LZ/A/27-1

Working Methodically

Lies Gualthérie van Weezel and Kees Waaldijk

 

Being, Acting, Reflecting

Characteristic for workers in this profession is to be present and to act in the living situation. In other words being there in a specific way – often not doing anything special apart from drinking a cup of coffee, listening to a resident who has come back from school, or watching TV with some youngsters. The group members are most of the time doing their own things. But at some point they may need help with their home- work, want a listening ear, or become involved in a quarrel – and then the worker has to become more active. In some situations help may be needed with ordinary things – dressing, laying the table, preparing an outing. The youngsters may lack the capability or the motivation to do these things themselves.There are many very common daily activities to be taken care of – often seemingly too simple to be mentioned particularly, but nevertheless fundamental to life. The way these small things are taken care of determines whether a young person feels welcome, at home, taken seriously, invited to participate, helped to accept the situation or stimulated to restore the broken relationships with his family and others.

The youngsters with whom child care worker Peter is working, are leaving the institution within a few months. Martin will go home to live with his mother but Monica is preparing to live on her own. She has found a place to live with four other girls where the social worker will visit them regularly to discuss their experiences and to help them where necessary in the organisation of their life. Peter isn’t quite sure that Monica is securely independent enough to leave, though she is herself very optimistic: "I’ll manage," she says. Today it was her turn to prepare the coffee. Peter let it go and did not take any initiative, choosing to wait and see, and taking the risk that the coffee would not be ready in time. Yesterday he reacted differently and helped Martin, not only because he knew Martin needed help, but also to avoid the risk that in that case the group would become angry. They surely would because some of them had to be in time at the football-training. Today there was not such urgency and it would help Monica to confront her with the consequences of her own behaviour. Maybe Peter was being too pessimistic, and if so, she could be proud of her own success. Anyway, the positive or negative comments of her group-mates might teach her something.

What we are seeing here is that the worker has to think about his reactions and to realise the effects of his interventions. He makes choices. In this example he chooses between action and doing nothing. And another time the choice might be between doing the task himself, helping, or giving a hint. This brings us to the distinction between ways of being with clients:

• Being. Just being present.

• Reflecting. Thinking about people, situations and yourself.

• Acting. Intervening, doing something.

These three elements are so closely connected that most of the time we don’t distinguish between them. To work methodically means to be to be aware, to think about what we are doing and what we want to achieve. We only can do so if we learn to distinguish between our being, our reflecting and our action. We start with some short remarks on the difficult notion of being.

We are present in very different ways. We can sit in a classroom or walk in the street in a way that nobody notices us. Another time we are clearly present by our appearance or by our mood – present in such a way that others cannot overlook us. They have to realise we are there. Our presence can be very dominant so that others know we are there, and are sensitive to our mood, our way of being. Most of the time, however, we are aware of neither our own way of being, nor the way the other is there. Only when I feel uncomfortable will I become aware of the environment and react to it. This might be conscious or unconscious. It can take some time to realise what is going on.

Being is a philosophical concept. The importance of the concept of being for human relations is shown by the French philosopher Levinas. He made us aware that the "being" of a human being is not the same as the "being" of, for instance, a stone. He warns us again and again especially in his main work Autrement qu’etre (Otherwise than being) not to apply the word 'being' naively and simplistically to our way of being. We should learn to distinguish being from just existing. The 'being' of human beings is above all characterised by openness, by relatedness to the other, by sensitivity, and even exposed-ness, with regard to the other who observes me. At the point of meeting with our fellow humans, we are not only active, but also, perhaps primarily, passive in relation to their unescapable presence, their awareness of us, their appeal to us.

In our view, these ideas are very important when we reflect more fundamentally on the presence of the residential worker in the living situation. Without being passive we do not allow the other to do something with us, which is a pre- condition for making contact with each other. Also, there can be no dialogue without us being influenced by each other, which means that the outcome of what is happening is open, unpredictable.

That is to say, when we accept someone as an other person with his or her own abilities and reaction, each encounter is one of infinite possibility.

Acting

Acting is more than just doing things. Acting is always the start of something new, even unpredictable. Hannah

Arendt sharpened our eye for this with her distinction between labour, work and acting. This is a decisive warning against any purely technological conception of residential or day care work. Working with people differs

fundamentally from making things or performing instructions or implementing a plan. A small event can be far-reaching. We cannot tell in advance what might be brought about by a particular action. This depends partly on my own follow-up action and partly on the action of others. The outcome can also be good or bad, depending on how we look at it and how it influences whatever follows.

We are confronted with unforeseen effects and situations This may be frightening for those who work with troubled young people. We want to be able to foresee the consequences of what we are doing. But that assumes that human behaviour is mechanistic. Hannah Arendt makes it clear that when we want to be sure we are forcing the situation, making things happen, using our power instead of acting within the situation.

The uniqueness of people makes every situation unique and the outcome unsure. In life we cannot bank on the fact that 2 + 2 makes 4. Or to quote Korczak: "Life is not a collection of arithmetic problems which always have one answer and at most two procedures". Again and again we find out that prescriptions do not work.

This distinction between making or shaping the situation, and acting within the situation with all its unpredictability, is not as a problem but a reality and a value in our dialogue with people. It is important if we really want to take the other person seriously and in the deep belief that everybody has his own life to live by participating in society in his own way. We can not take over the other person’s life and should not try.

In our contact with people who are very much dependent on us, we feel responsible for them and that makes the danger greater. In working methodically there will always be a tension between looking ahead and trying to predict the outcome on one hand, and our openness to whatever may happen on the other. Out of our wanting the best for the other, we overlook his own responsibility and contribution. We need to be conscious of this and avoid the search for recipes or theories which exclude those we are trying to help.

Knowing for sure what will happen is attractive, but an illusion. So these two philosophers remind us that working with people and intervening in their lives is, in essence, always a dialogue and therefore open-ended. In this work we act most of the time without questioning the situation. An important part of our reaction towards the other is that it is spontaneous and based on intuitive grounds. Happily, most of the time we can say: "We did it well". To take time for reflection may even be dangerous: "Lucas is fighting with John. I have to separate them otherwise they might hurt each other." But working professionally is more than reacting spontaneously and intuitively. It would over-simplify the work, make it too personal, too individual, because such action cannot easily be put into words, discussed and evaluated.

Our professional acting is a response to the client and his situation, and this obliges us to be explicit as to what we are aiming at. This leads towards the conclusion that reflection is an important element in working professionally. Considering what’s going on, what should be done, what is the value of what happened is a substantial part of working methodically.

Reflecting

To be explicit isn’t that easy, for we are acting in a complicated field. Many people are involved and we often get many conflicting signals. How to analyse? How to judge? To start with, we have to learn to distinguish what is really happening. Our tools to understand what is happening and to reflect on the situation are part of our professional growth. What happens in our daily work is seldom easy to express in words. Korczak put it this way: "Every day is a day made up of work that can be neither defined, nor perceived, nor controlled nor comprehended in words – just thoughts, feelings whose name is legion." There is always more going on than we see and notice. But we can start to reflect on what we did see, and go on asking ourselves and others involved about what they experience and have noticed. It is important to recognise that we need others for reflecting, for questioning the situation and for realising what is going on – a never-ending process. This is not only because our seeing and understanding are always incomplete and one-sided, but above all because working methodically can only be done in dialogue.

In a situation where action and reaction toward people is always at stake and in essence the heart of this work, we are obliged to be aware of what we are doing by giving it words, by discussing and by judging. Working professionally is not just acting in such a way that the child, the resident or participant gets good treatment, but also in such a way that by and in his treatment his rights are respected. We have to incorporate in our action and our judging at least the following principles:

• A person is to be approached in the context of his own social environment.
• We have to respect his history because every human being has his past, lives the present and is expecting a future.
• We, as workers, are entitled to have our shortcomings and our limits as well as our possibilities, tastes and preferences.
• The ultimate criterion lies much more in practice and the realities of life than in theories and abstract principles.

The unpredictability and the open-endedness of acting does not mean that we cannot speak of goals. On the contrary, to explicate our aims is a pre-condition to discussing the work and to considering with others what might be done and to judging the value for this particular person in this particular situation.

By realising for myself what I am aiming at can also be to look back to see what I have brought about. I can ask myself and others who are involved what happens in relation to our intentions. Good intentions are not enough. What matters is the outcome. Many times we will discover we did not achieve what we hoped.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that our actions, when we look more closely, turn out to have had a much more positive impact than seen at first hand – maybe positive in a different or unexpected way. It may be a new start, unexpectedly because we kept the dialogue open-ended.

The opposite can be true, too. Everything seemed to go so well in the beginning. We were handling the situation with great attention and our steps were well considered. But no real changes are apparent. What we were doing is not understood. It may even have hurt those who were involved. Working methodologically can be understood as a process – not as a straight line with a start, a goal and more or less well-planned steps in between, but as a never-ending spiral of encounters and actions with moments of reflection, and with surprises – not only as part of the process but as events of value in themselves.

To appreciate such moments is part of the art of life.

Clarifying situations and determining goals

Being, reflecting, acting
Working methodically can be understood as a process. Not as a linear process with a start, a goal, and more or less well planned steps in between, but as a never-ending spiral with moments of reflection, with sur­prises, which are important – not only as part of the process but as events with a value in themselves. To appreciate such moments is part of the art of life.

To distinguish the stages of a process in a clear and recognisable way is not easy. It has to do with facts and feelings; personal aims and experiences and those of other persons and of groups of people. We can also distinguish between moments of time, the moments before and after the action. In two parts, first this month and then next month, we describe the moments we consider as important, both in doing justice to the broad variety of persons and situations we have to deal with, and as a help in our reflecting.

Recurrent moments of clarification

To achieve greater insight into what we are doing, what our intentions are, and the choices we have to make, we distinguish between the following moments in the process before and after action. All five have their own value and specific possibilities and problems. We call them “moments of clarification”:

• clarifying the situation

• determining the goal(s)

• choosing the means or methods for intervention

• looking back, evaluating

• clarifying our own involvement.

Most often we do not start with the clarification or the situation but somewhere in between. When we realize that we are working on a goal not con­nected with the situation, this makes us re-think what we are aiming at and about the situation. Or we start looking back and wondering about our own involvement. Doing this seriously, we get to know more about the situa­tion we are dealing with. The consequence is a new starting situation. This gives us the opportunity to determine a new goal and to choose our means, in other words the way to work towards it. Often we will realize that in determining goals or choosing means we have to explore the situation more closely. Thus new questions may arise and we should not hesitate to return to the another ‘moment’.

The more we become conscious of the different moments we are dealing with we will ask ourselves more questions and become more aware of the contradictions we meet so often in the situation.

The distinct moments of clarification we mentioned above, can be of use in quite different situations. They can function in a formal staff meeting but equally in thinking while cycling toward my afternoon shift, wondering how Joan will react after our struggle yesterday:

In what mood will she be? Yesterday she was restless, coming and going. She expected a telephone call from her father, hoping to go home the next weekend. Did her father call? Better ask my colleague when I arrive. It is Wednesday so most of the residents or visitors will go and play soccer (clari­fications of the starting situation). “Let me try to give some extra attention to Joan. May be that’s a way of getting to underrstand her better and to become less irritated by her behaviour (goal). Maybe by asking her to show her collection of shells (means)? What irritates me is the way she is asking questions (own involvement). She pays no attention to others ... ”

An other example, a talk between two colleagues.

During the coffee-break Natasja told Olga that she was very angry at Mi­chael, their colleague. Again and again she had to clean the kitchen by herself. Michael did not give any help. It was not fair. Olga agreed but she had an other difficulty with Michael. He was always first to tell which weekend he preferred to be on duty and which days he wanted to be free. And didn’t the team-leader listen more closely to Michael? Her own remarks seemed less important. After discussing the situation they concluded that something should be done to get back the good cooperation they had been used to. That was the goal they were aiming at. As a means they chose, after making up their minds, a discussion in the staff-meeting next week. At first Olga suggested that Natasja would tell Michael of her irritation pri­vately and Natasja had thought of telling the team-leader. She was well aware of the fact that she didn’t feel at ease with Michael. She once said something about the mess in the kitchen. He had denied it and turned his back. This talk with Olga had clarified the situation and she realized that it was not only the difficulty with Michael that bothered her. They had used this coffee-break to analyse more clearly the present condition of their team. Their conclusion was that they were all involved. It had to do with the way they divided the work, and the team-leader was part of this. Their first step, first aim, would be to find out whether this conclusion was shared. As a way to find out they chose a discussion in the staff-meeting when all involved would be there. Olga would prepare the introduction of the agenda item.

These two examples illustrate how moments of clarification can become part of our attitude. In the staff meeting where the progress of the residents or visitors is discussed we also can discern these steps:

What is the future of John? Are they preparing for him to live with his mother or with his father who has started a new family and is urgently de­manding John? Yesterday the father said that he refused to think about any other solution and that he would fight against John going back to his first wife. “He would succeed. It was clear that is was the influence of her relatives which brought John into contact with the police.” John’s mother was arguing the same way – but the other way around. “She would not accept John going to his father. She could prove his bad influence on John. Those friends he met at the house of that man! They made John a criminal.” Before making the choice and starting to work on it, there was a lot to be clarified about the situation John lived in. Juvenile court, the teacher of his former school, the social worker, all had their points of view and were needed to clarify before choices could be made in the staff-meeting.

But the first step was to open the discussion with John about the fight be­tween his parents. He did not speak about it. The decision was made that Carl, his mentor, would try to speak with him about what was going on at home. Carl planned to pick him up at his school and to do some shopping. Away from the group may provide better conditions to have a talk about his feelings about his parents.

Clarifying the starting situation from different perspectives.

Again and again we have to make up our minds about the situation we are in. It may be clear that the diagnosis of the individual client is only part of the clarification of the situation. The influence of the surroundings, the possibili­ties of the network he is part of, and his history – but also the possibilities of the organisation, our relationships and my own possibilities all have to be taken into account before we decide on next steps. We ourselves are part of it. This not only makes it complicated but can also be a source of confusion or even conflict. Our own involvement is not the same as the team involvement, and can become very per­sonal and emotional. We need some points of orientation to get a clear view of such a complex situation.

The following five points of view all have their own value and all should be taken in account to avoid blind spots. Many theories can be of help in explor­ing one of the given points of view. It is good to realise which view they represent. To realise their value might also help us to look for other directions. Looking from all five perspectives is part of doing justice to the situation we are dealing with:

• The person (view 1). Who is he/she? What are his possibilities, his likes, dislikes and so on.

• The interaction between me and the client (view 2). What happens between me and the other. In what way does he have contact with me?

• Myself (view 3). What is my own involvement? And there may be additional extraneous issues: I can be occupied with preparing my holidays or feel ill at ease because I don’t feel accepted by my col­leagues.

• The ‘field’ (view 4). The context in which the person lives. For example the group of youngsters in which he is placed now, his class, his friends and his family around him. What do they ask of him? What can they offer him? How do the different persons influence him? We often call this aspect the youngster’s personal network.

• Time perspective (view 5). Not only the near past, the present and future, but also long ago and the far future. Does she has expectations, dreams, fears?

These five ways of looking, or points of view, listed here very briefly can be visualized in a scheme. More perspectives can surely be discovered. This scheme is just a tool to avoid one sided approaches.

We give a short explanation by giving some examples. All the directions mentioned can be illustrated with regard to Joan. Was it Joan’s slight epileptic deviance in her brain regulation which influenced that reaction (view 1) ? or was it the letter she received from her mother two days ago? (view 4, the field she is part of) Is she nervous because she is going to another school next month? (view 5 )

When I realised that I myself was extra sensitive to her reaction because I didn’t really accept her sympathy for the new colleague, I look at my own involvement (view 3) Or was she disappointed about my intensive involve­ment with a new child? (view 2)

What are we aiming at?

In order to act in the situation according to the goals we want to reach, we have to translate them into action, into concrete steps. Remember that, if we so decide, just waiting, taking no initiative, or saying a few words might be as much part of concrete action as making a telephone-call , arranging a trip to the sea or teaching somebody to carve a bowl out of a piece of wood.

We are inclined quite often to formulate goals in too abstract a way and to project too far into the future what we are aiming at. The goal “to become a better man” might be very desirable, but is very abstract. As long as we are not more concrete about what we mean by a better man, we don’t have any idea about what to do to reach this goal, and this makes it impossible to choose our means. By formulating aims abstractly and too remotely in the future, we mask the contradictions we might face. This prevents us from making choices. This isn’t helpful because we overlook, for instance, the discrepancies between my need to have a shift without problems, the child’s effort to become popular in the group, and the father’s expectations of good marks in school. The three of us will work on our own aims, with our own means, not feeling supported, but indeed opposed.

An example. Two brothers Zuhar and Aziz are trying to reach different things. Zuhar wants a solution for his problems at home with his father and uncle, while Aziz wants nobody to know about the problems within the family. Only when we are attentive to this contradiction, we can look for a way of acting without excluding or hindering one or the other.

The more we succeed in formulating our goals in a concrete way, the more we will be aware of such differences and realize how they are connected. Only concrete goals can be translated into methods in such a way that we are not merely acting at random. “We’ll see what happens” is seldom a real part of this dialogue, perhaps just a way of buying time. Another advantage of concrete, realistic goals is the satisfaction of reaching what we intended to reach. A condition, of course, is that we try to be as realistic as possible. The more idealistic, the more abstract and the more futuristic goals are, the more we get to feel helpless and incapable because we never will reach anything. Our actions and reactions are then not understandable by others. As we said before, we never can tell for sure what is going to happen. The outcome is unpredictable.

But a realistic aim for such actions as a talk with Joan’s mother, a focussed staff meeting on the subject, or the confrontation with Monica, may give us the satisfaction that we did do what we wanted to do. For example: giving Joan’s mother the feeling that she is welcome is the first step to improving the contact between Joan and her mother. Or, as one colleague reported when looking back on the afternoon: “This time I succeeded in telling Monica that I felt offended by her way of reacting toward me. Up till now she didn’t even take notice of my remarks when I told her.”  A tiny, even trivial event? No: a start for new opportunities.

These examples make clear that goals are not only future-oriented. To keep the atmosphere without tension, to give more attention to Paul, to get some contact, or not to force Miriam to participate in the group discussion, to give her time to enjoy the visit of her aunt, are all examples of the importance of the present, the quality of the “now”. A danger of being goal-oriented is to overlook the value of the moment, the event which pleases us and gives satisfaction. These ‘small’ and ‘big’ events can make life worthwhile and should never be totally overshadowed by all the good intentions of our goal-orientated working.

Looking more closely at the aims in residential and day care, we can distinguish goals in connection with:

• the development of the person

• making contact

• the atmosphere, the culture of the group or the program

• working together with the colleagues

• the connection with the society

• myself, my own well-being and development in work and life.

Just as the five points of view served in the section on clarification of the situation, these “goal-areas” can be used as a check-list for being attentive to the whole range of activities we have to deal with. Sometimes we will give priority to the atmosphere in the group and at other moments we consider the way of reacting towards Jadwigha as more important. Realizing the different goal-areas allows us to switch from one to the other.