Quote of the Day

There is the story of the father who arrives at the children’s home in an inebriated state to see his son. He is intercepted by a child care worker who points out that he is an embarrassment to the institution and to his son in that condition, and asks him to visit when he is sober. Two weeks later an identical situation occurs, and the father is again sent away. Six weeks later the father visits a third time, now even more the worse for wear than previously The child care worker tells him she is sick and tired of his coming in this condition, and that he may never come again after he has been drinking. But today the father responds: "I feel so ashamed and so guilty at having let my family and my son down, that I didn’t think I could face him without some Dutch courage. My first two visits made me feel even more inadequate, and I haven’t been able to come near for six weeks. Today I had to get really ‘tanked up’ to be able to face you to say all this, let alone to face my son.

As long as we cling to the "we can care for your children better than you can attitude, there will be mutual suspicion between child care workers and the parents. "Perhaps the most damaging consequence of this predisposition to ‘blame the parents’ is that it causes us to under-utilise our most valuable ‘natural resource’ in child treatment: the parents themselves" (Whittaker, 1979, 30). Staff often find it difficult to understand deeply the lives of the families from which children are referred. There is a social distance which can be closed only by first-hand knowledge, and our team at St Michael’s had become acutely aware of the discrepancies in their knowledge of the children between the children’s home setting and their own homes. Thumbadoo and Veeran (1986) report that while parents had always been invited to events on the annual programme, "we had not organised an occasion where parents were invited to a get-together where the focus was on parents themselves, their importance and role at Lakehaven". It was decided to add two posts to the social work department at St Michael’s to study the problems and issues surrounding family work, and to develop an appropriate programme.

Some problems
We began by visiting every one of the parents of the St Michael’s children who were traceable, and the few who lived far afield were contacted by telephone. The way we were received in those early days, told us much about the problems we were going to face in our work with parents. The door would open lust a crack. When we introduced ourselves, somebody would shout down the passage, "It’s the welfare!" We were greeted by apology or with exaggerated politeness, and the early meetings were conducted with an awkward and stiff formality. It became clear that our style of operating would have to be as informal and relaxed as possible. Parents were to mention past experiences of "being talked down to" by professionals who visited them, being intimidated by big words and by quotations from the Children’s Act. "When they walk in here with a file, I feel just like a case". By deformalising our approach, for example by introducing ourselves using our first names, we soon succeeded in the initial goals of the programme, which were to introduce ourselves and familiarize ourselves with the parents, and most commonly today we are welcomed and invited to share a cup of tea as we talk.

GILLIAN QUINTRELL and MARGARET CROWLEY
Quintrell, M. and Crowley, M. (1988). Work with Families: A South African Practice Model. In B. Gannon (ed.) Today's Child Tomorrow's Adult. Cape Town: NACCW pp. 110-111