|
ISSN 0840-982X VOLUME 5 NUMBER 1CONTENTS v Editorial
1 Definitions of Child and Youth Care: Responses to Billy’s MotherThom Garfat 15 How is Child and Youth Care Unique —and Different —From Other Fields? Reflections on Time, Space and Context With Thanks to Albert EinsteinKaren vanderVen
21 On Being a Child and Youth Care WorkerLeanne Rose THIS ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE ON THE CYC-NET SITE 27 Politics and The Language of Child Care Chris Gudgeon
33 Divisions Between Behavior Management and Therapy:Towards New Directions of Authority in Child and Youth Care Jim Vanderwoerd
43 Complementing the Therapist: Child Care Work With Sexually Abused YouthThomas Oles
51 One Child’s Smile: Non-verbal Approaches to Cognitive TherapyLisa Toman and Bruce Gray
59 Differential Group Programming for Children Exposed to Spouse AbuseD. Mark Ragg
77 Coming From Your Center, Being There, Teaming Up, Meeting Them Where They’re At, Interacting Together, Counseling on The Go, Creating Circles of Care, Discovering and Using Self, and Caring for One Another: Central Themes in Professional Child and Youth CareMark Krueger THIS ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE ON THE CYC-NET SITE
BOOK REVIEWS 89 Mark Krueger, In Motion. (Thorn Garfat) 90 Gerry Fewster, Being in Child Care: A Journey into Self. (Thorn Garfat) EDITORIAL FOOTPRINTS ON THE BORDERS OF REALITY Everywhere we walk we leave footprints. They may be marks deep like those we leave in the snow of a Canadian winter, or clear like the mud prints we tracked across our mother’s freshly waxed floor when we were too young to know that such things were important. They may be blurred and temporary like those we leave in the shifting wet sands of an Oregon beach in late October. But visible or not, they are always there behind us: following in our path like a stranger lurking just one step behind in the shadow of our passage. They leave their mark upon the terrain we travel: not always obvious, sometimes impermanent, frequently unnoticed. But sometimes ... sometimes they remain fixed forever like the footsteps of children in fresh cement on the first days of spring.As child and youth care workers we leave our footprints on the lives of the children with whom we work. We traverse their minds, their bodies, their hearts and sometimes their very souls in our daily interactions with them. This is the terrain we wander; this is the grass we sometimes trample in our journey. As child and youth care workers we also leave our footprints around them as we dance at our ‘oh so professional’ distance from them and from their reality. It is these footprints—the ones we leave on the borders of their reality—that interest me most. For it is on these borders that we whirl in our most furious dances. Daily in our work with troubled children we walk on the edges of the real and the not-so-real. We balance precariously on the line between the world we believe to be real and the world we think the children inhabit. Often, in our frantic rush to protect ourselves we manage to convince ourselves that their world and ours are not the same. Surely that world of chaos and madness which I see before me when I look into those tortured eyes is not the same world I see when I gaze fondly into the eyes of a new lover. Surely it is not the same reality I experience when I watch non-tortured children laughing in the streets on a Sunday outing. Surely the madness and pain that I feel lurking there like a dark shadow does not lurk within us all. Surely it is their reality and theirs alone. Surely this thing I feel when I am with these children is a reflection of their world, their history ... not mine. "My world is a world unlike theirs," I screamed at the supervisor who would have had me explore my reaction to the alienating adolescent who strutted his way untouched through my array of strategies and techniques, like water through a gravel bed."It’s not that I need for her to need me, it’s that she needs to need somebody so that her life will be more meaningful and she can experience trusting another without fear of rejection," I explained patiently to the team members who questioned my motives. "You can’t let yourself get too close to the children," I cautioned the new student who wanted to enter into a personal relationship with the group. "Remember, soon you’ll have to leave and they’re going to move on. Another significant loss would just cause more pain and we should avoid that at all costs, so make sure to maintain an appropriate professional distance."Now, years later, I listen to the hollow echoes of my own self-delusion, embarassed. I listen to the echoes of my fear and stupidity. For I have finally relearned that these children are people. But more important, I have learned that I am one too. For years I believed that what I had learned was real and true. Now, when the room is quiet and I have no choice but to listen to the voices I try to keep silent, I hear one of them whispering that it was all part of an ‘accidental conspiracy,’ a conspiracy of self-protection that exists in most fields where people work with others while trying to avoid being with them. For make no mistake, there has been a movement afoot to keep us distant from these things we fear: the children’s pain, their sadness, their madness, their reality ... and how it triggers our own. So, like a pride of hesitant lions we have circled these two-footed creatures suspiciously and with deep caution. We sniff but keep our distance: we surround them but are hesitant to move too close to these strange creatures we call ‘troubled children.’We wander near their territory, but it is not their territory we traverse; it is our own. It is not their madness that drives us back from them; it is our own. It is our fear and it is time we owned it. We are not alone in this fear. The very basis of the institutional confinement of troubled children was based on our fear of their disturbance, their expression of their reality and how it threatened to make us confront our own. Thus, we labelled them behaviorally disturbed because their behavior disturbed us. We labelled them emotionally disturbed because their emotions disturbed us. The labels kept us distant from them. It kept their disturbance from disturbing us. Now we call them troubled children because we believe they trouble us. But is is not they who trouble us. It is our imagination about what it must be like inside of them, and our fear—old and ancient—that if we touch (or are touched by) madness we will loose our tenuous footing in our own tenuous reality. This is an old fear: a fear as old as man’s consciousness itself. It is not just your fear or my fear, it is the fear of our society and it permeates our fabric like rain permeates the garden outside your window. Is it any wonder then that child and youth care workers find their work so stressful? They spend their days in the conflict between their desire to be in contact with the children, and the ancient messages, buried deep in the subconscious, that they should not touch, or be touched by, the madness of another reality. For, if it touches you, surely you will be lost forever. Like all the ancient messages, this one has contained just the right blend of truth and deception necessary to seduce us into thinking that it was true. Like all the ancient messages it has led us to walk ever so slightly beside the pathway of knowing. Not on the path.. . just a little to the side. For there is some truth in the fear that if you allow yourself to enter the reality of these children you may be touched by madness.But if you are touched by madness it will not be theirs: it will be your own. It is not their fear that will overwhelm you: it is your own. When you work with troubled children, it is not their reality that you wander: it is your own. Those footprints that you see around you are on the border of your own reality, not theirs. Tread gently and with caution but do not be led by your fear. For in the territory of the children’s reality, just where it borders with your own, lies the opportunity for change: for them and for you. ______________ IN THIS ISSUE What is child and youth care? What does it mean to say that you are involved in the practice of child and youth care? What does it mean to be a child and youth care worker? This issue, in many ways, addresses these questions. It does not offer a definitive answer (could anyone?) but the authors of these pieces provide the stimulus necessary to get us thinking on the right track. The editorial in this issue challenges us to look at how and where we focus our work, and confronts the unspoken fear that lies behind much of our work with disturbed children. We leave it to you to decide whether there is any relevance in it or whether it is just an excerpt from the ramblings of a frustrated practitioner longing for the future-past. In Definitions of Child and Youth Care: Responses to Billy’s Mot her, we offer you a sampling of how some members of our profession think child and youth care differs from other professions. Contributions to this piece came from far and wide in the field; you will find here comments from students and practitioners as well as from some of the leading voices in child and youth care today. While the piece appears under the authorship of one person, the real author is the field itself. The article which follows, How is Child and Youth Care Work Unique and Different from other Fields: Reflections on Time, Space and Context, With Thanks to Albert Einstein, is a delightful little piece which represents the thinking of Karen vanderVen at her esoteric and creative best. In responding to the question of how child and youth care is different from other professions, Karen gives us a framework for thinking about our profession as a contextual whole. Her thoughts should provoke and enlighten you. You may even want to pull out that dust-covered copy of Einstein your grandmother gave you. We publish this piece in this month’s issue because we believe that in order to know who you are, you have to situate yourself in a context. We consider the paper by Leanne Rose, On Being a Child and Youth Care Worker, to be mandatory reading for everyone involved in the field. In her exploration of what is meant by the therapeutic care of children and youth in their life space, Leanne provides us with a personal and sensitive look into one person s realization of what it means to be a child and youth care worker. Hopefully, reading her piece will help you remember why it is that you are involved in this field where ultimately there is only the encounter between selves. In some way she talks not so much about what child and youth care is, but also how it is. Part of one’s definition of self is found in the language one uses. In Politics and The Language of Child Care, Chris Gudgeon asks us to look at what we mean by the language that we use in this field, and why we use the language that we do. Some of you are going to be annoyed by this piece, which is exactly the reason why we think it’s worth including here. If it doesn’t cause you to think about what you say, you probably aren’t doing it now. The next article, Divisions Between Behavior Management and Therapy addresses one of the most controversial subjects of our field - control versus treatment. In a first person exposition, founded in the personal experience of working with children, Jim Vanderwoerd argues that we judge child care workers too much by whether or not their actions limit the deviant behavior of the children in their care. If you are a line worker you should read this article. If you are responsible for programs and their effectiveness, this piece may cause you to reflect on your evaluative actions and what it is that you think child and youth care workers do. In Complementing The Therapist: Child Care Work With Sexually Abused Youth, Thomas Oles offers us a description of how child care work with abused children can complement other therapeutic interventions used to help these children. His article offers one approach and while you may not agree with him, his ideas should get you thinking about the integration of the different intervenors in the lives of troubled children.In our next piece, One Child’s Smile, Lisa Toman and Bruce Gray help us to re-visit the excitement of early success in child care work. In a touching article about the discovery of how to help one child overcome one of his problems, then remind us that child care is about helping children. In their delight over their discovery we are reminded of the joy in our field. On another level it demonstrates how good educational practice can help a student help children. The next article is not so much about child and youth care as it is about an aspect of our work with troubled children. In Differential Group Programming for Children Exposed to Spouse Abuse, D. Mark Ragg does us two favours. First, he causes us to attend to an area that is too often overlooked — the impact of spouse abuse on children—and second, he offers us a way to think about group programming which is differentially designed depending on the chronological and developmental age of the children with whom we are working. We are pleased to close this issue on child and youth care with a valuable summary by Mark Krueger of some of the literature in our field. In Coming From Your Center,Being There ... Mark analyzes the literature and discovers themes that have come to be associated with quality child and youth care. It is a tittilating piece that will send you off to your local library or book store in search of some of the literature he reviews. Who we are in child and youth care is partially revealed in our literature; therefore, looking at the themes which evolve in our written work helps us to understand a part of who we believe ourselves to be. In the Book Reviews section you will find a review of Mark’s latest fiction novel, In Motion. It is an insightful look into the internal workings of a youth in care. You will also find a commentary on the new book by Gerry Fewster, Being In Child Care:A Journey Into Self. Some will love this book. Some won’t. I think it’s one of the most important pieces of literature produced in our field to date. We hope you enjoy this issue of the Journal. We would appreciate any comments you have to make about it, or the Journal itself. Please remember: for the Journal to reflect the field we need your input.
|
___