CONTENTS

Editorial    3
Voices in writing
Thom Garfat

Real-time communication in residential care    5
Adrian Ward

The dynamics of an inter-professional team: The interplay of child and youth care with other professions within a residential treatment milieu    12
Daniel Salhani and Grant Charles

The Joys of being a Sibling    21
Liz Laidlaw

The Vagrancies of Passion and the Dance of Arrogance    23
Kiaras Gharabaghi

Residential Child and Youth Care is fundamentally about team work    30
Leon Fulcher

ABSTRACT: The case for careful recruitment and selection of residential child and youth care workers is examined within the contemporary British context. Public outrage following disclosures of abuse, and the conviction and sentencing of care workers resulted in legislation that has altered recruitment and selection practices throughout the UK. Caution is urged about trying to define ‘ideal care work person- alities.’ A closer analysis of primary tasks in this work shows how residential child and youth care is fundamentally about team working, highlighting the need for sensitive recruitment, supervision and management of care work teams in their production of relational services with children and young people.

Practical applications of narrative ideas to youth care    37
Alison Little, Lesley Hartman and Michael Ungar

ABSTRACT: In this article we look at how narrative ideas commonly used in therapy sessions with youth can be adapted to the work done by youth workers in non-office based settings. Our discussion is based on our efforts to share narrative ideas with staff at Phoenix Youth Programs (PYP) which provides residential, educational and prevention programming for street youth in Halifax. We review the key ideas behind narrative practice and how they have come to inform the intentional day-to-day work of PYP staff. We conclude with strategies staff supervisors can use to promote the use of narrative ideas throughout a youth serving agency.

Please Abuse By ...     42
Garth Goodwin

Feeling Five     44
Carol Matthews

Contextual, family-focused residential child and youth care: Preliminary findings from a program evaluation study     46
Esther M. W. Geurts, Erik J. Knorth, & Marc J. Noom

ABSTRACT: This article reports findings from an empirical study of services for young people in residential child and youth care in the Netherlands. These services typically offer contextual, family-focused care. In evaluating service-outcomes 26 interviews were completed by parents and youth care workers. Levels of child and family functioning before and after treatment were compared. Pre- and post-treatment measurements were correlated with measures of family involvement during treatment. Our study indicates that positive outcomes after treatment were associated with parental involvement before the start of treatment, with parental contributions to decisions about treatment, with attention for parental responsibilities during treatment, with parental access to the residential group and with parental participation in treatment evaluations.  

Books: Self in Practice     59
Jack Phelan

Holidays are all about details…     60
whoby

In the Rhythms of Youth Passing: Flying Bird Nest     62
Mark Krueger

ABSTRACT: I share some of my thoughts about a phrase that helps me understand youth work. I also share some of my observations of competent youth workers, and describe the method of homework I use to prepare myself to be with and teach others how to be with youth.

Chaos and Control     67
Carol Stuart

Victim in the dock     72
Michelle Koroll

Reencounter Rituals     74
Thom Garfat

Assembling this issue of RCYCP has caused me to think about what some people call voice especially, because I was editing these papers, ‘voice in writing.’ One of the things I have always liked about our journal is how there has constantly been a place for the author’s personal voice, be that the voice of a practitioner, youth, academic or the voice of reason, passion, anger, joy. But voice is more than that. It is also, I think, how the author ‘sounds’ to the reader. The feeling, impression, picture one gets of the writer as one reads their words.

I remember, years before I had met Henry Maier, how I would read his writing wondering what he actually sounded like when he spoke. When I finally did meet him, I was struck and delighted by not only his accent, but his own unique way of saying things — characteristics which were, unfortunately in my mind, frequently rendered neutral by the many publications in which his work appeared. In later years, in some of his writings, one did find the ‘voice of Henry’ shining through. For example:

In being actively involved with the care receivers the worker becomes more personally engaged, thus enhancing the ability for mutual understanding. In fact, in doing things together workers become clearer about their own intent and gain proficiency in their practice. (Maier, 2003)

In that example I am more able to imagine him present as I read his words.

There is a danger, I believe, in editing the writing of others, that in our rush to convey a certain image about who we (the journal) are, we would remove the voice of the author and render it the same as all the other voices in an issue; forcing all the writers to conform to some pre-determined frame of presentation which affects style, format and, yes, voice.

I remember one time asking a friend to review an article which had been written by someone whose daily language was one other than English. “Don’t worry about the language and language structure,” I told him. “I will fix that up later.” He wrote back with the following warning. “Don’t do too much with the language. The way it reads right now sounds like many people I meet who speak English as a second language.” As I re-read the article in question I realized that he was right — as it was written, I could ‘hear’ the author speaking. If I had edited severely, that voice would have been lost beneath the layers of conformity.

I think about the voices of the young people and families with whom we work: how they all are unique, different, special, and how each voice identifies the speaker. I wonder how, when we demand certain kinds of compliance, we affect those unique voices, silencing them in favor of group and program conformity. I was joking with some friends the other day and I said “you can always tell when a young person is ready to leave the program. They speak in the same language as the staff.” Perhaps it was not a joke?

As you read through this issue of RCYCP, you will find many voices — none neutralized we hope. You will find people speaking in a second language, people speaking in passion, people speaking with the voice that is theirs, different as it may be from yours. But then, that is the point, isn’t it? For all of us, Child and Youth Care practitioners that we are, to allow ourselves to listen to the voice of others, as that voice is spoken — to recognize that how a person speaks is a representation of who they are in the world in relation to us.

You and I are different. You and that family you met recently are different. You and that young person are different. And in our ‘differentness’ we are each unique, occupying the world as only we can do. And, hopefully, we can find gratefulness in that experience of each other — as we do, I trust, find gratitude in the experience of each new young person or family.

Our identity, our experience of who we are as we live in this world, is found in our voice. It is the only way we can communicate to other, who we experience ourselves to be. As you read this you find me, being only as I can be in this moment of writing. And as you read it, you experience you — as only you can be in this moment of reading.

And when that young person speaks out — the voice with which she does so reflects her being only as she can be in the moment. Part of our work may involve helping her to find different voice but we must begin by respecting her current voice.

As a journal, RCYCP has, itself, tried to ‘find voice’ over the years. Sometimes we struggle, as we all do, about how to ‘be.’ In the end, we want ‘our voice’ to be the collective, collaborative voice of the authors whose words grace these pages. We know, as do you, that we edit, prod, plead and shape the voices of these generous people. We are aware of our responsibility to offer up a responsible voice, an honest voice. We hope it is the voice of the field. But we are also aware, as they often say in dime store novels, that the successes of this journal belong to those who take the time to write, and the failures are ours alone. Just as in our field, in our work, the successes belong to those who struggle and grow.

We hope you will enjoy this issue — I know I enjoyed reading the articles and putting it together. I feel fortunate that, as an editor, I get the opportunity to listen to so many voices. And you, the reader, the practitioner, the instructor, the trainer (whatever you may be) are fortunate to hear and listen to the voices that occupy your professional world. May you, too, be grateful.

Thom Garfat
Cape Town

Maier, H. (2003). In a nutshell: Why doing is preferential to talking. CYC-Online, 54