It is this we celebrate - I

Part 1 of a Keynote Address by Dr. Thom Garfat delivered last year at
the 15th Biennial Conference of South Africa’s NACCW

 This field – the field of Child and Youth Care – is a special field. Child and Youth Care, as we know it, is more than just a body of knowledge and a way of working. It is not only what we do, but it is who we are, how we are, wherever we are. It is a way of being in the world. It defines us, and it gives our life meaning.

Child and Youth Care is a special field. And it is filled with special people. People who care; people who give of themselves so that others may live with a little less pain. People who have made a choice to help others in whatever manner they can. People who, each in their own way, however grand, or minor, help to make the world a little bit better. Oh, I know that we don’t change the world – that is best left to others with grander ideas and greater power than ourselves. But we do help to make it a little bit better of a place for some people – and that, in itself, is significant. And it is right that we should celebrate this – this dedication to helping, to giving, this commitment to helping the world be just a little bit better.

Part of this conference is about ‘celebration’. And there are many things to celebrate. We should celebrate the fact – the simple fact – that you are there – that when you get up in the morning, you walk out that door and you make a decision – a decision to help someone else in your own way – and that is, as is so often said, the greatest gift of all. The gift of giving. The giving of self.

I know you don’t go to work to be heroes and saviours (although I might argue that many of you are just that). I know you don’t drag your tired self off to the residential centre; or the community centre, or some family’s home thinking ‘today I will save someone.’ You don’t trudge through muddy or dusty streets; or ride the bus, or struggle with traffic thinking to yourself ‘today I will be a hero’ or ‘today I will save someone’ – I know that because you know a simple and undisputable truth that not everyone understands – that you have to do this because someone has to – that child ... that family ... that community – they all need help and someone has to do it – and you have chosen, and continue to choose, to be that ‘someone’. And so each day you make that decision, you turn away from other opportunities and towards the activity of helping because, ultimately, given who you are, you have no choice. For many of you, it is as if the work has chosen you, as much as you have chosen it.

And this alone, the fact that you are there – that you choose to ‘be there’ when you could make other choices – this alone is worth celebrating. For when you are there, just there, just being there, someone who hurts knows there is someone who cares – and I think sometimes that this is the greatest need of all of us – to know that there is someone who cares. Cares about us; cares for us; cares what happens in our lives.

And so this too I celebrate. That Child and Youth Care workers are ... simply ... there. For if they were not, who would be?

And I celebrate you all being here today – because the fact that you would all take the time to be here – to come together as a community of carers to learn and contribute towards making things just a little better – because of this choice you made – to be here at this conference – a few people might be better served. And so we celebrate the choices that you have made.

How you came to this field, how you came to be here today, how you choose each day to walk the path you walk, is an individual journey. It is you who made the choices that ended up with you being here today – and so your journey is just that – your journey.

And while each journey is unique – your path is, after all, your path – there are some elements or characteristics of our journeys which are similar. And so today I want to talk about 5 areas in which I think we find commonalities on our journeys: Caring, Commitment, Curiosity, Creativity and Courage.

Caring
We begin with Caring – as all things should begin. We call ourselves Child and Youth CARE workers, or Child Care workers, or youth care workers, or social care workers – notice that while parts of the name change, the word care remains – for, ultimately, that is what this work is about – the act of caring – of caring for others.

But what does it mean ‘to care’ for other? And why is it important? But before I begin, I want you all to take a minute and think about something which ‘counts as caring’ for you. Think about ‘what is caring’, let your mind imagine caring for just a moment. And now let’s hear a little of what the field has had to say ...

Milton Mayeroff, in his book ‘On Caring’ written in 1971, identified elements which be believed make up caring. They include commitment, love, constancy, patience, authenticity, an absence of judgement and a shared life. He goes on further to say that ...

“The meaning of caring ... is not to be confused with such meanings as wishing well, liking, comforting and maintaining, or simply having an interest in what happens to another ... it is not an isolated feeling or a momentary relationship.... Caring, as helping another to grow and actualize himself, is a process, a way of relating to someone”.

David Austin & Bill Halpin, in discussing the ‘caring response’ in 1989 said that “the caring response is part of the person and fills out the way the person interacts with the world ...”

More recently, Eric Laursen (2002), in talking about ‘reclaiming relationships’ describes a study in which seven elements of caring relationships between young people and helpers were identified: trust, attention, empathy, availability, affirmation, respect, and virtue. “Each represents” (he says) “a pattern of behavior and beliefs that make an adult worthy of the trust of a young person”.

Frances Ricks has said that “Caring is an action verb”. If we care, we will do. If we care, we will not sit silently off to the side. We will become actively involved. Regardless of the task. To quote David Austin and Bill Halpin (1989) again “caring is always an action carried out... ”

Thus we see that caring, within our field, is not just an attitude, but is an action, carried out in relation to another person. It is not only in ‘how we are’ but in ‘what we do’ when we work with others. It is our way of ‘interacting in the world’. And if you now take another minute to remember what you thought, or imagined, when I asked you earlier to think about ‘caring’, most of you will realise that what you imagined was an action of some kind. We know, from our own immediate experience, that caring involves doing; that for the ‘other’ to experience caring from us, it must involve some act of doing.

And just as obvious, to those who work in the field, are your gestures every day – like when you go to help a family manage in the absence of parents, or advocate for a child being abused by the system, or just, simply, as I said earlier, go to work each day and try to help someone’s life be just a little better. For, caring is not only in the large gestures, it is also – and perhaps, especially – in the minute and seemingly insignificant moments of our encounters. For as Jean Watson (n.d.) has said ...

“A caring moment involves an action and choice ... The moment of coming together presents ... the opportunity to decide how to be in the moment and in the relationship as well as what to do with and during the moment... If the caring moment is transpersonal, each feels a connection with the other at the spirit level, thus it transcends time and space, opening up new possibilities for healing and human connection at a deeper level than physical interaction”.

And this caring benefits the care-giver – for it is not just about other – but about self. To quote Milton Mayeroff again ...

“Through caring for certain others, by serving them through caring, a man lives the meaning of his own life. In the sense in which a man can ever be said to be at home in the world, he is at home not through dominating, or explaining.... but through caring and being cared for.” (Mayeroff, 1971, p.2.)

So, it is also this we celebrate – that you have chosen, through your actions and the choices you have made about what to do with your life, to make meaning of your life in this way. Let me leave the last word, for the moment, to my own mentor, Henry Maier, who said, “The quality of care is not so much a singular question of how the workers feel about the children as it is how they translate their care into actions.”

Along with ‘caring’ within our field, we often hear the word ‘commitment’ for as Mark Krueger (1988), one of the most accessible of our writers has said: “Caring relationships require a commitment”.

Commitment
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.” Surely one of the greatest statements of commitment ever made in the English language – for what it says, in the simplest of terms, is that we do not change our positive affection towards other just because we discover something new. A commitment, once made, remains a commitment.

It is constantly said that this is a field of ‘commitment’: commitment to other, commitment to self, commitment to a way of being in the world which we call ‘child and youth care’. We have identified within our field that, ‘commitment’ is important. As your own Ernie Nightingale ... reflecting on his own experiences within the field here said, “the best workers ... are those who have understood the meaning of commitment and made this a priority in their practice”.

Jerome Beker, at the University of Minnesota (2001) wrote that, “effective child and youth care work is about relationship and personal commitment ... ” And, Felicity Coughlan also writing here in South Africa said . . . “Child care is about commitment; about not giving up ... ”

But what is this thing we call commitment? What does it actually mean? Does it mean ‘only this, and this forever’? Does it mean ‘hanging in’ no matter what happens? Does it mean that there is no time – ever -when we might say ‘no,’ ’enough,’ ‘I can’t take it any more’?

For each of us, it seems, commitment, is an individually defined word. For some it means one thing; for some it means another. But we do have to have an understanding of what we mean by commitment if we are to work in this field – because the word itself is so ingrained in our field.

But before I go on ... I want you all to think of a time when you felt that someone was committed to you. Now, I want you to think about what that felt like. What it feels like when someone is committed to you.

We talk in our field about ‘hanging in’ – indeed we have allowed ‘hanging in’ to become a defining characteristic of our field ... but commitment is also not just about this. Let me tell you a story ... and this story is certainly not ‘from our field’

The Chicken and the Pig
A chicken and a pig were walking along the street one day, when they noticed a small boy on the street. His clothes were tattered, his hair mussed and his face was dirty. He had a dull gaze in his eyes, he looked very unhappy. The pig said to the chicken: “I wished we could take this boy back to the farm with us and let him run in the fields.” “That would be wonderful,” responded the chicken, “he could play in the barn, ride the pony and fish in the pond. He would be so happy.”
“We can’t take him with us, his mother would miss him. But, I’d like to get involved and do something for him though, do you have any ideas Miss Chicken.” “Yes,” she responded, “I have a splendid idea, let’s feed the little boy a good country breakfast, If we can’t take him to the country, let’s bring the country to him.” Mr. Pig was delighted with Miss Chicken’s notion, so he asked: “What shall we feed him.” “Well, bacon and eggs of course.”
“Where will we get these things?”
“That’s a silly question,” responded the chicken, I’ll lay the egg, and you give the bacon!”
“Wait a minute!” yelled the pig, “laying an egg is getting involved all right... but giving the bacon, especially for a pig, is total commitment!”

Shall we be the chicken or the pig? Do we just “get involved?” Or do we make a total commitment?  For you, as child and youth care workers, commitment involves your ‘all’. It shows up when you make that decision in the morning; it shows up when you choose to reach out; it shows up when you linger quietly beside a young person in pain. It is what you do. It is who you are.

And this, too, we celebrate. For as Rollo May wrote in The Courage to Create,
“A man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them.”

 

This feature:  The first part of Thom Garfat’s Keynote Address to the  15th Biennial Conference of South Africa’s National Association of Child Care Workers held in July 2005, celebrating thirty years of the NACCW’s foundation.  Reprinted from Child and Youth Care, Vol. 23(7), pp.4-6.  [Part II is published in our July 2006 issue]