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1 OCTOBER

No 1224

Learning in residential care

Residential programs provide the basic training ground for many CYC professionals. In those settings, the CYC professional engages the youth by living alongside him or her, building a safe and predictable environment by “containing” injurious or irresponsible behavior that the youth may display (Winnicott, 1984). The worker engages in nurturing and caring interactions with youth who have difficulty with attachment to create safe, trustworthy relationship connections and allowing the youth to learn and grow.

CYC professionals typically reach a crossroad early in their career (usually between year 1 and 2), where they must choose between blaming parents and families and trying to rescue the youth from this influence, or seeing parents and families as partners who may also need our support to be more capable of handling their life challenges (Phelan, 2003). Good family support workers have chosen the latter path.

The experience of living day-to-day with the behaviors and beliefs of this unique population is a fertile training ground for future success with family work. The most straightforward issue is that the worker develops a tremendous respect for parents through experiencing the difficulty of living with these youth who have very challenging behavior. The more skilled worker understands how to use developmental lenses and other theories to support the youth’s strengths and appreciates the complex reasons for the existing behavior.

Parents know intuitively whether the family support worker can “walk the talk” because of having actually dealt with youth similar to their own. Without at least some personal credibility, the family will have little reason to trust the worker.

A major lesson for the worker is realizing that many people get stuck in de­structive patterns of living and want to live more happy lives but do not know how to change.

Associated with this lesson is learning that relationship building plays a key role in any attempt to enter a person’s life-space, and change will only occur after a relationship exists. The resistance of youth and families to relationship-building attempts by well-meaning workers also begins to be appreciated and understood as a protective strategy rather than simply as a “negative behavior.”

Another lesson is that most youth are protective of their family and especially of the parents. Even when youth experience tremendous relief as the difficulties in the family begin to be addressed, they defend their parents’ dignity and status. Youth have idealistic views of the parents who they perhaps wished they had, and we can see the strength and beauty here rather than the need to create a more “realistic” picture.

Another, more complicated understanding emerges as CYC workers become more skilled: The worker sees the value in creating small steps toward change that are developmentally helpful, even though they may not look useful to the untrained eye. For example, workers learn to support behaviors that are not the ultimate goal but are necessary transition stages. So, for example, a youth may be encouraged to be selfish or loud and demanding in order to assist them to acquire a sense of personal power and autonomy. Youth may be supported to make mistakes and do things that are outside the usual rules in order to develop a sense of trust and self-control. These strategies can look foolish or wrong when viewed only on a short-term basis, and unskilled workers may be unable to understand these ideas. The skillful CYC worker uses a theoretical map to guide interventions and this ability to have a theoretical lens to look at behavior is crucial to good family support work.
Change occurs slowly and in many ways that are not simple and linear, and skillful workers appreciate this fact. We really do have to resist the urge to tell people what to do based on our view of the world, to allow youth and families the opportunity to create the changes.

JACK PHELAN

Phelan, J. (2003). Child and Youth Care Family Support Work. In Garfat, T. (Ed) A Child and Youth care Approach to Working with Families. New York. Haworth Press. pp. 66-77.

REFERENCES

Phelan, J. (2003) The relationship boundaries that control programming. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, 16(1), pp. 51-56.

Winnicott, T. D.W. (1984). The child, the family, and the outside world. London. Penguin.

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