Centre for young people in trouble with the law, "Don't keep on acting like social workers. These young people have been sentenced for criminal  activity. This is not a holiday camp. They are supposed to know they have done wrong". Coupled with that was a further comment. "Where I am the facility is commonly called the "Stout school". It means a school for very naughty children and young people. In the community stoat school is used as a  threat to children. This I suppose could be called the "punishment model". Child and youth care workers were expected to  be hard and controlling.

Which brings to mind, what I call the "prison model". Child and youth care workers, I experienced, were called "care officers. The expectation is that they practiced mostly like prison wardens. At night, when the young people were locked into the 4 -6 bed, cell like dormitories, the child and youth care workers were required to carry out what was called, a "night patrol". They can take a security guard with them on these patrols. The expectation, further is that the child  and youth care workers "monitor" with high levels of regimentation. Line-ups, role calls, set diningroom places. All stand and then sit when given the command,  Strict set times for everything.  In some facilities, a siren sounds to mark the routines.

St Goodenough was established by an ex-army chaplain for  boys orphaned by the first world war and then by the South African Big Flu epidemic in 1923.Employed as child and  youth care workers were returning ex-service men. Until 1986 and beyond, they were called "Housemasters". Only men were employed. Later, housemasters brought there wives into the  staff residential facilities. At that time, Women were not employed and referred to by the title 'Mam". Housemasters were called "Sir".  "Sir". "Mam" "Housemaster", speaks of the child and youth care practice expectation. A middle class boarding school hostel model. 'Sir' was the discipline figure with the use of the hostel master's (standard issue) cane. Together with hangovers from the army model, it was regarded as most appropriate for boys, who were in any case, being prepared for the then compulsory conscription into the South African Army at age 18. This strange mix determined the expected child and youth care practice.

 A faith-based facility I encountered, and this is not a generalisation, seemed also to have its own expectations of child and youth care practice. In one I heard said, "We pray them good". Not just that. Heard was, "If you are not "Born Again" you will never come right and you may never leave this place". Also heard was talk of demons and Satan in the children, 'Spoil the rod etc..." In one instance I experienced a  child and youth care worker who held the view and practiced "Beating out the Devil" Young people were required to attend long scripture studies and readings every evening and compulsorily required to attend religious services. Practice in the facility I encountered, expected child and youth care workers to make disciples (proselytise) as an essential  practice element. In 1998 Minimum Standards for South African Child and Youth Care ( IMC for Youth at Risk.) prohibited this as child and youth care practice. "Prohibited.....undue influence by service providers regarding their religious or personal beliefs....."(pg 4). I will call this the "faith community" model.

With the move away from child and youth care workers being just "well-intentioned do-gooders" to being professional child and youth care workers, came the the word "development"  At first, child and youth care facilities used the word               " treatment". This sounded like the medical and the pathological models until it was redefined to mean the way we treat children and young people intentionally therapeutically and developmentally. These words speak of our practice and we hope, the expectations of  the child and youth care worker by management and the employer.

My concern is that developmental child and youth care workers may still find their expected practice to be in a sort of uneasy, parallel, or even a merge, within some of these historical organisational and management mindsets.  

When child and youth care workers in South Africa are called anything other than child and youth care workers... the name by which we are registered...and when words are used within an organisation that are entirely divorced from our practice  as professionals, my buttons are pushed and caution lights flash. 

WOUNDED HEALERS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

It was one of those barge into the office occasions. 
CYCW: "Do something to this boy. He threw a metal toy car                -  this car - at me. It hit me on the breast."
ME: " Are you OK? Please go to the Clinic and get checked out".
CYCW " I'm not going to that place. Do something to this boy."
ME: " Leave me with the boy". 

He was a very little fellow.  Eventually he told me his story. He was playing with the car on the floor in the passage entrance to the dormitory. He was making car noises - loudly. It was the "quiet hour". After Sunday lunch there was a quiet hour for the houses.

 The child and youth care worker told him to stop. He stopped for a while but got bored, so he seated himself on the step at the entrance and played "cars" again. This time she yelled at him. "A lot of yelling", he said.  He heard her voice but the only words he heard were "Get out, get out!" He couldn't explain why he was playing, so he threw the car into the passage. He didn't mean that it should hit her."

It must have been a little under a year when I was told that she had had a mastectomy. She never ever herself told me. Not ever!

I was never allowed to forget that incident. At every turn I was told that I only cared for the children and young people. Child and youth care workers meant nothing to me. Twas as if I was not just the Director/Manager, but an uncaring father heading a family - her family. 

On Facebook there was a post from Claudia Roodt a trauma advisor. It will be shared later in the blog. Claudia Roodt was once the Director of a well established, quality residential facility for girls in Capetowm. She is well qualified to talk trauma and child and youth care work.

There rushed to mind a number of experiences in interviews for appointments as child and youth care workers over the years.

These were questions I found useful in assessing/revealing. personal character suitability for the nature of the work in a residential programme. Obviously "Why do you choose to be a child and youth care worker?" The answers to this question rang bells for me. "I have raised my own children. I have enough love in me to love many children. I  have been there  I know first hand how it is to have a difficult life".

The follow up question was: "Whats been the worst thing that has happened to you in your life?" 
Then next. "How did you deal with it?"

There were invariably and understandably, spoken and unspoken responses to this question. Some more likely to be spoken than others: divorce, death of a close family member -  child or spouse, the experience of some other kind of loss or violence like armed robbery, financial misfortune or failure.

The least likely to be spoken were parental abuse, an abusive relationship sexual assault.

 The line of the interview questions was to probe whether the applicants were carrying unhealed traumatic experiences Some say, rather harshly, "emotional baggage". I used to call it "Carrying a piano on his/her back'.

Claudia Roodt's post listed tunes that the piano plays.

"FIXING OTHERS
PEOPLE PLEASING
CO-DEPENDENCY
EXTERNAL VALIDATION NEEDED
LIVING ON HIGH ALERT
FEAR OF ABANDONMENT
DE-PRIORITIZING OWN NEEDS
NEED TO PROVE THEMSELVES
TOLERATES ABUSIVE BEHAVIOUR
ATTRACTS NARCISSISTIC PARTNERS
DIFFICULTY SETTING BOUNDARIES".

You can see. The hurt are drawn into being the 'wounded healer'. The stress is on the title of that list 
"UNHEALED CHILDHOOD TRAUMA MANIFEST AS ......" .....unhealed.

Let's look at the effects of coming into child and youth care with the scars of trauma unhealed. The examples and thinking come from my experience in the field and not from an academic or theoretical sources.

A therapeutic environment proved frequently to draw the wounded healer as there was an underlying unexpressed, perhaps unconscious attraction to be where there were the hurt and where healing happens in order to find healing of self. "If I am an instrument of healing in an environment of healing, I will heal also." ...Faulty thinking!

It was a staff meeting. Present, a young student Psychologist, doing a practical year of constructive delay before undertaking the Masters degree. She had been newly appointed as Programme Manager. An unqualified, but long serving child and youth care worker found a moment to find fault with the programme management of a young person in her care. The young Programme Manager defended her interventions with verbal skill and very credibly.

Next day, the office barge in. 
"I'm resigning" It was the young Programme Manager. " Here's my letter. I only  have to give you 24 hours notice." 

She explained why. At the meeting I didn't support her against the child and youth care worker. 
ME "I didn't support the child and youth care worker. I wasn't going to take sides with either of you. I thought that you were doing very well on your own. It's part of learning." 
PM "Last night I booked to go to Israel.  I'm going to work my year at a kibbutz. They all support each other in a kibbutz. You let me down. If you can do  it once you will do it again. You are this place!. I thought that I would be protected here.

Half an hour later. "This is not the first time I have run away after experiencing let down. I always do this. It's like Act 1 Scene 1 of a play which keeps repeating itself".

Oh, oh, painful childhood experience unspoken, untold, unhealed, unresolved.

The interview question "How did you deal with it - the traumatic experience?" If spoken, this is the key. "Seeking therapy from a professional is, oh, so frequently avoided when it is most needed. Then to discover that the nature of child and youth care work mirrors all those traumatic incidents through the lives of the children and raises them to the surface again.

The expected healing through being a healer in a therapeutic milieu is all too often experienced a let down and proves to be a heavier burden on self and the very children and young people designed to be healed. 

 Some organisations can and do provide therapeutic services to child and youth care workers. I can talk here from experience. I say this to urge child and youth care workers who experienced unhealed, unfinished business from childhood or adult trauma to accept professional therapy.

Emotional fatigue (burnout) and more, is a likely effect of heaping the children's traumatic experiences upon our own. 

To be effective, our stories must be told, must be spoken. Once healed, there is research which show as wounded healers, our own experience can make us better, more empathetic, more effective healers of others.  

MORE LOCKDOWN AND AFTER..CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Now in South Africa, we have been there for real.

 The experience of lockdown must be a window of opportunity for change in Child and Youth Care and in child and youth care work.

Facebook during lockdown was loaded with comment on child and youth care work being an essential service. Asif it was a suprise! Like we didn't know. It has been legally an essential service  for a very long time.. many, many years. Some comment was "Read the Children's Act 38 of 2005 with Amendments". It is there clearly stated that child and youth care workers in residential facilities are essential service practitioners.

 This we learnt has scary implications personally, organisationally and professionally. 

 Personally - it is a huge personal risk and requires huge dedication to our professional practice and to the children and young people in our care.

Organisationally - shift systems, especially became an organisational headache. Some child and youth care workers regarded some organisational solutions to be unfair. They said that in some facilities (not all), some staff, including Managers and professionals who saw themselves as  not necessary in face to face contact with the young people, did not come into  the facility whilst child and youth are workers were exposed

 As a profession - A huge concern of mine is that child and youth care workers have not been recognised nor acknowledged as front-line essentilal service workers in the lockdown pandemic period.

The South African President and other State Ministerial officials' voice of appreciation is heard for health workers, social workers, police, army and 'care workers'.'Care workers' are not child and youth care workers who never receive mention. Not once ! Not once in public by officers at that high level, have I heard child and youth care workers thanked, noticed, spotlighted, the profession mentioned by name.  

 This lack  of recognition for our essential work has to be changed..Now! We have to use this window of opportunity to make our value, professionalism and dedication known and recognised.

 So then, after lockdown we are to be appreciated for who we are, what we do and how essential we are .

 Covid 19 and lockdown highlighted inequalities which after lockdown cannot continue. Now we really know what it means to be in a front-line profession and so must others.

 There are other essential changes post lockdown.

  In the COVID 19 lockdown I was caught off guard when I was told that  schools would open ! Some before the end of the lockdown period "No, - it's e-learning" I was told with concern that some communities would suffer, that there would be problems in some communities... For sure ! 

After the Soweto uprising in 1976, The then Apartheid government in South Africa initiated an enquiry into Black Education, then a system called 'Bantu Education'. It was called the van Zyl Commission of Enquiry. I was on the Curriculum Investigative team. We came up with a report that included a model that we found in Isreal. Schools there were being used as, what were called Ambos. It was a model in which the school was a community resource, with the community, adults, its children and young people having access to the facility to be provided with empowerment in whatever the community experienced as a need at the time. The 21 large separate reports were submitted to the then government who then conveniently just shelved them. 

But the Ambo idea has always lived with me. After lockdown our Child and Youth Care Centres are needed to become a community Ambo. A community resource. In the e-learning and digital lockdown period we are now experiencing, the in-house young people must be 4th Industrial Revolution literate, and so must our communities. We are ideally situated to outreach as a community resource as do many non-government Organisations.

There was a fire in the urban shack dwelling  informal settlement one block away from the church. Many of the pre-schoolers attended our full day Early Childhood Development (ECD) programme. Three young adults died in that fire. It flattened everything on the tightly packed inner-city residentially sized site. 300 people ..homeless. Many children. In the morning we went to the ash filled site to see how we might help. Dwellers were hunting through the remains for anything that could be salvaged Some were rescuing wooden poles that could possibly be used to make shelters They needed identity documents, food, tents, tools, blankets, grief and trauma counselling, psychological support. 

The social workers at the scene directed me to the police and the Fire Department Disaster Team and within two hours things started to happen, Medical supplies, food, tents, helping hands. We took the children into the ECD and made sure that they received two meals a day through the church.

We learnt a lot from this disaster. Together with the other churches, denominations, and faiths in the area we            co-operatively established a food bank which stored also other essentials should there be another disaster of this type or any other type in the community. It was a matter of being prepared. We had become an Ambo of sorts, a resource for community needs. Again, our residential child Care Centres seem to be ideally situated to be open enough with all its resources, with all its professional capacity to be a beacon of care in their communities.

In my blog called "Lockdown in a Shack" I proposed that our present lockdown situation in poorer communities, under provisioned, under stimulated children and young people could have stimulation needs met by child and youth care workers in a system of mobile activity units. These could setup temporary 'Safe Parks' on arrival, distribute stimulation packs, provide empowerment to parents on things like child stimulation and more effective parenting assistance with virtual learning . So if the Centre can't cope with opening itself Ambo style, then the Centre can still be a hub from which Child and Youth Care can go to where the children and the community is. Especially in times of risk and need. 

For the coming of the 'after lockdown. we must be prepared.  to be more relevant, more creative,more co-operative, more essential.