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5 november
No 1239
Those with and without homes
The Weekend Program represents different things to different children. For a few, it is yet another institutional setting, in a long string of settings, which keeps them from being home. For others it is an idealized family, a warm circle of kin. There are elements within the program that support both views simultaneously. Boys respond to the elements of the program which meet their needs. It a boy “needs†to see the weekend at Walker as an institution because it competes with his natural family, he will notice the disciplinary system, the rules, the distance he feels from adults. If another child “needs†a family because he has none, the program becomes a solid, caring network of brothers and parent figures. The adults are monitoring constantly the children's views, sensing when they move in either direction on the institutional familial spectrum. This work is extremely complicated and requires tremendous sensitivity and insight on the part of the staff who at times need to put aside their personal feelings in order to respond to a particular child's needs. It would seem tempting for the child care workers to “simplify†the program by becoming more narrowly institutional or familial; keeping this dialectic alive makes the situation complex. Yet the adults know that complexity, with many options, saves the program from becoming too intense in one way or the other. The Weekenders have decided to live with the “truth†of paradox rather than the “lie†of an artificial simplicity.
THOMAS LATUS
Latus, T. (1989). The dialectic of care: Familial and insitutional dimensions seven-day care in a residential treatment setting. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 4, 2. p. 70.
