Getting to know you
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Much has been written about professional boundaries and self-disclosure. Many of us who trained in earlier decades had it drummed into us that there were firm lines to be drawn between our professional and private lives, and that strong limits (especially regarding destructive and assaultive behaviours) applied in even the most permissive types of therapy.

Well, the bad news is that in child and youth care today most bets are off. When we choose to work with troubled youth (that is, spend time with them, engage them, listen to them, relate to them, challenge them, walk the talk with them) we know that we put ourselves at risk to their deep-seated hurts and rage. A central message we want to communicate to them is that no matter what they may do us, we will not reject them, that they are worth-while, that relationships can transcend the ups and downs.

A prerequisite to this is trust — the trust youth place in us as they come to know us, and the growing trust we place in them as they grow bigger than their pains and angers.

From our side we demand huge levels of knowledge about the youth, what with our intake reports, histories, our assessments, our daily logs, our progress reports ...  We may forget that in our quest to build significant relationships with these young people, our responsibility is equally to help them to know us. Gaining their commitment is not helped when we are doing an egg-dance around boundaries and self-disclosure. They seek the reachable real people within us. Know, today, that you must help them with a crucial task on their side of this relationship deal ...

Getting to know you.