A respected colleague told me this
A donor gifted the boys home with new mattresses. One for every boys' bed.
The mattresses were delivered one morning when the boys were at school. The staff secretly then, fitted each bed with a brand new mattress, stored the old ones and awaited the reactions of the boys when they returned after school. Everyone expected the boys would be thrilled and pleased.
They weren't.
Instead they came as an angry delegation to demand their old mattresses back.
The argument was that they had "earned" the better mattresses as they had progressed through the pecking order of the home..... "senior" boys claiming the right to the better beds, dormitory positions and mattresses. "juniors" get the worse ones Now the new mattresses had evened out the signs and advantage of the pecking order. .... it wasn't fair !!
I was told that the mattresses were swapped back and the new donated ones put into the store to be used as and when.
Such is the power of the "pecking order" in "institutional residential life... and in this incident was respected by the child and youth care workers and the Director. But at first, the strong reaction to the levelling of the order through mattresses was not foreseen .......it means that there were powerful social operations going on in the program that the child and youth care workers didn't quite grasp.
It is that "hidden" sometimes secret social system that operates in many a group residential program.
One of these is "initiation" Rites of entry and of passage through the social order.
A new staff member walked, purely by chance, into a dormitory to see boys in various stages of undress diving for cover . But he had seen enough to know that he had walked in on what he interpreted as some form of abuse of the young 14 year olds... all four of them new boys entering on transfer from a home attached to a convent in the city.
He exploded, and was told to "cool it" by the senior boys...This was just an initiation rite.. they said... all the boys have had to go through this or more .. these boys just had to show their manhood, ... that's all.... it was nothing. Also they said, it was a tradition in the home. A secret thing it has been going on for years... they had all been through this and if he tells..... "We will have you out of this place .. and quick, So if you want your job.... you keep quiet."
He told.
Within four days, He left.
It was years of secrecy broken. He had revealed a social practice that had been hidden and kept secret for years. I can't help wondering how many staff members over the years knew and kept quiet to hold onto their popularity and so their jobs... but the boys made it unbearable for him.... and he left.
A complex web of social orders, a network of social systems can and may well operate in hidden, if not secret systems in group residential facilities These can be below the surface of what child and youth care workers are allowed to see directly... intentionally obscured but impacting on the daily life of the program.
Is there another world ?
Next time...... skivvying, protection systems, alliances, "lapskulls", gangs and rats.
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