PETROL ON THE FIRE ???..CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Prof Nick Smiar at his "Ethics Seminar"was quoted as saying "Don't put petrol on the fire!" I thought that it had to do with the way we, as professional child and youth care workers were tackling our current unacceptable situation. I was corrected. He was referring to possible counter-aggression if caught in the stress cycle. Still, the thought came to me. Are we using counter-aggressive tactics as a reaction? "Putting petrol on the fire"?

If poorly serviced, unheeded, unheard, it has become a South African pattern of thought that we are now left only with taking to the streets, with memoranda for parliamentary ministers.

Maybe we do need a change of tactic. 

One of the problems we have is that we look inward then put it all "out there" in the social media (and in this blogsite) seemingly preaching to the converted. We may be contemplating our own navels, then addressing the same whatsapp group.... the navel gazing community of child and youth care workers.

Attention grabbing this week was a facebook call for child and youth care workers to use all the social media....whatsapp, facebook, twitter....and more, to "market" ourselves. The argument was that government and the other recognised structures in the field have not done this.
Obviously,We don't need convincing of our own value to children and the nation. A massive campaign has to be launched to create NATIONAL AWARENESS around what child and youth care is, and what child and youth care workers do, the value we add to social change social justice and a better life for all. 

So how now?

My first thought was that we have nothing to market unless our professional practice is branded by its excellent professional service to children and young people without in any way being "staged".  Our clients (includes families) must become our "word of mouth" publicity. Our professional registration is not just a number. It is a guarantee that our practice is not just some kind of superficial caring, that it is ethical and free from any malpractice. The children and their families have to experience it as such. They are our strongest marketing message in any of our settings but especially, it seems, when we practice directly in the public eye. Community-based work, family preservation, prevention programmes, follow-up and drop-in services put our practice on public display. 

Its tempting to use the children and parents themselves then, as a strategic marketing initiative. I remember two painful experiences At a conference/seminar in a packed auditorium, a group of girls each gave testimony to the quality if service they were experiencing in a residential "home". The problem was that they were obviously schooled, rehearsed and presenting a carefully staged performance ..Two questions from the audience and the pretence could not be sustained. Half the group openly cried. I hope they got supportive counselling.

In my workplace one morning I looked out of my window to see a small herd of strangers being accompanied through the grounds and into the dormitories. The boys in care had not been in any way consulted. I knew nothing of the arrangement. My outrage was that resident children and young persons were used, put on show,to promote the child and youth care service invaded in their private spaces. No! No! 

Two awareness ah-ha moments impressed. 

I heard , without staging, some young people tell their own stories. They were volunteers, who had experienced programme  and transitioned into independence. "Now it's like this"."Life has changed" "Next year I qualify as a lawyer"...... Now that felt OK. On one occasion the Minister said "The President must hear this". 

The National Association for Child Care Workers (NACCW) has a story telling initiative. It is in attractive booklet form. Success stories are told. These booklets do exactly what we need to promote the child and youth care profession.
But again ... who reads these ?  Navel gazers? the wider public? government? Let's hope all of the above? There is a view that if we want to hide something...put it in print.....Pity!

Obviously the media is an awareness and marketing tool.  The comment on facebook around the "failure"of the organised structures to "market" child and youth care work may have to do with there being little or no, time-framed plan for extensive exposure in news media, magazine, journals and especially on National TV such as other social service and helping professions appear to get. If this is taken up by child and youth care workers ourselves it would have to be very carefully strategised and managed. What is once said or printed, there is no going back .The big picture and any long term thinking of the organised structures must be taken into account. We desperately need to identify credible people who can think and speak on their feet. Which reminds me, Service clubs like Rotary are always on the lookout for speakers.

I am in no way discounting the power of social media as a means of conveying our message. Notwithstanding the "hide it in text" theory, as child and youth care workers in South Africa, we don't publish enough of our unique African practice.We simply don't write enough and we have so much that should be told to the country and the world. We do great work here. The Universities used to say "Publish or Perish" I would think that they still do. Maybe as a field in South Africa, we should take up that mantra.

What has been said? A non confrontational, non counter-aggressive strategy would be to plan and operate a time-framed strategy to build awareness of the professional value of child and youth care work in the public and government. Let us make use of the full range of media at our disposal. In one of my previous blogs there was mention of interest groups, lobby groups, advocacy groups action groups and Social Action Organisations. Unfortunately usually a strategy on this scale needs some type of structure and a group of skilled persons to operate it.

The struggle continues... ever upwards 

ADVOCACY, DEMAND, CONDUCT......CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

This week's blog was sparked by a social media post, a seminar, and an e-mail letter. The e-mail; an appeal addressed to the South African Council for Social Service Professions (SACSSP) asking it to publish a weekly news letter setting out the different mandates of the Council, a Trade Union and a Professional Association.  The Facebook post was a question. Should we as child and youth care professionals join a Trade Union? The Seminar was presented by Prof Emeritus Nick Smiar on child and youth care and social work ethics.

Lets start with the Facebook Trade Union query. The overriding response was "Yes". Evocative words gave reason - "victems, "suffering, dying profession". I agreed. Join the Trade Union that you trust will serve you the best as  child and youth care workers.

Child and youth care workers are required by law to register with the SACSSP, encouraged to be a member of your professional association (NACCW), and encouraged to join a Trade Union. They each have different mandates and different ways of operating.

The urgent call for mobilisation is, without a doubt, precipitated by child and youth care labour relations experiences since last year and this year April until present. The issues have been spotlighted in my previous blogs. Here is a reminder. A six week"public servants" strike under the banner of a Trade Union that came to nothing, the so called "dry season"....no pay, no stipend. Then there is something new which I really do not understand.Workers in projects are saying that some were interviewed for employment. Some were employed and some not. Some are awaiting interviews. Suddenly they sit at home with no income and load of uncertainty. Some say they are working anyway and submitting M&E reports without pay.

 

The call is  for action now.

Facebook post; Our situation is now that we must all be, not just a profession, but all united and mobilised.

State employees in residential facilities appear to some extent organised. They have forums that report to the Department. Frustrated, they can join a Trade Union and establish a bargaining Council which would include the State employer. It's all set out very neatly in the Labour Relations Act in Section 27.

Quote:1. One or more registered Trade Unions and one or more employers associations may establish a Bargaining Council for a sector or an area. 2.(summarised) If the area or sector is one in which the State is an employer, state may be a party to the Bargaining Council.

Bargaining Councils purpose is to: conclude collective agreement, to enforce collective agreements,to prevent and resolve labour disputes, promote education and training schemes, develop for submission, policy and legislation that affect the sector.

Exactly what the sector needs. Trade Unions, it is said, are necessary for bargaining for workers rights and benefits and to regulate industrial relations. Trade Unions can make demands and call for a strike. But child and youth care workers in South Africa constantly remind each other in the social media that a prolonged national strike yielded nothing for them in the end. Because child and youth care work is categorised as an essential service there appeared to be some confusion during that period. So what does it mean when it comes to strike action?

Strictly speaking, employees in a job categorised as an essential service cannot strike. But this is in direct contradiction to the         South Africa Constitutional right to strike. So, terms and conditions have been established which, if properly applied, allows strike action. Through collective bargaining with the employer and  the strike declared legitimate, a strike may proceed if a minimum service agreement (MSA) is struck.This will include agreement as to the minimum numbers needed to provide a minimum level of service.

The professional association does "work toward" the "material circumstances" of the professionals. Its objects determine its modus operandi. It does not demand, bargain or call for collective action. Key "doing words" are "liase", "disseminate information" "support". "encourage efforts to eradicate factors". This does not make the association toothless. It uses the voice of its members to do all of this. It has, in terms of its constitutional mandate to advocate but go about things differently from a Trade Union.

The SACSSP has one object within its Act that mandates it as a voice directly with State. It can "advise" the Minister. Its primary concern is Registration, Regulating Education Qualifications and Regulating Professional Conduct.....upholding Professional Ethics.

Just as there is a policy guide for social workers, so there is a SACSSP document entitled "Policy Guidelines for the Course of Conduct for Child and Youth Care Workers".(Ed. Lodge B.J, Nadasen V, 2013). It is under revision and due for distribution this year. Section D2 deals with Labour Action. It sets out that child and youth care workers "shall be guided the profession's, values, ethical principles and ethical standards" 

These are some dont's :

Damage to property, threats of intimidation, harm in any manner to children young people and families, violence, neglect or abandonment of duty, (This is where the MSA come in),  bringing the profession into disrepute, defacing property, defamatory words or action.

There other forms of action and mobilisation. protest marches, work to rule, go slows. Each of these has been tried at some time or another. 

Homework shows that there is NO  existing employer's association in the non-governmental sector just for child and youth care workers which could form a bargaining council in terms of the Labour Relations Act

There is another concern. Community-based child and youth care workers across the country are disparate and have no consolidated voice. There is an organisational structure called a Lobby Group, (also known as an Advocacy Group and sometimes, a Pressure Group, or an Interest Group). Any individual or group can form a Lobby Group or Pressure Group.It must have a constitution and regulations to which its members subscribe. 

There was a social media comment which expressed surprise that child and youth care workers have not taken their unfair labour experiences to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). The social media impression is that child and youth care workers are fearful of as an individual, taking the state head-on That the stakes are loaded from the start and fear rightly or wrongly, further negative repercussions or even retaliation.!! 

I am nor really in favour of a proliferation of organisations. Other than Trade Unions however, the others are not mandated to demand publically confront or enter into public protestation or civil disobedience.  I favour the idea that there the NGO sector who employ child and youth care workers form an exclusive co-operative to tackle issues on behalf of their workers nationally. 

Trade Union membership is encouraged.

A lobby Group, however sounds enticing ....even sexy

 

MORE THAN ROCKET SCIENCE...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

It was Nelson Mandela who called us a Rainbow Nation. He was of course, right. Many colours, many cultures, one nation. We are encouraged to focus on what we have in common to recognise our shared humanity as a people. 'Tis true. We do have enough in common to say that we are all South African.. But then, it's not only race, nationalities. and our 13 different official languages that makes us diverse. Privilege, class, disadvantage, spirituality, restricted language codes, religion, education, rural, urban, tradition, values, heritage, gender, gender attitudes, child rearing practices, and more........all that is embraced in the word CULTURE.  We are a fascinating, complex people.

Put all of this into a child and youth care programme together with the additional complexity of the behaviour patterns of children and youth  in care, and we get  a sense of the intricacy of child and youth care practice. More than rocket science!!! Now we know for sure why we are a"profession". ..not child minders, nor nannies. nor domestic workers. It is about time that the powers that be, and the other social service professions recognise this too.

In this blog I thought to look at some of the inevitable complex patterns or phases of human experience that merge at any one moment in the daily life of children and youth in car and to parallel that with phases of child and youth care workers development to explore what working in the moment means in our practice.

One of these experiences is culture shock. 

I think that in South Africa we are particularly susceptible to culture shock.when coming into a child and youth care setting. There is always an an argument that after 24 years of democracy, the end of apartheid, segregation and separate development, that anything like culture shock would be a thing of the past. Unfortunately it's not so. We still have vestiges of apartheid living on. Bantustans and the group areas Act were scrapped. But still, many residential areas and regions are characterised by separation by colour. Township life, rural villages, provincial towns, urban slums, crowded apartments, informal settlements, overcrowding, shack life, still typify the residential settings from which children and young persons come into care. They come into residential facilities which are not only culturally diverse, but cut off from familiar sounds,smells, people, street life activities, stimulation,
community, local peers (including their gang maybe).

The facility itself has its own foreign culture. Deliberately structured, routined and sometimes.. regimented. You sleep alone dormitory style when you are accustomed to sharing a family bed.

I arrived early morning at a facility in a place surrounded as far as the eye could see with nothing but veld (grassland). it called itself "Juvenile Holding Centre".  Getting out of the car we heard a girl singing in one of the rooms facing the driveway. It had a wailing melody. "It's like crying" my colleague said. "It's from the heart, hurting about her situation." In Africa we know. In Africa, in every situation. in joy, in sadness and in pain, we sing. A single voice is joined by others as community embraces that moment with the other.......you belong... She sang alone.
A passing employee went to the window. "Thula...ukhona mlungu" ( Quiet! there's a White person here") I went to the barred window. "Please sing"I said. "It was good to hear you singing. You sing well". There were five adolescent girls in that room. Two of the were White.......she sang alone. Where was the child care worker to "do together"?  Where was the Rainbow Nation. Why the old stereotypes ?

At the same time child and youth care workers may be experiencing culture shock. The reality is different from the lecture room.

In my entrance into on-line child and youth care work, with my family and at what may appear to be a very simple experience of environmental change, I (we) experienced culture shock. It was an all white residential setting.so it wasn't a "racial" thing. It had to do with class. The children and young person's language was loaded with the most explicit expletives. Not infrequently directed at us> Some of which my children had never previously heard. Children went to school bare-footed, ate with their hands, drank tea from the saucer, no books, no reading, obsessed with TV soapies and lousy violent movies, short fuse  behaviours, Your mother.....your  ma....banter. "It just shouldn't be like this". After three weeks all I could think about was to load my suitcases onto my roof-rack, pack my family into the car  and go home.

It is said that there are four phases of culture shock. Honeymoon, crisis, adjustment, adaptation. I was at the crisis stage. We did eventually adapt. It took however at least two years practice with excellent supervision and mentoring before I felt confident that I was practicing therapeutically. I was going through my own phases of professional development and adjustment. ( doing for, doing to, doing with, doing together)

It is said that children placed in a facility separate from parents, whatever the circumstances, experience "death". I used to call it "a little death". Commonly, I guess, this is known as separation and loss. There is little need to say that there are well known phases of grief. The Kubla- Ross DABDA (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). In no strict order and with no smooth transition. 

Children then, inevitably will show behaviours not necessarily characteristic of  that child.....quiet, withdrawn, low mood, defiance frustration, over servile, aggression, even violence.

It seems that what I'm saying is coming into a child and youth care programme is good medicine. But it  has a range of fairly unavoidable side-effect, mainly beyond your control. This applies to children and to the incoming child and youth care worker. This becomes very complicated because child and worker are experiencing different phases of adaptation at different levels at any one moment. This leaves the child and youth care worker with the responsibility to recognise what is happening with themselves and what is happening in the child in any given time. Meaning making. Then to provide support to the young person as a primary focus through it all.......culture shock ,separation, loss, adaptation to institutional life, group living and the issues that brought them into care in the first instance.

It was Prof Jim Anglin who said ....
Child and youth care is not rocket science. t is MORE THAN ROCKET SCIENCE.

When?  I ask, With registration as professionals, When, will this be acknowledged and fully recognised  in our Rainbow South Africa

THE SURVIVAL SCRAMBLE...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

A job description was something never given to me. A title....yes..Director. A job description ..no! The Boards of Management in each, at some point, gave me a task. "You will spend 50% of your time fundraising'. The Home, or you, as Director, will have 20 mentions a month in the media". "You, your face, will be the brand of the Home and used for marketing". Each month the Board of Management monitored this and evaluated its effectiveness. Good publicity equated to a good programme. Avoid negative press at whatever cost.

Chunks of time were spent on PR, giving talks at meetings of benefactors, writing "adetorials", making sure that the press attended functions. Existing to survive. Existing to exist.

I am sure that this is something that will resonate with Directors of child and youth care programmes in the non-government (NGO) sector throughout South Africa. Especially in our current funding crisis. It's painful to be constantly distracted from managing the core business of professional child and youth care by demands to brand, package, profile, market (sell), publicly relate... scramble for survival.

Always, but again, especially now in South Africa as a result of the non-payment of subsidies, there is an urgency simply to exist, to survive. 

Come desperate times - come desperate measures.  

It is enticing to use the children in our programmes and their stories, their situation, for fundraising. It's a risk loaded strategy with possible ethical implications.

The children on my first appointment gave me two warnings. Don't drink more than two glasses of wine and don't trust newspaper reporters. At the time it was trendy to call children in care, "neglected, abandoned and abused. Story goes that a reporter 'had combined these labels into a single journalistically emotive word "weggooi kinders" ( throw away children) but with a possible implication on translation into "garbage children".  More than righteously indignant, they were outraged . And rightly so.
There had to be instituted a procedural condition that before publication articles were to be vetted. Not always possible, but well intentioned journalists understood. Nothing about us, without us.

Related to this was the issue of the Home's mini-bus (in South Africa called a "combi"). All the usual good branding strategies were used. Brand colour....red, brand name...the name of the the Children's Home, brand logo.... on all sides. Now tie this to the stigma of the "weggooi kinders " idea. "People stare at us like we're  monkeys in a zoo". So they gave "the finger "sign to staring  passing motorists. Not good PR at all. The next combi had to be white with no markings. Red was for goods ( and me).

The better corporates have a binding set of corporate ethics. What is morally acceptable and not morally acceptable in its operations. There are no doubt child and youth care facilities in South Africa with such a binding course of ethical conduct for fundraising, accounting and disclosure, but I have yet to see one.

Desperate times, desperate measures . Risks that ethical boundaries  become fuzzy.

Children do tug on the heartstrings and so on the wallets of most open hearted adults. This makes the children themselves an organisation's biggest fundraising asset I suppose. Especially the younger ones. In a facility that provided a residential programme for older boys many in trouble with the law we always jokingly said that we operated at a disadvantage, "Take a photo of a young child on Nelson Mandela's lap and the funds pour in. Put one of ours on his lap and his pocket will be picked.!!"
Then also, children in care can be a funder's greatest asset for the same reason. Try telling funders that if they give to children, they must leave their cameras at the office!!

There is a local facility with an educational and residential facility for physically challenged children. It regularly busses children, wheelchairs and crutches into the local shopping mall to sell raffle tickets to shoppers or to request donations in return for a lapel sticker.

Phone call from local newspaper. Journalist: " The beer festival in the city is to donate the profits made to the Children's Home. This links the name of the home to a function dedicated to drinking alcohol. How do you feel about that, and taking funds from them when many of the children you care for have had their lives disrupted by alcohol consumption?" Me: "It's guilt money. The intention is good. I have no problem using guilt money for the benefit of the children".
But the question got me thinking . Are there ethical organisational considerations in the source of our funding? I know of many organisations in the apartheid years that refused to register as NGOs as they refused to take apartheid regime money

There appear to be other ways of using children and young persons for funding. It's to use the focus target of government. When government provides large grants for social crime prevention like diversion programmes for young persons in trouble with the law, then it pays to have such a programme in the organisation. There are two types of funding. One for a project, the other for the funding of posts. (post funding). If post funding is received staff may be deployed for other child and youth care programmes or even other unattractive adult programmes and hidden in the system. The same applies to project funding, especially when the accounting systems don't cater for silo accounting with proportionate allocation. It has been my experience that when target numbers of young people are  not reached excess money is not returned to State. But then State seldom if ever applies this requirement.

Personal experience taught me that deliberate deficit budgeting in the annual business plan can be a favourite of Boards of Management to solicit funding. The threat of closure withing some kind of time frame is an emotion puller.. It's quite easy to do. If a Trust or a completely separately governed Building Fund is set up with the sole purpose of assisting the Home or Organisation, then incoming funds from external sources (other than government) may find their way into the Trust. The balance sheet of the Facility then doesn't look that good. You can't really attract funds if the place is making a profit or sitting on a big surplus.

Then again. Pay administration costs and /or rental to a church which owns the property or supports the project. Own a second business and hire it as a service provider.... the list goes on.....

Come desperate times...come desperate measures

The argument is always is that it is done in the best interests of the children using whatever means is available. Maybe it is , but it's really a pity that higher level organisational ethical thinking may get scrambled in the scramble for survival. 

It shouldn't have to be like this.