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.
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