The people we lose from child care

I continue to be saddened by the number of people who, seemingly avoidably, leave Child and Youth Care work.

It” s wonderful when colleagues leave in order to study further, to start a family of their own, to move with their family to some exciting new chapter of their lives somewhere “ or just to retire gracefully. These people always go with our good wishes, leaving us with some affirmation that “there is life after child care”. Unfortunately, rather more leave because child care work has been hard on them, they have become drained or disillusioned, they have been overwhelmed or defeated “ with a sense that more has been asked from them than was reasonable. I often see this illustrated with students. In most of the two-year training courses offered by the NACCW, including the UNISA Certificate in Child and Youth Care, we see very encouraging numbers of new students “ people who no doubt come into the field with energy and commitment, determined to give of their best to the healing and development of young people while they themselves work at their own professional and academic progress. But before two years have passed, fully two-thirds to three-quarters of these students have gone, lost to the field, lost to the organisations they worked for, and lost to the children with whom they worked.

The money or the box?
Many will say, correctly, that child care work offers little in the way of material or financial rewards. This is in many ways inevitable when so much of the work in South Africa is undertaken by religious and charitable organisations who cannot hope to work on high salary budgets, and when many state employers give a very low status to the work (one state department has paid child care workers at the entry-level labourer scale “one-third of the salary paid to drivers.)

But the monthly package for an employee in any profession is so much more than the money. It will also include recognition, appreciation, status, challenge, professional satisfaction, guidance, feedback ... and a host of other things which managers should know about.

It is a cop-out for management to claim that child care is a “vocation– in which workers should expect to give more than they get. We had the opportunity to discuss this issue recently with a group of principals, and three nuns present confirmed that even their life vocation was intended to be one of joy, not a grim life sentence. Nobody expects their career to be constantly rewarding, but the overall equation must generally balance.

Empowered people
Tim Agg, in a very challenging article reproduced from the Canadian Journal of Child and Youth Care in the April issue of this journal, sketched what he considered to be the ideal employee in the Child and Youth Care field. His picture is worth re-reading. It included not only a person who likes kids and has skills to work with them and their families and communities, with understanding of the laws and policies which guide their lives “ but also a person who is actively concerned about the laws and policies which impact on his or her own job and profession.

He writes: “This may sound like odd advice from an agency manager and employer, but I expect those planning a career working with youth to learn about employment standards and labour law.”

He goes on to say that the employee should become involved directly in these issues, for example through unions, and also in professional organisations which provide the ethical guidelines for the work “ in addition to involvement in politics and economics: “There is a direct connection between work with a particular youth and the public policy frameworks established by government. Staff should also learn to think like accountants or auditors, with attention to the proverbial bottom line”. Tim Agg draws a compelling picture of recognition and empowerment of child care staff.

The work and the job
When we continue to lose valuable people from child care, it is the profession as a whole which suffers alongside the individual organisations–staff teams and children. We have to ask why, and be honest in our answers.

It seems that any response will have to come equally from professional associations like NACCW (regarding child care work) and from employer organisations (regarding child care jobs). The two are different, but complementary.

If, between us, we fail to give meaning and value to Child and Youth Care work in general, and workable and acceptable employment packages to Child and Youth Care jobs in particular, we will deserve the waste and disruption inherent in high staff turnover which our field suffers today.

This feature: Gannon, B. (1995). The people we lose from child care. Editorial in The Child Care Worker, 13, 6, p. 16.