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ISSN 0840-982X
VOLUME 6 NUMBER 4
Table
of Contents
VOL 6 (4)
iii Introduction
Gerry Fewster and Thorn Garfat
1 Family Experiences of Residential
Treatment
Kenneth Goldberg
7 Leaving Care: A Personal Account
Janice Popp
15
Editorial
Garth Thomson
Editor's note: This editorial was
in response to the plight of child care workers in British Columbia.
Since the issue is inextricably bound up in political ideology any
nonpolitical statement would have inevitably lose the essence of the
battle. We have not, therefore, attempted to disguise the political
stance of our Editor in this analysis.
21 Loosening the Fabric: The Termination
of the Family Support Worker Program in British Columbia
Janet Currie and Fred Pishalski
Editor's note: We often talk about
the need for Child and Youth care to advocate for the best services for
children and their families, and we also talk about the need for us to
work collectively with other professional groups in advocating for
service delivery. This article demonstrates an active commitment to both
of these concepts...
35 Counselling a Single Parent and Child:
Functional and Dysfunctional Patterns of Communication
James P. Anglin
Editor's note: Many of the
families of children in are are headed by a single parent. Yet, the
models we use for working with them are typically models for working
either with two-parent families or for working with individuals. In this
piece, James applies his understanding of effective communication to
assist the child and youth care worker involved in a helping
relationship with a single parent and child...
47 A
Child is Dead
Gerry Fewster
49 Art
Therapy on a Residential Treatment Team for Troubled Children
Anne Mills
Editor's note: Creativity
represents the most authentic expression of the Self. In our adult world
of structured language and formalized concepts, the confused world of
the troubled child often struggles in helpless silence. Unfortunately,
clinical psychologists have led many practitioners to believe that Art
Therapy is only valuable to clinicians trained to interpret such
expressions through intimidating theories and profound insights. In this
article, Anne Mills minimizes the significance of theatrical
underpinnings and liberates artistic expression as a process valuable in
its own right...
61
Overcoming Institutionalized Child Abuse: Creating a Positive
Therapeutic Climate
Tom McGrath
Editor's note: The abuse of
children in child caring institutions is a subject that fills us with
dread and repulsion. Yet it is one of the unfortunate realities of our
field. When we look at all the variables involved, it is frequently
clear that the institutionalized abuse of children involves not just
individual team members but the collusion of the team itself...
69 Editorial: The Selfless Professional
Gerry Fewster
73 To Be ... Love-ing ... To Be
Jock McKeen and Bennet Wong
Editor's note: Throughout our ten
years of publication, this is the only submission to deal with the
ubiquitous and elusive experience of "Love" Yet somewhere deep within
each of us, hidden behind the armour of daily survival, is the innate
capacity — dare we need to say it — to be loving. In its essential form,
being loving has no other agenda than in the simple authenticity of its
expression. All too often in child and Youth Care, love is considered to
be synonymous with "taking care of" or "looking after" and this
interpretation may well inhibit our own capacity to be loving as well as
our willingness to become vehicles through which children may express
their own loving...
85 The Paradoxical Journey Some Thoughts
on Relating to Children
Gerry Fewster
Editor's note: In assuming
editorial responsibility for the Journal of Child Care, Gerry
Fewster made a decision to refrain from submitting his own work for
consideration, Maintaining this stance for five years reflects a
remarkably sustained gesture of self-restraint by a man whose
psychopathy has taken him close to homicide in many a traffic line-up.
released from the burden of editorial writing by the one and only Henry
Maier, Gerry jumped at the opportunity to say something about his most
beloved topic — relationships...
93 "Hey Grandpa, Remember Me?"
Kathryn Stallings
95 One Child Care Worker’s Approach to
Resistance in Adolescents
Brian Stock
Editor's note: One of the most
pervasive myths about good child and youth care is the idea that the
competent practitioner is able to "break through" the resistance of the
client. From this perspective, resistance is seen to be something that
gets in the way of progress and, from here, many of our most coercive,
intrusive and manipulative techniques become justified. In our
experience, it takes a certain courage for a practitioner to challenge
this belief since such a challenge is often taken as an act of
resistance by those who supervise and monitor front line practice. Once
the issue of authority is understood, however, the basic wisdom of such
a challenge becomes painfully obvious...
103 Worker-Management Relations: A Child
Care Worker’s Perspective
Trevor Harrison
Editor's note: The majority of
child and youth care practitioners work in organizational contexts that,
to a significant degree, define the nature of the work. Within such
environments people called "management" are considered to have the power
over groups generically referred to as "the workers". In this scenario,
most of us struggle with power-relations issues that, in our opinion,
are relics of our unfortunate childhoods. but, for whatever reasons,
practitioners, managers, anad governments seem to expend as much energy
playing this game as they do in providing services to clients...
111 Editorial: Confirming Abuse: Killing
Children Who Kill
Chris Bagley
115 Parental and Young Adolescents’ Views
on Fantasy Role-Playing Games (FRPGs)
Linda Thompson
Editor's note: Fantasy based role
playing games have become an integral part of the adolescent world in
North American culture. What is the basic fascination? Why are some
games more popular than others? What are their personal, developmental
and social implications? These are just some of the questions posed, and
addressed, by Linda Thompson in this fascinating analysis.
127 The Dialectic of Care: Familial and
Institutional Dimensions of Seven-Day Care in a Residential Treatment
Setting
Thomas Latus
Editor's note: At the most
essential level, we believe that child and youth care is a
phenomenological experience. by this we mean that, unlike his or her
"clinical" colleagues, the child and youth care worker "participates" in
the life of the client. It ios for this reason that many practitioners
are overwhelmed or inhibited by the "objective" stances and
pronouncements of other professional in the field...
138 eddie’s city
Beth Goobie
139 Out of Sync
Sylviane Desjardins and A. Freeman
Editor's note: Child and youth
care is different, in many ways, from other traditional professional
ways of helping children. This article offers us some insight into the
subjective reality of the wotk, and life, of child and youth care and as
such it makes a contribution to the literature on the experience of
being a child and youth care worker — a part of the literature which is,
in our opinion, in need of further exploration.....
145 Role Playing: Structures and
Educational Objectives
Henry W. Maier
Editor's note: Role playing is one
of the most mis-used and under-used techniques available to the Child
Care Worker. This is because it is also one of the least understood of
techniques. while we have all seen it, and even experienced it, in our
training, we have seldom had the opportunity to really dissect it: to
tear it apart and analyze it so that we come to know its value, power
and usefulness. As a result we end up using role play when we're stuck,
bored or desperate rather than using it because it is appropriate for
this client, in this state, at this time...
151 Kymaru and the Magnificent
Multicolored Bird: Metaphors for an Angel
Thom Garfat
Editor's note: It is difficult to
choose a piece of your own work and then try and say why. It's kind of
like looking into the mirror early in the morning and trying to decide
if there is a piece of your face you like enough to sat it's your
favorite.
I don't know if Kymary is my best or my worst. I certainly don't kid
myself into thinking it's a contribution. I chose it for the age-old
reason - I like it.
For me it represents the moment when I decided to let down some barriers
and say: "this is who I am." I like it then because its personal:
because it represents a personal risk. For me, this is so much so what
Child and Youth Care is about: taking risks, even personal ones, in the
knowledge that, in the end, it will be okay.
157 Editorial: Footprints on the Borders
of Reality
Thorn Garfat
161 On Being a Child and Youth Care
Worker
Leanne Rose
Editor's note: Is child and youth
care something you do? Or is it something you are? Can you describe one
without the other?
Somehow even the best of the academic definitions of child and youth
care fall short of effectively describing what it is that we do. Usually
that's because they leave out the person of the worker and try to
describe the experience in terms that speak of tasks, behaviours and
activities. While this type of description is obviously necessary, it
misses the point that child and youth care is an interactive process
within which each party to the interaction reacts, changes, grows and
develops in response to their experiences with each other.
167 There Are Times
Penny Parry
169 Differentiating Between Ritual
Assault and Sexual Abuse
Louise M. Edwards
Editor's note: Simply stated, we
chose this because it is the best overview of this topic anywhere. Based
upon many years of clinical experience working with ritually abused
people. Louise shares her considerable knowledge in the most
straightforward way. I isn't pleasant reading but the information
contained within these pages should be at the fingertips of all
practitioners working with young people...
189 Stolen Innocence
J.B.
Introduction
GERRY FEWSTER AND THOM GARFAT
With this volume we celebrate ten years
of publication in the field of Child and Youth Care. There have been times over the last ten
years when my editorial work with the Journal of Child (and Youth) Care
has taken me to the edge of "what is" and offered tantalizing glimpses
of a new deal for adults and kids. Then there have been times, many of
them, when the old worn-out patterns seemed locked into every manuscript
and a "so what" response was the best I could muster. And
then there were the times when, without manuscripts, it seemed that our
publication would simply cease to be—a
relief for those of us who toiled and for those of you who questioned
whether we were deserving of your
subscription dollars.
It’s amazing how the recognition of a
milestone, the creation of a modest ritual and a brief congratulatory
gesture can bring perspective to the sequence of experiences and events
within the invention we call "time." These things help us to transform
the minutiae of our transitory worlds into the more enduring experiences
of courage, growth, mastery, tenacity and commitment — a chance to look
back on the self as an emerging entity. So, what’s good for us is good
for kids and good for the Journal of Child (and Youth) Care.
We met so many wonderful souls who
inspired us along the way: Henry Maier, with whom we will be spending
considerable time in an upcoming issue; Mark Krueger, who frequently
walks at our side and shares his words and his heart; Karen Vander Ven,
who constantly breaks new trails for us to explore; Roy Ferguson, Jim
Anglin, Allan Pence and Carey Denholm, who have contributed so much to
our experience; Penny Parry, who helped to nurture us through the early
years; Garth Thompson, our prodigal son who may return some day; and, of
course, a host of others who have been with us on the journey. My very
special thanks to Chris Bagley, co-founder of the Journal and my
co-editor for many years. As you bask in the oriental sun, I sincerely
hope that you will take some personal satisfaction in this ten-year
commemorative.
Within this issue you will find what we
consider to be the contributions that have taken us to the edge. Here
are the glimpses that have kept the ship afloat and the flag flying. We
believe that you will find no better collection of writings from this
diverse, and at times remote, field of child and youth care.
In the final analysis, the Journal of
Child (and Youth) Care is a testimony to those whose words adorn its
pages. And no one has more graciously adorned our literary canvas than
my editorial colleague Thorn Garfat. In handing over to him now, I know
that he will maintain this impeccable tradition in his own inimitable
way.
Writing is never an easy task, especially
if your days are consumed with the action which typifies the field of
Child and Youth Care. Producing the Journal over the past ten years has
not, therefore, been an easy task, because those who would write are
busy attending to the business of the field.
The production of the first issue, from
the time of its conception, took a year and things haven’t changed a lot
since then. Struggling to obtain enough suitable manuscripts; cajoling
Canadian Child and Youth Care people to subscribe; workshopping at
conferences; encouraging people to write and carving out enough time to
put it all together have been strenuous tasks. But like most tasks in
the field, it has been worthy of the effort. In this book you will find,
ordered chronologically, some of the best writing the Journal has had
the privilege to publish in the last ten years.
The eighties were important years for the
field of Child and Youth Care in Canada. We have seen the Canadian
National Child and Youth Care Workers Conference, for example, become a
permanent event. It has become an established part of the field and
regularly provides the opportunity for professionals across the country
to come together to share their wisdom and experience with their
colleagues. Through it, and vehicles like the Journal of Child and Youth
Care, Canadians have developed a vital network of care providers. The
consolidation of the Canadian Council of Child and Youth Care
Associations, the hosting of the 1st International Conference, the
establishment of a Master’s program, and the growth in the number of
provincial associations stand as symbols of the development of the field
in the last ten years.
Child and Youth Care in Canada has grown
and has, in many ways, ‘come of age.’ But it has not been a painless
development.
The struggles that the Journal has gone
through just to stay viable are, in many ways, a reflection of the
struggles of the field itself. The struggle for self-definition, the
struggle for legitimacy and the struggle for equality have been issues
for the field as well.
The articles and pieces which appear in
this special issue reflect both the growth and the struggle of the last
ten years. In our subjective opinion, they mirror the field itself and
stand as a testimony to the strength and beauty which typifies the
contribution of Child and Youth Care to the care and treatment of
troubled children and their families. We begin this literary history
lesson in 1982 when the first issue of the Journal was published.
We are pleased to be part of the history
of this profession and owe our gratitude and respect to those who have
continued to support us through our first ten years. As you read through
these articles, you will enjoy the experience of the growth of the field
to professionalism. And throughout it, you will notice that the field
never lost sight of its primary mission: the enhancement of the quality
of care provided by Child and Youth Care people.
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