LONG PAST LASTING MEMORIES ...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE TALK

Surely, it will not be forgotten that our South African pioneer and child and youth care guru, Brian Gannon, in the mid eighties initiated a year of Making Memories. The idea was to encourage child and youth  care workers to design, to create moments which would provide children and young people with positive, meaningful, lasting memories. That, as an initiative was needed at that time. Really meaningful, purposefully structured, creative positive, life enhancing moments tended at the time to be lost in what Brian Gannon called child and youth care logistics. Creating purposeful meaningful memories was breaking new ground.      

Some time past now, in Facebook, someone posted  a text which read something like this."  If you want to know what I miss about the residential programme, it is the lunch that the child care worker ( name) cooked on Sundays.

Unusual for a, now middle aged past resident to have a lasting good memory of a meal...food! Mostly food is remembered with complaint - except for puddings. Puddings were a Wednesday treat, They have a way of being remembered long into adulthood. 

Anyway, it got me wondering. What is it that children and young people remember? What memories linger for life? 

Responses to that post and the experience of other , now middle age past residents was that the people in the programme, child and youth care workers were well remembered. Often fondly, often not.

 He was about 9 years old. She had been in my residential facility for 2 years when she was moved to another in another City in another Province to be with her brother, also in care. After some 2 years, then 11, he asked to visit the old place for part of a school holiday. They thought it to be a sound developmental, therapeutic idea, so with a one-on-one child and youth care worker, he came.

On seeing me from a reasonably close distance, he said to the child and youth care worker "There he is. That's him! I'll never forget that SMILE." 

 Social media posts among long past residents and community - based young people followed that theme. Child and youth care workers were remembered years after. mentioned by name for their personal characteristics, their qualities of caring or not caring, as they then experienced it and for their relationship. Often with gratitude.

She had to be moved to a more secure facility and immediately because of issues connected with her parents. 

Where is she?  - very upset and angry. "She was here when we left for school and not here when we came back. That's not right. At least we should have been told. Don't you know  for us here...an injury to one is an injury to all " 

The connection among each other is another of those lasting memory threads. "They were / we were, like family, - brothers and sisters"

 The social media posts like that abound,  Many still keep contact with each other. "You were always there for me . I could always share with you". Sharing common life experiences and situations strengthen the peer bond into memories which social media has proven last well into adulthood.

 Then came so well the "Do you remember when ? " posts. Most I read are lasting memories of what they got up to as  and young people in a facility. Especially if it was a  daring escapade.

"Do you you know what I remember?  We had such fun when we used to break into the tuck shop at night and steal sweets and chocolate bars. It was such fun man!  We planned together so carefully. Night-time creeping down there... breaking in so quietly and then... the chocolates. That's  what I remember so well."

Some can't forget now as adults, the child and youth care system and what it forced on them in the name of discipline. Way back before the law prohibited young people from being held in prison cells, there came the Juvenile Prison. An advance was the Reformatory. and a less restrictive institution called an Industrial School in which the boys were accommodated in secure dormitories.

They were told to expect us, at the Juvenile Prison. We were proposing Child and Youth Care training training for the prison wardens. What we experienced in any event  happened every day.. The boys stood at attention at the foot of their beds, holing their identification open at the chest...name, age, offence. The big memory for me were the made beds. Military style with one blanket covering the bed and the other rolled and twisted to make a decorative feature on the single pillow. ..each different and each twisted into very creative designs. They never forgot. For when, after the law change, they trickled down into the bigger boys residential caring facility called  St Goodenough Children's Home...Lo and Behold - they followed exactly the same bed-making thing.

At the residential facility I inherited in 1986 the boys chewed the blanket edges on the bed to make a sharp creased edge. Staff would hold an inspection with the boys standing at attention at the end of the bed. This has come up endlessly on Social Media as positive never  to be forgotten.

Some try to forget. "Oh, I don't talk about that. ..it didn't happen I say I was at a Hostel as a boarder. It's part of my life that doesn't exist. Some remember proudly and let the memory be known. 'I made it through all that. Look at me now

 Today, child and youth care workers do design and  purposefully create experiences, activities and moments to last as lasting, uplifting memories They seem not to get much social media mention. Pity

Again and again there is a need for we child and youth care workers and for young people to tell our stories. Again and again we must let our memory making in the lives of children be known. It's part of what we do, It's so very important.