ETHICS AND WAKE-UP.....CHILD AND YOUTH CARE WORK IN SOUTH AFRICA.

I have the most bizarre dreams. Genuinely - six nights ago I dreamt I went to a neurosurgeon. In my dream I needed surgery. I asked the doctor to give me medical aid rates and an estimate. In my dream he said  " Oh. Here we have a clever ass asking for a quote on medical aid rates - go find yourself someone else - Good luck!". I said " What you just said to me is professionally unacceptable. I'm going to report you to the Medical and Dental Council" 
The Dr........"Good Luck!"

Then I woke up
...... and that's where it all stopped.... Bizarre? Maybe not.The dream abruptly stopped before any report was made. 

Do we have a broken dream in child and youth care?  Can we also leave unethical and unprofessional conduct as just a bizarre dream? Hanging there? Suspended? Unresolved? Like Medicine, Child and Youth Care has a regulating Professional Council.
Unfortunately unprofessional  conduct does happen. Then poof! It all seems to end there.

It's not asif we can say that we don't know about our required professional conduct and ethics. After the regulations were published in October of 2014, roadshows were held in 5 of the 9 provinces, Recently again in another three or four.  In the roadshows the NACCW video on the Code of ethics was shown. Professional compliance was explained.

Just in case we need a reminder, here follows a very short extract t from the Rules relating to the Act or Omissions for Child and Youth Care Workers:
"...the following acts and or omissions of a child and youth care worker are detrimental to the profession and constitute unprofessional or improper conduct: 
4,(a) The execution of professional duties in a manner which does not comply with generally accepted standards of child and youth care work;
   (b) conducting oneself in a manner which undermines the prestige, status and dignity of the profession.

There is, of course, more . Ethics has to do with what is morally right or wrong in a  profession. Conduct with what may actually be done or not done in practice.

But here's the BIG ONE . As social service professionals we have a regulated responsibility to hold each other accountable for upholding professional ethics. And so do our "clients.".

I have always felt uneasy that our 'clients'are minors in the legal sense. They are not legal complainants in any complaint submission. Their complaints have to be canalised through an adult. Who will do this? ..Parent: Manager? A child and youth care colleague? We are ourselves,then, the voice of the children and young people in care on issues of malpractice and unethical conduct.

We and especially in-house managers are not exempt If there is an in-house disciplinary hearing and sanctions imposed because of a breach of professional ethical conduct, the complaint should  be lodged also with the SACSSP.

Workplace issues are a labour affair. Professional conduct is a PROFESSIONAL concern, Connected possibly, but statutorily  different. The issue is that the integrity of the profession has different importance from that of the "job".  

Why, as in my dream, do incidents of unprofessional conduct and breach of ethics suddenly float away into a new day?

Some thoughts for talk.

I wonder if it's buried somewhere because of an unwillingness or fear of "being involved."   Are there work-place/career hazards in getting involved? Is there a cost involved? Time? Secondary abuse? Would we be somehow dark-clouded as a complainant?

Then maybe there are child and youth care workers who don't know how to complain or report beyond the borders of their programmes. OR, perhaps, we just say, "But this is the way it's done here".

I went to a secondary school where the School Prefects were mandated to enforce rules with the cane. In the prefect's room they administered "cuts".  Boys regulated boys, SO, it wasn't such a huge shock for me to find a similar system used in the Children"s Home I inherited in 1986. Various tactics were institutionalised to do this vicariously supervised by child and youth care workers.

CIRCLE KLAPS (slaps) The House monitor would instruct boys to stand in a circle. He then slapped the boy next to him hard across  the face. This continued until someone "owned up" to the offence.
RUN THE GAUNTLET. After showers the boys formed two rows to form a passage way. The naked offending boy ran down the passage as they flicked their wet towels at his body. OUCH!

Confronted, child and youth care workers would say "I didn't do anything. The boys have their own ways of sorting things out, It's been a tradition here for decades". Job secured !!!

TODAY. no matter the system. As a professional child and youth care worker..... You are accountable. You uphold the prestige and dignity of the PROFESSION.

This whole thing of us not acting to protect the integrity of the profession of child and youth care, is my personal and professional concern. I hope that it is the concern of others in the field. 

This blog is written as an urge for child and youth care workers in South Africa to stand firm in action if the integrity of our profession is threatened, violated and in need of safeguarding.

There is but one way to do this. A formal complaint must be lodged  ( no pun intended) with the SACSSP.

Go to htpps//www.sacssp.co.za/professional/conduct                    Click "Complaints". 
Scroll down to Complaint form "click here" Click to download the complain form.

Please child and youth care professionals. remember that silence makes you party also to bringing our beloved profession into disrepute.

By protecting the profession we protect all child and youth care workers and more importantly, we protect out children and young people.