NO PARENT HOUSEHOLDS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

 

There was a home-based community health service provided to the village of Bethanie in the North West Province in 2010. It had an unused hospice. The statistics kept by the home-based care workers showed a large number of orphans in the village as a result of parental HIV/Aids related deaths. At that time the definition of an orphan was a young person under the age of 18 with both parents dead. The UNICEF global partners definition however defines an orphan as a child under the age of 18 with one parent dead. In Bethanie, this raised the number considerably and more especially as there were what we called pragmatically orphaned children. Generally the mother had died (young) and the biological father had long disappeared or was unknown. 

Result - child-headed households.

This is where the Isibindi Project  came in. This community-based Child and Youth Care concept was initiated as a model primarily because of the large projected figures of expected orphans in South Africa as well as children affected or infected with HIV/Aids as a result of the pandemic. It proved over the years, that those figures were fairly accurately predicted.

PmG (Parliamentary Monitoring Group) www.pmg.org.za Child and youth headed households/PmG quotes Stats SA Household Survey as showing 90,000 children in 50,000 child-headed households in South Africa in 2015.

In Bethanie Isibindi, we identified and provided Child and Youth Care services to about 500 children in any one year from 2010 onward.

The local church in the Hartbeespoort area, where I live knew of my Isibindi Bethanie involvement and what it did.

"She's only 13 years old," said the priest. She's the oldest of three. She is the primary caregiver for the two younger ones. They live alone in a shack dwelling. It's in a settlement next to that huge plant nursery on the way to town. The problem is that she/they are helped by an 'uncle" who lives next door. He demands sexual favours in return. This 13 year old has gone into the streets to fully support her other siblings. She has become a child prostitute. Can you put an Isibindi Project there?"

 The numbers didn't meet with the viability requirements. Work outside of Isibindi had to be done...the church, non-profit organisations, and well-wishing benefactors. It must be said that there were sources of help. It came as food parcels, school uniforms, shoes, clothing, school stationery and in some sibling-headed households paid voluntary work and even one-room accommodation.

State support developed slowly over the next years. but it did.

This 13 year old story sounds like an extreme, but wasn't an isolated instance.

 There was always the possibility of orphaned children, child-headed households, sick mothers, unemployment putting children and young people at risk. Isibindi widened it's service delivery to include children and young people at risk. I don't know of a child prostitution instance in Bethanie at any time in my spell as the co-ordinator. There was however, an emergence of us recognising the at risk no parent households. Granny headed households, grandfather headed households, sibling-headed households ( headed by the oldest sibling, older that 18 and anything up to 25 years of age), neighbouhood supported child-headed households. Each sometimes had its own levels of risk for children and young people especially if there was the additional burden of an ailing mother in the house. 

Granny headed households arose quite often. as a result of the HIV/Aids pandemic. - more than usual. It was almost a cultural norm that, if the mother and or the father, or both, were absent because of employment and temporary residence in the city, then the children went to granny. Now, more than before the absence of parent featured in the community  profile.  

 Many grannies were old. Well past child rearing age. They  seemed to get tired easily, stressed, separated from the teen culture of today. Child and youth care workers do not separate children and young people from household/family systems. Professional work, then provided support and care to the full family in its own child and youth care professional form of life-space practice. ...... and they still do.

As I said, state support started to grow. Minister Dr Skweyiya made it his 1999 to 2009 ministerial focus to introduce social grants. It resulted in established, considered child-care grants, free schooling, school meals, foster care grants, disability and unemployment grants as well as pensions. The social support grants together with a huge increase in the number of Isibindi Projects  as community-based professional child and youth care services eased no parent household struggles.

In 2014 there was a state campaign to compile a register of child and youth headed households to "formalise" assistance if needs assessments were done and then linked to "therapeutic interventions and resources". Grannies, for example were able to foster children and group foster homes were established. I know of at least one instance where the court agreed to allocate foster care parenting to an 18 year old sibling and so, the financial assistance. The number of child-headed households is reducing slowly, but nonetheless reducing throughout the world and noticeably in South Africa.

 We can boast of professional, quality community-based child and youth care service delivery to orphans and to no parent families.

DO WE KNOW QUALITY...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA?

 

Opening remark: Registration as a professional child and youth care worker by and with the South African Council for Social Service Professions ( SACSSP) is a legal process established to protect the children, youth and community against poor, mal, negligent or unethical child and youht care practice.

This has appeared in a past blog ...the moment sticks with me and came again to mind. The then Minister of the Department "Welfare", Minister Geraldine Fraser- Moleketsi said at a National Association of Child and Youth Care Workers (NACCW) conference - way back in the 90's "I look forward to the day when a child and youth care worker will be able to report from records that a child or young person has tantrummed three times less this week that she did last week."

Tantrum counting and logging like any other goal-orientated observable behaviours, have to be reported and recorded in today's South African professional methodology.  We have it all in place. Minister Fraser-Moleketsi's wish day came about in South Africa easily several decades ago.

 The question on Facebook  "How do we know if we are delivering a quality service?" can be approached in one way    (among others) through measurement. We all know this. It starts with the initial care plan and carefully structured observations logged daily. Then within a given time period.  the child and youth care worker puts together a developmental assessment (DA). Consolidation of all party's DA's happens at the Multi- professional Case Management meeting (Previously called the multi-disciplinary team). An Individual Development Plan (IDP) is agreed. It now that our recording responsibilities, tasks and accountability are all set out as goals, tasks and time- frames for all involved including the child or young person with agreed constant periods of review. Logging continues now with the developmental purpose measured up-front.

What is being said here? 

How do we know if we are delivering a quality child and youth care service? If the tasks are undertaken and the goals are being met, then within these parameters, our practice is to some extent measured.

It is however more complicated than this. In South Africa we have what are called practice principles. Interesting is that Geraldine Fraser-Moleketsi was party to compiling these together with Leslie du Toit of the NACCW. The mechanical counting and tick-box checklists and the achievement of goals has to practiced within  practice and policy which actively demonstrate that these practice principles are being applied. I'm going to list them without explanation just in case they may have been lost somewhere in organisational and professional practice. Participation, Rights of young people, Restorative justice, Appropriateness, Family preservation, Permanency planning, African renaissance. Family-centered, Continuum of care, Integration, Continuity of care, Normalisation, Effective and efficient, Child-centered.

Quality Care is measurable and principled.

Still... How do we know?

Back to statistics. There is this thing called recidivism. It's a measurement of the percentage of the children and young people, who having transitioned out of the child and youth care programme, then return into it. The lower is the percentage, the better s the programme ranked. My problem with recidivism statistics is this...I know of only one franchise of facilities which may have the recording tools and the capacity to monitor recidivism within its consortium only. If there are others I would be pleased to know. But, nationally I think that some young people get lost through the cracks. If, for example, a young person comes into a diversion programme, completes the programme but has to be placed later in another progamme in another city, in another province, or more particularly at age 18 lands up in prison, do we know? There are examples of this. In doing quality assurance work in Child and Youth Care Centres in Gauteng we couldn't establish in the local/regional courts whether a young person may have moved to another locality or region and entered the judicial system there. So, on the basis of recidivism what is the quality of service practiced in the original placement Centre?

Then again, there has been a view that we cannot establish 'success' in child and youth care work. The idea is that success cant be measured. What, it was said is that we deal with the reduction of failure. The statistics thrown around said something like: If a child or young person comes into a programme, notwithstanding the quality of the programme and practice,11% of them have the natural resilience to bounce back and to cope following transition. If a young person comes into a programme, which, notwithstanding the quality of the programme, has consistency, then the figure increases to about 20%. So, the argument is that we can't chalk up practice success, what we can do is to establish the reduction of the possibility of failure for a remaining 80% of our programme intake..... how do we do that? The through flow ...so many in...so many out is a statistic but has to be adjusted to take into account that quite a number of young people would have coped, developed and transitioned anyway.

Child and youth care workers say that there are unmeasurables in trying to establish the quality of our practice. This is where child and youth care workers have particular professional skills. It in our skill of profiling descriptively the children and young people in our care programmes. We seem to be able to find examples, images and words to describe shifts in otherwise unmeasurables.  Outside of tick-boxes, we recognise shifts in world view, in values, in attitude, which underlie behavior as young people develop through our professional care. Shifts like, for example, moves toward co-operation rather than competition, others rather than self, understanding parentability .. the list goes on.

 We have a poor record of longitudinal studies, but some of us know how the 40 plus year olds are coping and through some of these contact keepers, are our best indicators of the quality of our child and youth care practice services.

"Uncle Barrie, I'm worried about you, I think that you are struggling in your retirement. Can I help you?"      

   

 

  

STORY TELLING MAGIC...CHILD AND YOUTHH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

" Pick out the scars and wounds on your body. You don't have to show us if they must stay covered. But tell us about them. Tell us how they happened and why". It was an exercise in awareness during a training session.

"I don't have any scars". 

Me, "What s that above your eye?"  

"Oh that...  I was a child. I pulled a donkey's tail and it kicked me". 

Another child and youth care worker said, "There's no scar you can see. I'm wounded inside. My shoulder doesn't move properly. He was a giant of a man. We argued, and he pushed me out of a moving car and drove off. He left me for dead. I  lost some shoulder movement.

" I have a scar. I can show you. It's across my back from my left side. I was born not able to swallow any solid food until I had this operation. I was 12 years old."

Me, "Do your scars and wounds still live with you somehow? Has the hurt left you with triggers and reactions?" 

" Food means much to me emotionally. I have to guard against making a sudden unreasonable reaction in situations where I think food is wasted by young people as well if young people get fussy about what they will eat and what not."

"I get very worried whenever I see young people touching an animal.. especially dogs. I tell them to leave the dog alone, it may bite you". 

'I have a thing about big men and I have a thing about being in a car with the young people. I have to be sure that all the doors are locked and that safety belts are buckled up. I haven't learnt to trust big men."

What's encouraging was that the story tellers were able to connect the big dots and link their past narratives to their present life and child and youth care practice. What I missed was the connection of the smaller dots to messages of bigger life and world views. From experiencing locally to thinking universally...globally. 

This is where wisdom story telling comes in.

Africa is known for its art of story telling, myths, legends and  oral tradition used as a cultural practice to raise those all important  "AHA " moments of universal truth and perceptual change.

"Do you remember?" she said "We sat on the ground under a tree. Granny sat on a chair. Sometimes there was a fire. She put four little sticks into her hair. Does any one remember, what was those sticks for? Then she told stories." It was a response from a child and youth care worker at a conference presentation on story telling in Child and Youth Care.

So from child rearing experiences, my observations have been that much of everyday conversation in African cultural space is narrative in style, lively, loaded with humour. We laugh easily. So it is with the style of story telling. Voice changes, singing, body language, hands, eyes, gesture and sometimes drums make African story telling live. Animals feature. Animal analogies abound and so character understood  or misunderstood is transported into the understanding of humans and human behaviour.  

I have had experience of the Tswana tribe known as Bakwena ba Magoba...'Crocodile on the move'. To be a tribe of the moving crocodile sounds like a people slithery, not to be trusted, dangerous..to be feared. The story of the origin of the tribal totem however throws a completely different view on the common view of the  crocodile......a lesson for life.  Crocodile is heroised because it saved a princess from danger, drowning and from death. Lesson learnt. 

African stories are wisdom stories, learning for life, religion and culture, right, wrong and the treatment of people life events, local events and the world. They connect the smaller dots.

We speak a lot in South Africa if indigenous practice. In Africa story telling cannot be disregarded as a Child and Youth Care  tool (If you like) for cognitive restructuring....when pulling a donkey's tail is not just a donkey or a tail....to bring about that all important AHA moment....oh OK, now I get it.

 For us in child and youth care work, the magic in story telling is in the stories children and young people will listen to, will hear as told (or perhaps read) by us and  the stories children and young people tell. In the listening and the telling lies the magic. We do use helpful story joggers and props to help young people tell their stories. The life-book, the life-line, the memory box, socio drama, puppetry, doll talk.

  On going through her memory box "I remember the songs my mother always used to sing", she said ."I can sing them for you". Singing. "I wonder if my mother knows I remember the songs and what she taught me just in her singing when she was alive?" 

"Would you like to  take your memory box to her grave and you can sing to her?" And so it was. The otherwise untold story told. Healing, safe, supported, helpful, therapeutic, developmental. When children and young people tell their stories, the first ears to hear them are the ears of the story teller. Magical moments.

 In Afrikaans it is said " Nou praat ek van 'n ander bladsy af ". "Now I am speaking from another page". But the thought is not strictly a change of subject. It's that we have a huge need for us in  South Africa to tell our stories. What we do well in practice. What works for us a South Africans. Our success stories, especially in indigenous practice. There is indeed Child and Youth Care magic to be had in this.       

It's this. Story telling in Africa, and so in our Child and Youth Care practice does make a difference. It is magic. It is African Magic

 

REPORTABLE INCIDENTS... CHILDAND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

On Saturday mornings, staff collected their weekly rations from the kitchen. They would take a tray, containers and a jug. There was a shouting - two female voices.. I went out of the office to see two female child and youth care workers standing on the steps to the houses. One on one side, the other on the other. Young people were watching. Suddenly, the one picked up her jug of milk and poured it over the other's head. The boys stared.

 Me, "Go to your houses NOW. I'll come and we'll talk in private.  

The story was that the one accused the other of having more supplies than she.

Me, "But you both modelled a way which we are supporting young people to do differently. You help them to find other ways of sorting out disagreements.

End result. I filed an official complaint. Disciplinary hearing. One resigned.... still .. REPORTABLE INCIDENT 

Reportable incident 2

Staff meeting. First hour child and youth care workers only. Second hour all, general staff meeting. We were coming to the end of the first hour.. A child and youth care worker was sharing very personal issues with the other child and youth care workers which affected her response to an incident. It had become a group support moment... which is fine.

A general support staff member walked in.

ME. "Please wait outside for about 5 minutes, we are involved here. Give us 5 minutes". 

She, walking out "STUPID ! RUDE !  LITTLE MAN ! "

End result. I filed an official internal complaint. Internal disciplinary hearing. REPORTABLE INCIDENT.

Reportable incident 3

On Saturday mornings weekly, Woolworths gave us foodstuff which had reached its sell by date. The child and youth care couple (Then known as houseparents) collected the it in the facilities allocated mini-bus. A young child and youth care worker allocate to the group home as a relief worker reported that when the loaded minibus arrived at the hose a pick-up ( bakkie) pulled up alongside. The Woolworth supplies were loaded into it and it would drive off

Me, " Please put it in writing". 

End result. A scheduled internal disciplinary hearing. The couple resigned without attending the hearing. REPORTABLE INCIDENT

Reportable incident 4 

"If you go to the clubs in the red- light area of Johannesburg and get back late, I will not report you. But here's the deal. You will al be present when Mr Lodge does his walk-abouts at breakfast and at homework."

It was a young person who reported this. He must have had other grievances.

End result. Internal disciplinary enquiry. REPORTABLE INCIDENT.

Reportable incident 5

"There is to be NO physical punishment. No hurt whatsoever. As a child and youth care worker you will not punch, kick, pull hair, ears twist fingers, use a belt or cane on any part of the body, hands, feet. You shall not design any form of punishment which results in hurt."

"We might as well resign now", they said.. 

Me, "We'll have staff training to learn other ways of discipline". 

"Not interested" But they did attend. 

 There was a thing called running the gauntlet . The boys lined up in two rows with a narrow passage between the two rows. The offender was forced to run naked through the passage .and the line-up flicked him with wet towels. 

Allegations of physical punishment against the child and youth care worker were responded with "I did nothing. The boys have their own way of dealing with things ".

There was an internal complaint... encouraging and by silence associated with physical punishment.

 End result. Internal disciplinary hearing, Guilty REPORTABLE INCIDENT.

Reportable incident 6

"Are there ay other child and youth care workers in this group who have this problem?" It was a full-blooded text on Facebook. "The manager here at St Goodenough is not a child and youth care worker. She know nothing about child and youth care work. We are suffering. We went to university and we got a degree in Child and Youth Care. Some of us have the certificate. We know what we are doing. But NO,. We are always told we are doing things wrong. Sometimes, some child and youth care workers finish up in disciplinary hearings for doing the right thing.

End result ... REPORTABLE INCIDENT.

Look at Reportable incidents 1--6

It all rests on the 'Code of Ethics for  child and youth care workers. In the Code, the critical sections are the child and youth care worker's ethical and conduct responsibility toward Self, Profession, Client, Colleagues, Employers and Partners and Community. The examples in this blog have attempted to touch on most of these.

 Organisations should have internal procedures for dealing with breached in these . But then Labour issues are different from, in most instances from Ethical and Professional Conduce issues.  They have to be reported to the South African Council for Social Services Professions for further procedural measures too be taken'

An Sacssp form for REPORTING an INCIDENT. is required. It's available by requesting it by e-mail from profcond2sacssp.co.za  This is the submitted to the South African Council through the e-mail address on the form. 

 Thereafter the procedure is set out in the Regulations regarding the Conducting of inquiries into alleged Unprofessional Conduct. Regulations 3 and 4 in terms of the South African Social Services Act 110 of 1963 with Amendments. Which can be downloaded.

It's like this. We have all been waiting for the Child and Youth Care profession to be truly professional and ethical. The procedures are now available to us for this to be. WE must use them.

 

LIFE-SPAN...LIFESPACE...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUHAFRICA

 

The usual Monday morning staff meeting. 

"Last evening, at about 5.pm, Pilane ( a young person of about 17years) had one of his tantrums. He broke a window in the dormitory. It was about pocket-money. He wanted it then and there. I said " I'll give it to you on Monday morning."

Me, "What did you do?" 

"Aagh. We've learnt t live with it... that's what he does."

Me. "But you are a child and youth care worker. That's not what we do. We don't learn to "live with". He needs to be helped. He needs to know how to use more appropriate behaviour. We use that moment to help the young person. He needs to know how to, what we call, hold-off. Many of the young people we work with characteristically want immediate gratification. Let's talk about phased. gradual learning to hold- off."

"Aagh, We just live with it. We've got used to it".

Me. "My concern is what happens if he isn't helped to have another way, a more coping way, of waiting for his needs to be met? What will it mean in his marriage? For his children?"

The question was  What's the difference between life-space and life- span work?  

Pilane was in his dorm next to a window. It was 5.00pm on Sunday. He wanted his pocket-money. Guess was he would bully a junior to go to the local Roadhouse to buy him a hamburger and Coke. He couldn't hold off until Monday when the pocket money was due to be routinely paid So, he used a power tantrum and a window break to intimidate, to scare the child care worker into breaking the rules. That's the moment. That's the environment in which he reacted. That's when and where the child and youth care worker seizes the opportunity to start a holding off  Intervention plan . Its the life- space moment for life-span benefit. 

 At St Goodenough, I could never understand  that there were boys in the residential programme who were sons of fathers previously placed there. In at least one instance ...three generations. "My father and my grandfather were here - now I'm here". All three were proud of their St Goodenough history. Even staff, I heard said, 'I looked after his father, and now I'm looking after him".

Me. "We just don't seem to get it. The purpose of our work is to put a sign on the gate .. Out of Business."

It was the Pilane, "We have learnt to live with it" syndrome. It was the "we look after syndrome  Left unassisted Pilani was sure to demonstrate disfunctional relationships of intimacy, Pilane's children were predictably destined to be locked into the system.

St Goodenough again. One of the group homes was allocated to be, what we called, a bridging house. We took in street children from a neighbouring Street Children's Shelter when they were considered ready to be bridged into what we called the mainstream. We observed that the boys had inappropriate attitudes and behaviour toward girls. Projected into mainstreaming their whole approach to the opposite gender, shouted out messages of longer term developmental, life-span, disasters. The boys saw girls as sexual objects, lessor beings, fetchers, carriers and cleaners. But there were only boys in the house. No girls in the life-space. It took very careful planning. We had to create, to design life- space moments in which a few, or a group would mix socially with girls. For child and youth care workers, it was a structured activity.

Designed life- space work for life-span development... how very challenging yet professionally satisfying for us as child and youth care workers. But then again, that's what we do.

 The coffee- bar was useful. At one time, in terms of the 1983 Child Care Act, the Children's Homes had the responsibility to provide follow-up with young people transitioning out of the programme. That changed. So we started a coffee-bar. There was an Old boy's Club as a fee-paying membership and the nature of it's members tended to be something of a Club for those who had made it. Proper longitudinal studies were lacking and are today. In any case their constitution didn't accommodate girls and they were reluctant to include the new generation of black children.

So, we started the coffee-bar.  It was held once a month at the Bridging House. The idea was that, on leaving, young people and now young adults, or who-ever, having been in the programme could always come to the coffee club and talk. It was designed to give support into life-span situations. 

In child and youth care work, it happens now, where the children and young people are. In that time and space, we are preparing them for their whole life-span.  We are preparing their children and their children's children       

THE "LOVE" WORD...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

 

In the blog "WORDS WE USE" the phrase "We love them good" was used in a child and youth care setting which I called " a family setting". It got me going on the word 'love' as it crops up in child and you care work.

 I can't forget a moment when, in a well known baby sanctuary in Johannesburg, it was said at a Board meeting "If we put a child on Nelson Mandela's lap for a photograph, we can attract a lot of funds". "In my setting", I was tempted to say, " If I put one of my guys on Nelson Mandela's lap, he'll pick his pocket."

Considering this, when the reason for applying was "I love children". I would respond " "These young people might be the very different to love...will you cope if they......?"

In the 14th Century, old English epic poem called Tales of the Green Knight , also known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, there is a character called The Nun. On her habit, across her forehead was inscribed Amor Vincit Omnia. ...."Love conquers All". it 's a deliberate play on the word "Love". The different meanings adding a touch of humour in the poem and a double possible interpretation of the nun's character. Her surrender to divine love verses her having surrendered to sexual love.

I had on my shelf a book called The 11 Love styles. In a google search I found an article called 36 definitions of love.  I mention the 36 definitions and 11 styles to highlight the extent of the possible confusion. In child and youth care the multiple shades of styles, language, meaning, experience and understanding of love could lead to similar confused interpretation with implications in practice. Especially as at the moment of intervention, the different styles and language of love within the young person and within the child and youth care worker, engage.

 Let's start with love styles. I rather like the classic model of the psychologist John Alan Lee in his Color Wheel Theory of Love.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/color_wheel_theory_of_love

He suggests 3 Primary styles of love, 3 secondary and 9 tertiary.

His three primary styles are Eros, Ludus and Storge.

The three secondary, Mania, Pragma and Agape.

The 9 tertiary styles are combinations of these.

It 's worth looking very briefly at the primary and secondary love styles.

Eros: very strong physical and emotional connection in relationships. A stranger may immediately evoke strong excitement. Could be an exclusive but not a possessive relationship.

Ludus: meaning game or school. Love style is to look for fun with each other in the relationship. Could include teasing, activities, getting attention is part of the game and part of experiencing the relationship as love.

Storge: is familial love. Style is to grow commitment. "Quietly possessive" love through friendship, which becomes sexual only after commitment is declared". 

Secondary styles

Mania: love style is possessive and co-dependent. May but not necessarily, be associated with a mental disorder.

Agape: The love style is characterised by the person having no self-interest and considerable concern for the other in the relationship. It is a love style that unconditionally accepts the other as a partner and as a part of humanity.

Pragma: businesslike.  Looks for the relationship and what is given in it, to be returned. Style in which it is believed that getting on can be 'worked out'. 

The 9 tertiary styles are combinations of these.

Now for the language of love.

The question on Facebook was just that "What is the language of love?". I interpreted that to mean "In a relationship how is love communicated to another?" Considering the love styles, this could well be communicated and experienced in a different way in each of the styles. A child of about 8 years once said to me "If you cant control me you cant care for me."  Her expectation of the communication of love/caring in the relationship was that she would experience the other in the action of holding her, as managing and containing her within reasonable behavioural boundaries. For her, love is communicated through action, through doing and so to allow her to feel safe from her scary self. some Facebook responses to the question said exactly that. "It's a doing word".

 One response I enjoyed, read "There are 5 love languages, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, physical touch and acts of service." ( Ntombi Myeni 27 Sepember 2020). This sounds like Agape love style to me. And what I liked about it mostly was that it seemed to come close to a professional relationship that may well be called love and experienced as such by both young person and child and youth care worker. It also rang bells for me because it seemed to resound with the broad definition love as "deeply tender, passionate warm, personal attachment". Note: Affection is regarded as a step beyond. It has to do with feelings of closeness and passion. Love is kind, affection is passionate.

 It resounded with me also because it  spoke to me of compassion.

I found it  in Greater Good Magazine (https//greatergood.berkely.edu/topic/compassion/definition. Undated, Author unknown

"Compassion literally means "to suffer together"....It is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another's suffering and are motivated to relieve that suffering.'...not the same as empathy or altruism though the concepts are related." 

Considering the complexity of the term Love, it is essential the we as professionals interrogate ourselves, our own inherent styles and communication, our love language and our "doing".

I think that if a young person experiences us as professionally compassionate it could safely be called "Love" and what the young person experiences will be experienced as '"Love". 

 

CHILD AND TEEN TALK MATTERS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARAE TALK IN SOUTH AFRICA

 

 We were driving to the annual campsite  . One vehicle behind the other. My ar was filled with young people and we were following the loaded mini-bus . One of the girls in the mini-bus was kneeling on the backseat and looking out of the back window. Her friend was sitting in the passenger seat of my car. They could each see each other. Unexpectedly, the teenage girl in the bus ahead, raised both her hands and flicked eight fingers at her friend. Then, repeated the gesture. I returned the eight finger flick. Closed hands - eight fingers up, closed hands - eight fingers up. My passenger very quickly said, "Mr B, don't do that. Do you know what it means ?"

Me, "No, please tell me. I thought it was just a 'hello'."

"No Mr B. Don't you know the number code?"

"Nope. Tell me."

Mr B, she said, "One is holding hands. Two is kissing closed mouth. Three is French kissing. Four is fondling the breasts. Five is touching down there. Six is mutual masturbation. Seven is rubbing genitals together. Eight is oral sex. Nine is fingering. Ten is full on sex.

As a child and youth care worker, I had just been given a lesson, not only for life, but as a fill- in to my professional practice knowledge never presented to me as part of my training and education.

In a training programme on "Managing Sexual Abuse in Residential Care", the seed was further planted. We had to know what children and young people were saying when they spoke of body parts, sex and sexual activity. The facilitator started us, as child  and youth care workers, on collecting, what she called a 'Sex Dictionary".  It was not that we were to use these words, but that had to understand their meaning when, for example, the silence is broken with eg "I have to tell you. He put a penny in my money box." Young male seduced by an older woman, "She made me eat from a big pot".  

She was just a few months past her thirteenth birthday. A schoolgirl who lived in a small apartments just across the road from the resort at the Hartbeespoort Dam. I walked in the resort every afternoon. It was my daily exercise. She would almost ever afternoon be found talking to the female security guards at the entrance gate.

She took to walking with me for my 30minute  stroll. She held in her hand a small cellphone which she checked regularly. One day - NO Cellphone !!!

"Where's you cellphone?"

"My father took it from me. He says he will keep it for three weeks. He checked my messages and he didn't like some of the messages I was getting from some boys. He works at the police station. He is a detective. He says that he will find out who the boys are".

"But what were they sending? Were you swapping naked pics or something?"

"Mr B. Don't you know?  We talk in code and swap pics. I'll show you."

When she got her cell phone back, I was given a lesson. So began my text talk education. Most important - that detective father must have had advanced knowledge of sneaky teen text talk that I, as a child and youth care worker, did not have.

53X = sex,  KMS = Kill Myself,  LH6  = Let's have sex,  KYS   = Kill yourself,  MOS = Mom over shoulder,  POS = Parents over shoulder,  GNOC = Get naked on camera,  99 = Parents gone,  GYPO = Get your pants off,  WTTP = Want to trade pics?

In the homework I did, the surprise was to find that the number of texts teens made daily had been researched. Like - - boys typically send and receive 30 texts a day. Girls - 80!!! The 12 to 13 year olds, around 20 texts a day. Mostly in code. The biggest concern is the load of grooming for attempted seduction and the luring of children into pornography in order to normalise and trivialise sex.

 It's scary, but, it's essential for us as child and youth care workers to enter the world of children and young people. For us to grasp 'what is really going on'. It is essential for our professional  practice and our being relevant and our 'being present'. 

In training programmes and in practice, it was one of my favourites to tell child and youth care workers ...."There is what you see. There is what you are allowed to see. There is what you can deduce from these two levels of seeing so that you can enter the worlds of children and young people in care. There is what is hidden.  It's your work to make meaning of all of this"