FOOD, AND MEALS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Child and youth care workers, food and meal's. Who eats what when, where? Who provides what, to whom, how? Every question word in the dictionary!

So it was in the queries and responses to a recent question and the responses in a social media child and youth care Facebook group.

"Should child and youth care workers be "fed" meals by the organisation  they work for?"

Discussion around issues of food, meals and feeding has shown to start vigourous discussion at any time.

In assembling a procedure manual for a short term residential facility, I thought it would be fairly straight forward. A matter of "this is what we do here".  Not to be so...sure there was a thread of standard operational procedure for meals, mealtime and child and youth care workers employed there, but the debate around what was, what is and what should be raved on for an hour and a half. I had to put an end to it. The page was marked "unresolved...to be further discussed". 

 The unresolved issues were the tensions and thinking arising from policy, professionalism, salaries, supervision       ( monitoring) young people at meals, menu's, the serving of food, portions, meal-time rules, wasted food, routine, chores and more... "Unresolved...to be discussed".

I left them with a guideline. In putting together your policy and procedure ask these questions. "What are the children and young people learning about the world which underlies what you do. Is what you do giving the young people messages that demonstrate an ideal world.the world as we want it to be especially in the status and relationship between children,  adults and food? Also does what you do measure up to the principles of child and youth care practice? These form a safe, good and required measure of sound practice. Are they tangibly experienced by young people in food, meals and child and youth care workers (adults)?

Reminder, the principles of child and youth care practice in South Africa, are: accountability, empowerment, participation, family centered, continuum of care, integration, continuity of care, normalisation, effective and efficient, permanency planning, African renaissance.

At first glance it seems asif only a few of these practice principles apply to meals, food and child and youth care workers, but in various ways each has implication. Some are primary and obvious, others less obvious but not the less important.

 In both of my appointments to Children's Homes the same policy around children, young people and meals applied. I was included in these practices as the Director. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander". Both residential facilities had live-in child and youth care workers and centralised kitchens. Both had a staff dining-room separate from the children and young people. There was a thing called "Dining-room Duty" for child and youth care workers on a  roster basis. In one, that person sat on a pedestal so that the children and young people could be observed. Both facilities were in receipt of food donated from local retail stores. In both, the staff got the best of the donated food on the grounds " The children don't eat that !". I inherited a system of different food, different separate dining spaces. sometimes different meal-times. Question. What are children learning about the adult/child world and adult/child relationships? 

The unfairness of different quality food and menu with child and youth care workers getting the better deal was obvious..  We all will eat the same. "what's good for the goose is good for the gander". 

Next stage. The dining space and seating re-arranged to ensure that in the mix, siblings sat together to ensure that families ate meals together at one table.

Next Stage. Child and youth care workers sit at the table where, as far as possible,a family group could be seated with as many of the child and youth care worker's focus group as possible. All had the same foo but it was dished up on plates in the kitchen and young people lined up, took a plate and went to the table. They took it in turns to clear the table. This initiated Step Three.

Step Three: The facility bought, or had donated, serving dishes. Children and young people were helped by the child and youth care worker to dish up until they could do it for  themselves. (normalisation and empowerment). This resulted sometimes in there being a wider choice at the table.as the seating at the tables with the child and youth care worker had a cultural mix. ( appropriateness)


The whole system was constantly discussed at the  Children's Representative Forum and the Child and Youth Care Workers Forum to smooth out any hiccups. (Efficient and effective). 

At the second facility, as said, it was still using the 'everything separate' model. Over time, steps toward change followed the same journey when in a dormitory, common dining-room setting. In a few years, though the dormitory setting moved into a group home setting...houses in the community. The group home setting allowed that meals, food and child and youth care worker take yet further steps toward living out the principles of child and youth care practice and a better life for all world view. A world driven by values of justice, co-operation, sharing,and social equality.With the child and youth care worker, children and young people budgeted against a set budget, constructed shopping lists and purchased the food monthly and top-ups as and when. It now required that the menu be broken up into ingredients, quantities and the handling of money. They helped with food preparation.                                                                                                 The child and youth care worker supported the young people to move from co-dependency to independence. (continuity of care)

The issues of professionality, the issues of who? what?, when?, where?, how?... faded,  .

  

CHILDREN'S REPRESENTATIVE FORUMS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

"We are scared at night". She could not have been older than 11. Small, blonde and the junior member of the Children's Representative Forum. "At night we put dolls and teddy-bears on the window-sill to make people think that there is someone there" The window was situated above a lean-to roof. They were right. It was an easy entry.

'It's a matter of safety. Children come here to be protected and to feel safe.The window must be fitted with bars immediately." says I.
"We are waiting for an external funder"
"Not good enough. Safety and protection first".

As the independent chairperson of the Children's Representative Forum (CRF) at that facility, by invitation, I was removed by it's Board of Management and a Board Member appointed to replace me. I was not "developmental".

This was not the first time a small child in a CRF had spoken out on a facility's  services which quite rightly needed to be changed. I'm not saying they were making demands. I'm saying that they drew attention honestly and justifiably to their rights and to principles foundational to Child and Youth Care practice. Issues like disregard of culture, not enough hot water, unacceptable discipline (punishment)...always issues of food.

The child's voice must be heard. Put coldly, the client must be heard. And again, the service recipient must be heard...Ha! The children and young people must be heard.

The question in social media was, "Does your facility/ programme have a Children's Representative Forum?" .. No replies or comments were made.

Firstly, it is a regulatory, standard  practice requirement in the same way as a facility or programme will have a child and youth care worker's forum.

Experience in undertaking Quality Assurance (QA) in 43 Child and Youth Care organisations showed a huge number of facilities without either, or without a Children's Representative Forum.

I frequently quote Thom Garfat"s doctoral thesis. If not an exact quote he says in essence "An intervention is only as effective as it is experienced as effective". It means obviously that we have to hear what the children and young people are experiencing. And to do so maturely and professionally 

The regulated requirement for Children's Representative Forums in the programmes or facilities is the first in a much wider system in which the voice of children and young people is to be heard. 

 The National Association of Child and Youth Care Workers has a governance system designed to hear the voice of child and youth care workers. South Africa has 9 Provinces each with a Provincial Representative Executive Committee (REC). Some provinces are very large geographically, so "regional committees" are formed liaising with and  represented on the Provincial REC. The chairperson of each Provincial REC forms the National Executive which is the management body for the membership Association and which advises on child and youth care worker issues in the country. It all starts with the child and youth care workers forums in the facilities.

 The NACCW established a policy in which it is set out by agreement that the same structure as it is applied to allow child and youth care workers to be heard is to be formed for the children and young people in care. It follows a favourite dictum of Masud Hoghughi "What is good for the goose is good for the gander".

It means that in the facilities and programmes, the Children's Representative forums elect from among themselves, a Regional, then a Provincial and National Young People's Forum (Committee) with it's own National Chairperson.     

At every Biennial Conference of the NACCW there is a parallel Youth Conference. At a point in the programme the young people take their voices to the child and youth care worker's Conference ..Loud and clear. The system is at work, but for me, the absence or reluctance to have in-house Children's Forums is disappointing.

At one time there was a Child and Youth Care organisation in South Africa established by refugees from the Central Republic of the Congo for Congolese refugee children and young people in a high density refugee area in Johannesburg. It was community and school based and funded by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Parallel to their Child and Youth Care organisation was a linked partner constituted to form a children and youth in programmes' Parliament with a special portfolio for refugee children. This was also funded by the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. 

In my time associated with the Central Republic of the Congo refugee children's project, the Parliament idea never got off the ground. 

It however got me going.

A shadow Cabinet and Parliament of young people and children in care liaising and represented in Parliament made sense to me. "What is good for the goose is good for the gander"

I remember being advised, "Let's get our National young people's model working before we talk of a children in care parliament. It seems that now, through the NACCW, the young people'structure is sufficiently organised . But again, to hear the voices really close to the ground, there has to be a strong contingent of young people's voices being heard from the Children's Representative Forums in the facilities and programmes... residential, community and school based.

It starts with getting Child and Youth Care organisations to accept and set up Children's Representative Forums without the adult prejudice of children and young people seen as undeserving of social equality. Furthe, the CPR should not be limited in its agenda to in-house issues. Young people want to talk about the bigger picture, the social ills and injustices that brought them into care in the first place. "What can you do? What can be done to reduce and stop young people and children having to be placed here? More importantly "What can we as young people do?" Hear us as we speak.

It's a challenge because that's what young people developmentally are designed to do...to challenge systems and practices. They know they inherit the world we make or allow to be made.

In one of the Provinces in South Africa, I as the NACCW provincial chairperson, I had the responsibility of getting the Children's Representative Forum structure going and maintained. A start was made in the facility in which I was giving training at the time. There was no CRF there. Requested, the staff selected two young people to meet me and the Regional NACCW Mentor to form a steering committee. First meeting, trust building and explaining the purpose and to plan. Second meeting. "OK. Tell us what is good and what can be improved"...a dry run on a small scale with 2 staff-selected young people to let them get an experience of what could become an agenda. It all came tumbling out. With what the unheard heart full is, the mouth runneth over!  Third meeting...refused by the facility's management.They couldn't make the young people available for various reasons. Bottom line..the Children's Representative Forum there never got off the ground. I can't but think that as child and youth care workers and as management we may well have a fears of being evaluated by the very persons we serve. A fear of having to put the young people's needs and voice as the centre of our 'programme planning and having to fit in. After all, it's much easier and more comfortable for us to expect the young people to fit our programme than  the other way round. Perhaps we find it even more scary to have young people contributing to policy in-house, Regionally, Provincially and Nationally

I would like to to hear the voice of young people in care eventually at Parliamentary Committee level and to hear a child in care speaking to parliament. 

Let it happen in our life-time.
    

MEMORABLE MOMENTS LAUGHING...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

International Child and Youth Care Week this year, 4 - 10 May had "Making Memorable Moments" as it's theme.

And so to keep the impetus alive...

It cropped up during training in Behaviour Management. Somewhere the material required a discussion on responding to the stressful moment.  One of the stress-breakers it was suggested was laughter. For a child and youth care worker in certain situations to laugh rather than highten the stressful moment with a tense reaction. To get the young person to see the funny side. Sounds dangerous. The example scenario, however made it into a safe, in the moment stress breaker. 

The group was at the dining-room fully set, plates-loaded  table. Fathima started to complain loudly about the potato on her plate. "I hate potatoes. You know I hate potato. Why did you give me potato. I won't eat it. I hate potato!" With that she slammed her fist down on the side of her plate. A table knife rested on the edge of her plate with it's blade under the potato The knife became a lever, the potato a missile. It flew and landed "PLOP" right in the centre of the bowl of butter!  "PLOP".  The child and youth care worker saw the funny side of this and laughed. Not loudly, but laughed. Fathima got it , the funny side of this and laughed too, with the others at the table. The potato was removed. The meal continued amicably. 

In that particular situation, it became a memorable moment - a "do you remember when?" moment. In that moment it worked.

Laughing at obviously hightens a stress moment. Laughing at a situation is safer. Laughing with is a relationship builder and laughing together is healing, Laughing together at the right time place, space makes for memorable moments.

The potato in the butter story got me thinking about lived experiences of laughing with young people in memorable moments. It struck me that child and youth care work can be and is, a somewhat serious task ...and it is. It has though, relaxed, lighter moments, fun moments.

In my thinking over the past years, I was concerned that the serious moments were more easily remembered.

When did we laugh together?

The duvet covers on the beds were laundered once a week dormitory by dormitory. Four 'dorms',..four week intervals. Once a month the young people were to fit the duvet inner into the freshly laundered cover. It wasn't easy. Someone discovered that the best way to do it was to push the inner into the cover, then crawl into the cover to get it to the corners and flatten it out. Then, crawl backwards to get out. ALL BUMS UP! and all wriggling.They watched each other go through this and laughed together. Child and youth care worker and all....a magic memorable moment.

Portia was a deeply fundamentally religious young person. Always 'good'. ..like, no make-up, no nail polish, always dressed to be well covered and modest. No swearing, smoking, not even would she swim in the pool when there were boys in the water. What Portia experienced was that the misbehaving young people were always noticed and were given attention.(negative though it was). Child and youth care workers gave them of their time. She didn't get this. I called her a wall paper kid. You knew all the time that she was there but she didn't stand out enough to demand attention.

One day Portia decided to be noticed by the staff and occupy their attention. ..to be "naughty" as she put it. That day she emerged in short shorts, black eye liner, black nail polish and red, red lips, a less than modest blouse and dangling earrings. First she came to my house and announced her decision to be changed "From now on", she said..... I took a photograph of her. "I have to have a pic of you like this.. the new Portia". It was when she went into the main building that the girls saw the funny side of Portia's new image. It spoke to them about themselves, a mirror of who they were. They were not at all unkind. They gathered around her asking to see her nails and toenails. It started first with a giggle, which Portia joined. Then they all laughed heartily together. Child and youth care worker too. The next day Portia went back to the person we, and she best knew. But no longer a wallpaper kid. It was a good, memorable laughing moment... a "do you remember when?" moment, a "potato PLOP in the butter dish" moment.

There were fairly simple moments of shared laughter. Together watching a funny movie, games in the swimming pool like "Marco?"..."Polo!" and making dive-bombs together for a monstrous splash..lots of laughs. Spontaneous mud fights after rain and the hosing down by the child and youth care worker which followed. Fun and laughing together. Child and youth care workers too. "Now go to bath or shower".

A favourite in the boy's dormitory was to plot a deliberate attempt to pull the child care worker's strings and wait for the display. Bed time. Then one gets up to go to the toilet. ..Not unusual. Back to bed. But then comes another. Toilet, back to bed. ..and the pattern of toilet and back to bed continues one after the other. The child care worker just laughs.

It wasn't predicable, but it would happen about once a year. Again unannounced, the girls and the boys swapped clothing. Girls dressed as boys, boys dressed as girls. Boys teetered around in heels and dresses and girls in boys school uniforms each strutting around or with exaggerated mincing body language.  All laughing together. Child and youth care workers too. Good, healthy  laughing memorable moments.

Informal groups would get together, sometimes with the child and youth care worker present in the group and just talk. Sometimes they shared the funny side of otherwise serious "what happened at school" stories. The "there's this guy in the village" stories. "There was this guy I dated, he dived into the swimming pool and his costume came right down to his ankles". Memorable laughing moments all round.

It's not all a valley of tears and doesn't have to be. Young people enjoy clever, repartee, the backwards and forwards of witty, if not joking conversations. It's a child and youth care/ young people sharing laughter moment.

Sometimes a child and youth care worker can make these moments happen.Sometimes moments happen which a child and youth care worker contributes to make into a memorable laughing moment.

Its a '"PLOP" in the butter-dish moment, a "do you remember when?" memorable moment laughing.






  

LOCKDOWN LESSONS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

I didn't get it until now really - lockdown May 2020. So far, 45 days and more to follow. On my own, isolation.

About 4 times daily, I walk my driveway to the motor-gate and back. It's a relief from 'cabin fever'. In these mini walks, through the boundary fence, I see my neighbours clearly experiencing lockdown differently from me. There they are  - a family of six. They sit, talk, cook barbeque, eat, laugh. From the driveway, I can feel a family connection, for which, in lockdown, I long.

Some times they call me to the spiked paling fence. "We baked some cake. We thought you may enjoy. If there is anything you need, please, just tell us".
"I'm fine. Thankyou. If I need anything, I will ask". My real "anything" can't be asked. If my need was asked, it would be: "Please can you invite me in for a moment of company, connection, talk, sharing. These things called 'social distancing', 'lockdown' erect a barrier and doesn't allow that. And anyway, they are, what many call,"tight". I would be an intrusion. 

He must have been 17 years old at the time. Seventeen is a scary age to be a young person in a facility. It's the final year of legal placement in residential care. 

I was in my office at my desk. It was a room about 1/3rd of the way down a long outdoor corridor. From the left came the sound of smashing glass. Window after window. I stood up and moved toward my inner office door. Just as well as, wham, shatter, there went my office windows, then the secretary's, the Deputy Director's office windows. Smash, smash, smash,windows the full length of the office block. The Deputy Director gave chase and found him in a nearby vacant plot.

Obvious next move, drag him into my office, deposit him and leave him to me. Once the usual verbal and emotional hype had calmed, he said, "Do you know how much I hate you. I'm in Swale House. I look down from my dorm window next to my bed, right into your back garden. You have a barbeque place there. I see you with your wife and your children sitting there. You sit, you cook, talk, laugh, eat together. I don't have any of that. I get so jealous. I want what you have. I want what your children have. I hate you. So, I smashed your windows.

My lockdown need was and is, unspoken. This young person chose an inappropriate but desperate way of getting his message across. Now I had to hear . Damage to property like that  was categorised organisationally as a 'critical incident' demanding critical and immediate multi - disciplinary team response of which the young person is part. Dilemma. We weren't in an imposed lockdown, yet there were still some  social no go areas. Like my neighbours, some moments of family intimacy are protected. I couldn't introduce him into my family to give him the  experience he needed to lift his lockdown. In any event, apart from being a poor solution in permanently meeting his need, it is regarded as unethical and for good reason. It has to do with role confusion.  Apart from repairing damage, the main focus for us, as professionals was to do some serious introspection about how we had possibly contributed to his social distance from his significant others.Intensive critical work had to be done with his own family and with his transitioning. We had not addressed his socio-emotional familial lockdown sufficiently nor timeously .

Now I really get it, the pain of his lockdown. I look over my fence, He looked down through his dormitory window into my family garden. Hopelessness bred in him a build-up of "I couldn't care less, what do I have to lose?" 

Another time, place, another 17 year old young person. Honestly, I can't remember what he did. It was anti-social. He was in serious trouble with the law and facing expulsion from the school  First stop...my office.( as usual),  This time with the facility's social worker. 

Context! Context! Context! One month earlier his mother and his sisters had all died in a car smash. One shot - all his family gone!  Looking over the fence, lookng through the window, now there was nothing, no-one anymore, forever. Isolated and in his final year at both school and in the facility, not just a quarantine period, quarantined forever. It was the first (but not the last) time I  heard  a young person say, "I don't care. What do I have to live for?" This was another kind of lockdown response, expressed also, like the window fellow, as an angry act against society. The social worker cried.

Social media in this period of world wide lockdown has shown pics of some people visiting their mothers and seeing her by looking through a glass window pane. To see, but not to have real connection, no embrace by family. In one such moment, text said "the care- giver cried, the that got me going too". 

It's starting to become almost banal, unoriginal, repetitious to say that things will never be the same after the pandemic and the lockdowns. The "Aha"experiences, the first- hand lessons of the quarantine lockdowns and defences up (pun intended), are certain to change our perceptions. Now, our real experiences through the fence, through the window, through the fatalities of this novel viral pandemic are certain to change our child and youth care practice. Surely we must "get it" for real now. We must surely as child and youth care workers emerge from this with a deeper empathetic grasp, of young people's familial separation, lack of meaningful contact, family barriers and loss.

TOGETHER WE ARE STRONGER...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

  
Dr. Kiaras Gharabaghi, keynote speaker at the 2019 National Association of Child and Youth Care (NACCW) 22nd Biennial & 4th CYC-Net World Conference held in July in Durban, South Africa, commented on his experience of the Welcoming Function and the first few hours of the opening of the Conference. He said It was the vibe among child and youth care workers…”and the most amazing thing is that you all know each other”. Child and youth care workers being relational in our practice with young people and children in our various contexts is a given. Kiaras Gharabaghi’s comment turned the cogs and wheels. What about the relational experience among ourselves – child and youth care workers as a collective? I can only draw on the South African experience. In its formative years, the National Association of Child and Youth Care Workers (NACCW) had only one staff member – Brian Gannon, the National Director. I reflected on how the association somehow survived unbanned with its non-racial membership, within the context of apartheid and the separation of peoples. And that we now witness today, Kiaras’ words “you all know each other” and that he was amazed. Brian Gannon travelled the length and breadth of South Africa (and it’s not a small country). He was able to remember, use and greet everyone by name. Did I say “all”? Well, pretty well all the child and youth care workers he met. If he didn’t know a child and youth care worker’s name, he would ask someone and then use the person’s name. We learnt to know each other by first name. We connected as child and youth care workers who had in common some extraordinary stressors – coinciding challenges of the endemic HIV/AIDS, poverty and orphan crises with nearly non-existent professional recognition, within a context of racial divide that affected funding of services. Challenges that were at times foreign and misunderstood by outsiders. Our shared uniqueness in the South African context draws us together.  It reminds me of the powerful comradeship, the brotherhood and sisterhood of an African people shaped as a result of sharing apartheid oppression and a common cause.      

The nucleus of about 300 NACCW members were family… a rapidly growing family. Child and youth care workers in South Africa demonstrated relationship in action. Toward each other we reflected all the qualities which make up the relational practice we have with young people and children: engagement, warmth, unconditional acceptance, empathy, and being present. We hug.  At a fairly early NACCW Conference, Ashley Theron, the then National Chairperson said, “Stand up. Ask the person behind you their name. Greet that person by name. Now hug that person.” A hugging explosion shook the Centre. We are now a hugging profession. One with the other. None of this 30cm distance thing. Full warm hugs. You meet, you greet, you ask a name, you hug. And we sing together. Singing in Africa is inseparable from dance, swaying and following each other in movement. Singing and laughing are great de-stressors. I can’t think of another profession that has its own songs. We sing them together. When apart, we stay in touch with one another. Social groups, social media groups, WhatsApp groups. I heard it said in South African Government circles, “Let anything be said or happen in the child and youth care field and within 24 hours …they all know!”. There are a number of social media child and youth care groups which maintain a high volume steady flow of information and comments. It means that child and youth care workers are in constant connectedness. Recently on social media the word “Tribe” was used to describe this relational connectedness … belonging together as child and youth care workers. I like the word. It speaks of Africa. More significantly, it describes us well. It put us together in a group that shares a common ancestry, sometimes a name, a common culture. There is a special relationship in being a member of a common tribe. What is the spin off in our relational connectedness in and among South African child and youth care professionals? I think that this is a chicken and egg thing. Which in South Africa came first? Child and youth care relational practice or the relational child and youth care sector? As a sector, I believe, our relational nature contributed to our professionalization. First in the growth from a support group of child and youth care workers, then to a country wide move for recognition. Child and youth care workers in South Africa were relationally united, they supported each other in a nationwide movement for recognition. It was a struggle, and the struggle bonded us.
     
Child and youth care workers in South Africa are very much a “helpmekaar” as it is said in Afrikaans, … a co-operative … a “help each other” community. I can’t ever forget struggling and being ready to give up. Without announcement, Brian Gannon and the first Chairperson of the NACCW travelled by air to support and encourage me. Just me. The seeds of the relational child and youth profession in South Africa were sown. The benefit of child and youth care workers being in a warm relational connectedness, lies with the children and young people in our programmes. I was once told that child and youth care workers in independent private practice may struggle because child and youth care work is team based. It is true I think. Even now writing this, I miss discussing ideas with others. Nelson Mandela said, “Together we are stronger”. Being relational as a body of professionals considerably benefits the young people in care. Being relational among ourselves underscores the whole message and meaning of relational practice. I am grateful as a child and youth care professional to have been held in the embrace of what I call “family”. And I can agree with Kiaras Gharabaghi “… and the most amazing thing is that you all know each other.”  

First published in Relational Child and Youth Care Practice Volume 32 Number 4