The environment

The child and youth care relationship is most often (and accurately) perceived as that between the main characters on the stage: the careworker on the one hand, and the child, youth and family on the other. Particular clients are referred to us with their own issues and problems, and we engage directly with them.

However, much of our work is achieved through the way in which we create and manage the wider group and indeed the whole environment of our program. So many youth problems are a reaction to difficult or even impossible odds in their own situations, and their connection with our program is often their first experience of a rational and responsive environment, allowing their defences, resistance and rage to subside.

If we bring young people into an up-tight program which imposes unreasonable barriers or obstacles – or worse, impersonal and inflexible criteria for acceptance, approval and experiences of success – we place them in yet another toxic environment, and we evoke the negative reactions and “rap sheets” they arrived with.

Our whole program – its routines and rhythms, its groupings, activities and styles of communication – should exude a quality of welcome, stimulation, possibility, exploration, encouragement and satisfaction – in which the central child and youth care relationship can take root.