The consultancy was scheduled for a one year period. Reasoning was that there should be a supported transition period because of a significant staff change. The facility had established a particularly detailed set of procedure manuals based on the practice of individualised "treatment" - leaning on the applied, in the life-space applied psychology concept of child and youth care work practice.
Incoming management staff inherited these somewhat "clinical" child and youth care developmental practices. Before the end of the 8th month, it became obvious that there were fundamental differences between what was, the practice beliefs of the consultant and what was to be. It had to do with approach differences...individualised "treatment within group care" vs program and programmes based on the assumption that the children and young people all shared the same needs. "Here they all have the same needs" was heard as a repetitive theme..so they all benefit by our generic approach. There appeared to be no compromise. The consultant withdrew from the contract.
He called it "The child determines the programmes" as contrasted with "the child fits the program"
The different spelling of the word programme and program has been used deliberately. At one time there was a sort of agreement n South Africa among Child and Youth Care policy makers and writers in the field that the word program would be used for the broad service offered, like for example: Street Children Program, Unmarried Mothers Program, Sexually Abused Children Program, Young People in Trouble with the Law Program.
Programme will be used for the specific interventions within a program. The Individual Development Plan (IDP) then, becomes the blue-print for the child's programme. It was useful, but the usage got somehow lost It will be used in this blog.
There are considerations that that arise out of program and programme. The first may be obvious. It is the issue of possible specialised Child and Youth Care training and education for programs.
A Facebook question raised this recently. It asked whether child and youth care workers in programs for young people in trouble with the law needed specialised training. Other possible areas of specialisation would probably be street children programs, school-based Child and Youth Care, residential Child and Youth Care... maybe you can think of other possibilities.
This then brings us back to the "One size fits all" vs fit the programme to the child
It was my experience in the residential facilities in which I worked (really more like "treatment Centres), that there were clusters or groups of children and young people who did have needs so similar that their individualised programmes placed them together in group-work programmes . Some were structures programmes which I called "off the shelf programmes". Programmes of an educational nature without risk ( Level1intervention) are allowed to be facilitated by child and youth care workers at the auxiliary level. It worked very well. But all the children and young people had needs that could only be met through programme design, though planned enviroments and through goal specific activities and relational approach. The individualisation of programme tends to be practiced within some kind of broad, agreed, value and principle-based management program approach to provide a level of predictability and consistency. Even this was found to need flexibility in application. An example is the program practice of using natural and logical consequence as a management approach. There were some children and young people who were really unable to learn from this. They could not connect the dots, to get the link between consequence and the initiating behaviour. They needed an individualised management.
"It's not fair. When I throw my toys out of the window, you tell me, "nothing will be replaced" and if I make damage, that it has to be fixed. so we work out ways for me do some work to have it repaired. But if Sello does that you just put him into that stupid group-work programme that talks about the stuff that makes them angry and doing other stuff. It's not fair."
Programme individualisation almost always raises the story of "It's not fair". When I... you do.. When he .. you do. It makes the one size fit all very attractive to child and youth care workers and to management, but mostly unhelpful and certainly not professional.
That 'Unfair" moment is, I think, an opportunity.
"Let me tell you a story. A man had three horses in his paddocks. When he took a stranger visitor into the paddocks, One horse was over friendly. He came up and rubbed his nose on the visitor's arm. The second horse was aggressive, pawed the ground, snorted, put down its head and stalked the visitor. The third horse was a afraid and backed away trying to hide. He wants his horses to accept and relate to visitors in a positive way. Can he treat them all the same? One had to be comforted, with one he had to be firm, with one he had to be gentle. Can you think about which horse had to be treated in which way?
We are like that too
The same but different.
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