2 APRIL 2008
NO 1280
Helpful environments
At the beginning of 1985, after six
years writing and teaching about practice in group Child and Youth Care
settings, I left university life to return full-time to the Walker Home
and School in Needham, Massachusetts. As a new program administrator, I
was immediately struck by how much more complicated the business of
therapeutic group child care had become. Child care professionals at
Walker School and, I believe, throughout the group care field are
confronted by a confusion of equally powerful points of view as they try
to do their jobs.
- First, particularly given the
increasingly difficult, multihandicapped children placed in our
care, it is clear that no one theoretical system is sufficient to
guide day-to-day practice. As we make key clinical decisions, we
often struggle to combine concrete behavioral objectives with longer
term goals generated by psychodynamic or systems considerations,
just as valid as the need to teach new behaviors. The result is not
always comfortable, or clear as a blue print for effective
intervention.
- With reference to the families of
the children and adolescents we serve, public policy and the impact
of a growing number of new practice theory formulations challenge
both practitioners and parents to reframe residential group care as
family-centered and family supportive. This perspective is exciting
in theory because it breaks down the stereotypical barriers between
parents and child care workers in the name of creating a sense of
permanence for every child in group care. Yet it is also disturbing
as it demands program change, reallocation of resources and
innovative partnerships where real power is shared with parents
within the institution.
- From most public and private
community funding and regulatory agencies, the child care
professional continues to endure the pressures of increased demands
for accountability and decreased willingness to provide adequate
fiscal support. Often the effect of this outside pressure on child
care workers is indirect, creating tension within the agency between
line workers and program administrators who are so in tune with the
need to reduce costs and risks of liability as to be perceived as
out of touch with the real needs of the clients.
- From the perspective of
non-familial child care as a social institution, Child and Youth Care work in the United States is still a faintly suspect
semi-profession, and direct care workers still lack adequate social
status, adequate pay and, much too often, an adequate share of
decision-making power within the group care agencies built around
their work. At the very least, this sociological anomaly complicates
effective direct care practice. At worst, whole agencies struggle to
recruit and maintain even marginally competent direct care
professionals, while significant numbers of child care workers
struggle with powerlessness and cynicism in their work.
All of these points of view are relevant
to practice in group child care settings. The problem for the child care
worker and the program administrator alike is to achieve some sort of
integrative focus-what Albert E. Trieschman called a "unifying
something"as a basis for building a coherent helping environment.
RICHARD W. SMALL
Small, Richard W. (1987). Preface. In Maier, Henry W.
(1987). Developmental Group Care of Children and Youth: Concepts and
Practice. p. xiii-xiv.
