Splits and Divisions
in the Child Care Team

Two staff colleagues recognise a common problem encountered by adults living and working with children. At the time of writing, Alan Roberts and Janine Brunyee were child and youth care workers at Oranjia Jewish Children's Home in Cape Town

Staff teams, like parents in families, are prey to splits and divisions, and child care workers who haven't been subject to this phenomenon are few.

To illustrate in concrete terms how splits and divisions can operate, look for a moment at a common family scenario.
Louise asks her father if she may go to the shop.
Father forbids her: "It's almost suppertime".
Louise then approaches her mother behind father's back — and mother gives permission. As Louise is on her way out, her father spots her. "I told you that you can't go to the shop, Louise".
Louise replies: "But Mom said I could go".
Father feels undermined, ineffectual and impotent as a parent. Conflict occurs between the parents.

Does this sound familiar? This drama plays out in children's homes too, except that the situation is significantly more complex and fraught with difficulties due to the artificial nature and larger size of the "parental" group (the staff team) and the "sibling" group (the children).

Splits and divisions between staff members occur also for reasons which do not directly involve the children: discordant conceptual frameworks, conflicting value systems, conscious and unconscious feeling of rivalry, incompatible work ethics — to name a few. Such staff divisions and tensions, while inevitable, are frequently aggravated when carried into transactions with the children as exemplified above.

Boundaries and involvement
The boundaries between different members of the staff team and the children can vary with one care worker preferring diffuse boundaries and being more enmeshed with the children, another preferring rigid boundaries and staying less involved with the children, a third enjoying clear boundaries and affiliating himself appropriately with the children. These different styles of relating provide a rich breeding ground for splits, divisions and tensions. Often, coalitions and alliances among staff and children proliferate because of this uncertainty over appropriate borders and lack of clarity as to where over-involvement or under-involvement begin and end. Clear, well-defined borders, allowing for well-balanced, appropriate contact between staff and children, are essential for a functional system. To state the obvious: It is important for the child care team to prevent splits and divisions as far as possible and to restore staff relationships damaged by splitting as soon as possible. Any dysfunction in the child care team negatively impacts on the children. They sense it soon.

Prevention
The staff team ought to provide a model to the child of the nature of intimate relationships and about the transactions between men and women in general. The dynamics of this adult team are likely to affect the child's relationships later in life. How, then, can the child care worker work to prevent splits, and to restore relationships damaged by splitting?

1. Awareness of the dynamics of the phenomenon, described above, as they present themselves in your context. This is half the battle won.

2. Three C's — Consultation, Collaboration and Communication. Returning to our example, had Louise's mother asked Louise whether she'd already asked her father, things might have happened differently. Louise's parents could have consulted with one another and come to a joint decision. In this way, no one feels undermined and no strain is placed on the parents' relationship.

3. Sensitivity group for staff. Because of the stressful nature of child care work, it is difficult for staff members to nurture relationships between themselves. One solution involves the establishment of a weekly group for staff led by an outside consultant. The objective of such a group would be group cohesiveness and the opportunity for child care workers to experience each other as people rather than only in their team roles as happens during work hours. Ideally, this group would provide staff members with a supportive, nurturing and regenerative time together which would contribute to the quality of work time.

In conclusion, children in residential settings — especially — are walking a tightrope between a problematic childhood and the adult world. They are prone to slip and fall daily, and it is important that the safety net of the child care team be intact and not have weak links.

Forgive the cliché, but the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The child care team needs to inspect and mend any damage to the safety net continuously — for the children's sake as much as for its own.