We are probably all agreed that "child and youth care workers do it with everyday events". Instead of setting up a lot of high-sounding therapeutic tasks, we prefer simply to be around when kids are doing whatever it is that they do in the course of their daily lives anyway – eat, play, talk, clean, learn, hang out ...

We do this so that youngsters can remain engaged upon normal life tasks, and thus collect experiences which will continue to "work" back home – where we all still have to wash up, iron clothes and pick up after us.

But how often do we subvert this "everyday" principle by using words which make what they learn in our programs less portable and transferrable back home? Even for the word "home" we use words like treatment center, campus, cottage or unit. Instead of domestic words we use rec room, lockers, dorms and classrooms. For Norm and Claire we use carers, staff, houseparents, therapists. For household tasks we use cafeteria duty, janitorial fatigues, ablutions!

We must remember that we don’t want the kids to clean up our facilities; we want them to pick up values around the health, comfort and order of wherever they stay. We don’t want them to obey our supervisors and overnights; we want them to see the value of what people do and recognise what others contribute. We don’t want them to be loyal to St Mary’s or Forest Glade Group Home; we only hope that they will want the best for their families and siblings in their homes – and in the homes they will eventually make for their own families and children.

It is when we are washing dishes or sorting socks that the really generous actions about sharing home and living together are clearest – and (for our kids who are with us now) will continue to be for the next fifty years.