A DISTURBING INCIDENT...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

This blog has never deliberately set out to paint pretty pictures of child and youth care issues and incidents simply to make us look good. South African reality has its fair share of incident and situation in need of confrontation and a call for accountability. We have to come out and admit to good and bad. 

An incident of forced removal hit the social media last week.

With a high practical regard for our culture of rights, especially children's rights and our statutory code of professional ethics, children and families are said to be protected.The video on social media showed the forced removal of a child ( it was said to be in Wellington in the Western Cape?). Surely this is an isolated incident but it disturbed me greatly.

The video showed a contingency of what must have been about 6 uniformed armed police forcibly removing a child from off a mothers lap. Bad publicity for Social Service Professional,..bad publicity for South Africa ,or not, this deserves exposure and comment because in my view, this should never happen again. I viewed it twice in quick succession to be sure of what I saw and heard. The third time, access was not accessible "Content unavailable". Must have been somehow blocked. This happens if someone complains or if the content is of a disturbing nature. Below this is perhaps an anxiety that the visual may possibly go viral. Is it possible that there was fear of the South African Police Department and/or Social Services be portrayed in a poor light? 

The reasons for a young crying girl ( I think) to be forcibly removed from her mother's lap by armed police then accompanied away by two uniformed officials are not known. A screaming outraged mother...all of this raises questions.

The first , I guess, is whether there in hard fact, circumstances which would justify such wrenching force and such a large armed police contingent.    

I got a phone call one night from a mother of a 12 year old boy. She was as equally vociferous in her distress, but for a completely different reason."He's sitting on the window ledge of our flat in Hillbrow, It's 6 stories up. He has just again assaulted me. He always assaults me. He says he will jump. Please come now." I knew I would never find the place           ( before GPS!) My reaction "Call the police" But this video didn't indicate risk. This little girl did not appear to be at risk.

Two comments were made. One was not to judge too quickly as there are experienced situations in which Social Service Professional's presence in a possible drug, or violent situation puts the Social Service Professional at high risk of assault. 

Been there, done that, guns and all !! The video didn't suggest anything like that. Just a mother sitting in a chair outside the back door, child on her lap.

I have been accompanied by a single unarmed police officer on occasion, but not for a forced removal . I can however think of situations in which a child would have to be dragged away in what could be construed as a "raid". We used to have a Child Protection Unit  in the South African Police Department .One youngster was abducted by two young men. The unit took 3 months to find him. e was tracked to a child pornography film studio in the garage of some property. A storm in and grab scenario.

What we all want to know the circumstances around this incident. We want to be informed of the reasoning behind so many uniformed armed police using force to remove the child.

So then, if removal,placement and separation is really necessary, how can it be don differently?

First prize obviously is to avoid he removal, placement and separation. The need to do this is determined by what Anna Freud calls "Irretrievable harm"...harm beyond repair.It is an ethical move only if all other possible interventions have been tried and failed. 

This is where child and youth care workers come in. 

Child and youth care workers work alongside the child in its environment. In the living moments of the child's space. A good, tried and tested model of this is the community based programme known in South Africa as the Isibindi Project. I does just that. Trained, registered, supervised and mentored.child and youth care workers work relationally. Generally if placement is needed the child and youth care worker will use orientation and seek consent . One hopes that force then will be avoided especially if Social Service professionals work as a multi disciplinary team to provide a multi faceted integrated programme.... a carefully planned designed strategy to reclaim the life of the child and as far as possible maintain family preservation and restore some level of good enough, safe care 

It all sounds very idealistic but in the community based Isibindi model, it has proved to work.

Let's sum it all up. The visuals and the audio of the facebook video of a forced removal by police, for me, was very distressing, It looked,sounded and felt like secondary abuse.
As Social Service Professionals we are bound to accountability. We need to know the who, what and why of this incident. We really need to be given enough information to know if this was a protective move in the face of great risk or whether it was a violation of the rights of child and family.
We need to be convinced that there was really, really, no other way.
We need to know what was tried and failed. We need to know if any other approach may have been more professional or appropriate in Professional Social Service practice.

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