UPLIFT THE CHILDREN'S VOICE....CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

At the end of his key-note presentation at the Capetown NACCW Conference, Lorenzo Davids threw us a parting shot. "You know the "starfish story?" He said,".....It's a delusional social construct....while we pat ourselves on the back". In child and youth care work, we all know the starfish story.... the "saved that one" story. the saving children one at a time story.

Then I found this. "We must stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in" Desmond Tutu.

Our children and young people are growing up in a  country of large scale poverty, unemployment, crime, violence. In all of this, they are the most vulnerable. In fact, we can say that among the oppressed, they are the most oppressed. That's why they land up in our programmes where we pick up the washed up, help them and throw them back into the sea of despair, the valley of tears... maybe better to cope with the tide, backwash and breakers. I've heard it called benign child and youth care. I've heard it called docile child and youth care.

If the state and the times in which we live seem overwhelming to us, imagine how it must be for the children and young people. I fear hopelessness and a cycle of social destruction. 

As child and youth care workers we have to see ourselves very differently from other social service professions - and we are!  It is time that we change our approach. And we must!

The question as always is  - "So what must we do?" How do we approach what is experienced as the unapproachable in the best interests of the children and the young people today for tomorrow.

Minister Frazer- Moleketsi, when she was moved from Welfare to Public Service said she would make sure that every decision  made from a Local, Provincial to National level will be in the best interests of children. We can't say that it happened. Adults it seems, are not always the best people to address the best interests of young people. 

Let me share an experience.

I walked off the street into a Kindersentrum, a Children's Centre in Cologne in Germany just outside the old city. Coming up the stairs there were two large panels - obviously children's art work. I was told it was the result of a children's group art work project. The left side depicted the city as conceived by adults for adults. The right side showed the city as conceived by children for children. I wish our local, Provincial and National decision makers could see this. The contrast. Wealth driven, high density overcrowding, crime ridden retail dominated centres characterised the adult view. All of this was redisigned by the children and young people in their view of a city to create space, play parks, green areas, water, easily accessible colourful stalls, schools painted as attractive places for children.  

Their message was clear. Adult minds are drawn to design for wealth, power, possession with little to no thinking about the children and young people. The children and young people are oppressed and silenced by minds dominated by  many adult's values of personal gain above all else. Truth is Geraldine Frazer- Moloketse's attempt to  put the best  interests of children and young people as central was doomed from the very start.

So again, as child and youth care professionals, what do we do? We do put the children and young people at the very core. I think we must shift, from benign, docile, "saved that one", to a Lorenzo Davids and Tutu way of thinking. I call it "going upstream" Then: Gustavo Gutierrez, He says."The poverty of the poor is not a call for generous relief, but a demand that we go and build a different social order." 

 Going back to the Kindersentrum panels Who better to give voice to a better social order than the ones who suffer most as a result of our present order. Who better than the ones who will inherit the social order for themselves now and their children, Who other that the young people themselves. Thing is.... they can do it.They have innovative solutions that we  lost to the world, long ago. Kiaras Gharabughi, the key-note speaker at the most recent NACCW Conference in Durban will agree. He said, and I'm not quoting, "Young people have innovative solutions to problems that adults do not have."

The shift in the approach is for us first to empower, assist and support young people in our programmes to have an understanding of the social forces which brought them into the programme in the first place. The societal dynamics of    oppression. Then to facilitate a dialogue with the oppressor in order that the politicians and decision makers hear the voice of young people and their struggles and the young people  enter into the mind and strategies of the oppressor. I'm thinking that the areas upstream that young people need to be helped to understand in order better to understand their position are: banking, politics, education, big business, war and peace. As child and youth care workers we are really good at facilitating dialogue and restorative justice. This is exactly what we need to empower children and young people to do in order that they contribute their voice into the development and growth of a better world for themselves and others, both for now and for a future. They need to contribute in the making of the shift from the left panel to the right panel.

What I an saying is not new There are two Child and Youth Care movements of which I am aware. On is called Radical Child and Youth Care, the other, Restitutional Practice. In both it is the child and youth care worker who who connects its practice  to connecting young people and children to the social and economic structures that affect them negatively, to grow their understanding of the mind of the oppressor, to let the leaders in those structures have access to the mind of the young people and children, to facilitate dialogue and to support a process of restorative justice.

I started with Lorenzo Davids. Let me finish with this quotation he posted on Facebook. It spells out much of Radical and Restitutional child and youth care work. The author isn't cited. The bracketed addition is mine. "Peacemaking doesn't mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of discerning evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight, but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love ( lead by children and young people) that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressor free".