ListenAs I write this column, it is the latter part of July and a soft rain is falling outside my study door. The lawns are freshly cut and the weeding has been completed around my courtyard. Being a recent convert, I am listening to a jazz CD my wife purchased for me and Dizzy Gillespie is about to “Take the A Train”. As Mark Kruger so often notes, in many ways, Child and Youth Care is like jazz. No-one agrees on what exactly they are, both are born out of migration and interaction and cultural cross-fertilisation. Continual challenge to convention marks both.
I remember once reading that Louis Armstrong answered a journalist’s question on “what is jazz" with the quip, “Sonny. If you have to ask the question, you probably wouldn’t understand the answer". Ok. I may have paraphrased a little, but you get the point. Both Child and Youth Care and jazz share histories of upheaval, insecurity and non-acceptance at different historical stages. Both now have come centre stage.
Moving
In some ways I feel like a young person about to leave a
long-term residential child care placement. I am fearful, yet excited.
It is time to move on. So, next month we pack our bags, sell the cottage
(or, perhaps, rent – we can’t agree), call in the removal trucks and
move the 100 miles or so to Athlone.
As part of the process I am reflecting on the last decade and the many developments in social care. I suppose there are many ways to measure success. Amongst the college community, we could look at publication rates, graduate numbers, staff ratios and the like, but it seems to me that there might be another way to look at success. We could, instead, look to how much positive initiative there has been in this time in terms of practice and theory initiatives, how young people involved in the care system are being listened to by providers and how the care community is co-operating.
Or I can look on a more personal level, and notice that my father at last knows what I am lecturing in and Child and Youth Care issues appear on nightly news programmes.
I have been a lecturer and course director of social care diploma and degree programmes at the Waterford Institute of Technology for nine years now and it is time for me to move on. Over my time in Waterford I have learned many things about myself, instructors, managers, students and, of course, children and youth in care. I have learned that sometimes it is better to keep quiet about an issue, sometimes it is prudent to speak up and sometimes it is better to pretend one does not know what is going on! All of these are key survival skills.
When I first arrived at Waterford, there was only a Diploma programme on offer and graduates received a Diploma in Child Care after three years of study. It seemed to me that this title designation was something of an injustice to the students as they studied much more than early childhood care. In the next year I oversaw a change in title from Child Care to Social Care and we have maintained this since. Strange then that after nearly a decade I am coming full circle and increasingly calling my students Child and Youth Care practitioners in my lectures. Indeed, in a forthcoming article by Thom Garfat and myself in the Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, we have found over 60 title designations in use internationally. Such is the diversity in our field. This diversity translates out into the colleges. Here, in Ireland we refer to lecturers whilst in Canada lecturers are referred to as instructors and in the United States professor is the norm.
Then, there were only 30 students in year one of the Diploma, the figure is now closer to 50. A Degree in Applied Social Studies in Social Care commenced in 1995 with over 30 students this year about to graduate and we already have our first M.A. in Social Care graduated with several students registered. As Dylan noted, “the times they are a changing–”.
My map of Ireland
Working in Waterford has been interesting. I have been fortunate to have
visited over 200 Child and Youth Care centres all over the country in my
time there. Indeed, I could direct an international visitor around
Ireland using various Child and Youth Care centres as compass points. I
know where the rape crisis centres in every town and city are, I am
acquainted with the medium and high support residential child care
centres, I know where the validation units are, the special schools for
Traveller children, the special schools for delinquent children and
youth, the early learning centres, the community programmes, the Youth
Encounter Projects and every manner of day care project. I have taught
hundreds of students and frequently meet them in my travels – some of
them even speak cordially to me! And I have met “clients” in one centre
and then in another and then yet another.
The last decade has been one of massive change in social and Child and Youth Care provision. The government is taking a much more active role than it has historically. A new piece of legislation has just been passed called the Children's Act 2001, which goes a significant step towards allowing children and youth a more involved role in their future when it comes to sanctions. The salaries of Child and Youth Care workers have been fundamentally re-written in the last couple of months with new title designations and grades brought in to reflect the changes that have taken place. Older titles such as house parent and assistant house parent have been swept aside and new ones such as trainee child care worker, child care worker and child care leader have been brought in. It is a time of hope in Child and Youth Care – a radically different landscape to the one I entered in 1992.
A new town and a new job
On September 3rd I take up my new appointment as Head of Department of
Humanities at the Athlone Institute of Technology situated in the
midlands of Ireland. Here, there are over 200 social care students
spread over Certificate, Diploma and Degree studies. It is a new
challenge and one I am looking forward to. I hope to facilitate change
and progress whilst there, make new friends, experience new things and
ways of working. I believe that we live in better times for vulnerable
and marginalized children and youth than just a decade ago when I took
my first hesitant steps into the area of Child and Youth Care. I believe
that the Irish public is less prepared to allow politicians to pass the
buck on important issues as it did in the past. I believe that the
education and training programmes are gathering momentum and that the
seven colleges are co-operating in a new and refreshing manner. Two new
colleges are about to enter the fray, so to speak, and they will require
support from the established players. Graduate students are now
lecturing across several colleges and practice is contributing to
academic discourse. International models are being explored and we are
looking outside ourselves. I hope that one day, ex-clients of the care
system will be asked onto academic course boards to assist in curriculum
development and, perhaps, speak to students in a formal setting about
their experiences.
We must travel with hopeful hearts, embrace diversity and be unafraid to advocate for children and youth. Like a child moving from the centre, I leave my current comfort with some anxiety and some hope and on the jazz CD, Duke Wellington and Johnny Hodges are blasting out “St Louis Blues”, but I don’t feel blue. I feel good.
