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2 MARCH 2009
NO 1407
Competence
Everyday life in a residential care setting is marked by a myriad of events or experiences as young people and the members of the staff go about living together. Some of these are dramatic or attention-getting events, but most are routine or ordinary occurrences. Some typical examples might include the following:
As staff members who provide a major portion of round-the-clock care, supervision, and resources for children and youths in group care (Maier 1977), direct care workers usually find themselves in the midst of these and countless similar incidents. How do they react? How should they react? How can they use these experiences to promote each child's or youth's best interests? Such questions constantly confront Child and Youth Care workers. Their greatest challenge is to use life events – the ordinary as well as the dramatic ones – as extraordinary opportunities to enhance the growth and development of young people in their care.
This task is a crucial challenge since,
by virtue of their close involvement, direct care workers play a
powerful role in the lives of children and youths who are placed in
residential settings. The thesis of this chapter is that the positive
influence of this role can be maximized if, in their relationships with
individuals and groups, child care workers use a competence-centred,
ecological perspective, regarding the promotion of competence in
children and youths as one of their most important functions. The
essence of this perspective is that, rather than being preoccupied with
pathology, workers recognize each person's natural strivings toward
growth and promote effective functioning by focusing on his or her
unique coping and adaptive patterns, mobilizing his or her actual and
potential strengths, removing obstacles, and providing supports in the
person's environment [(Maluccio 1981a, 1981b, 1983).
Following an overview of the concept of competence and its philosophical and theoretical foundations, this chapter explores the significance of a competence orientation for child care practice. The focus is on how direct care workers can develop and utilize competence-oriented relationships with children and youths, both individually and on a group basis.
Competence: An overview
Competence is generally defined as the network of skills, knowledge, and
talents that enable a person to interact effectively with the
environment (White 1963). As outlined below, theorists and researchers
from various disciplines have contributed much to its study.
On the basis of evidence from research on animal and early childhood behaviour, that cannot be adequately explained by traditional motivational theories rooted in instinctual drives and tension reduction, White (1963) postulates that an autonomous drive toward competence motivates the human being to keep trying out the effectiveness of his or her ripening capacities for action. Gladwin (1967) emphasizes the role of social processes and interactions in personality development. lie believes that competence develops along three principal and interrelated axes:
(1) "the ability to learn
or to use a variety of alternative pathways or behavioural responses in
order to reach a given goal";
(2) the abilitv to comprehend a variety of social systems within society
and in particular to use the resources that they offer; and
(3) effective reality testing, involving not only "lack of
psychopathological impairment but also a positive broad and
sophisticated understanding of the world."
Smith (1968) points out that competence involves intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivation, social skills as well as personal abilities, and effective performance for self as well as society in one's social roles. He indicates that competent functioning is affected by key factors in the personal system of the organism as well as by strategic: components in the social structure. The key factors in the personal system include the sense of efficacy or potency in controlling one's destiny, the attitude of hope, and a favourable level of self-respect or self-acceptance. Corresponding features in the social system are opportunity (e.g., supports or resources), which stimulates and reinforces the sense of hope; respect by others, which provides the social ground for respect of self; and power, which guarantees access to opportunity.
These varying formulations contribute to a comprehensive idea of competence in its multiple biological, psychological, social, and cultural aspects. The notion of the human organism's drive toward dealing effectively with the environment is uniformly emphasized, with agreement also that personality growth takes place in the dynamic interplay between the qualities of the organism and the characteristics of the impinging environment. Traditional formulations frequently place the burden on the human organism, because competence is viewed simplistically as a property or trait of the person. It seems more accurate, however, to regard it as a transactional concept, an attribute of the interplay between the person and the environment.
This view is emphasized in particular by Sundberg et al. (1978), who propose the notion of ecological competence. These authors point out that an adequate consideration of competence should take into account all appropriate personal dimensions, such as one's skills, qualities, and expectations. In other words, competence is not a fixed attribute of the person. It is the outcome of the transactions between:
(1) the person's capacities, skills, and motivation,
and
(2) environment qualities such as social networks, social supports, and
demands or obstacles in one's ecological context. For example, how
competent a child might become in various academic subjects depends not
only on his or her native abilitv and motivation, but also on the
quality and quantity of opportunities available in the school setting.
This view is further supported and elaborated by writers on the ecology
of human development, notably Bronfenbrenner (1979] and Garbarino
(1982).
ANTHONY N. MALUCCIO
Maluccio, A.N. (1991). Interpersonal and group life in
residential care: A competence-centered, ecological perspective.
Readings in Child and Youth Care for South African Students. Cape
Town. Pretext. pp. 149-151.
REFERENCES
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecolap of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Garbarino, J. (1982). Children and Families in the Social Environment. New York: Aldine.
Gladwin, T. (1967). Social competence and clinical practice. Psychiatry, 30. pp. 30-43.
Maier, H.W. 1977. Child welfare: Child care workers. In Encyclopedia of Social Work (17th issue). (Vol. 1). Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers. pp. 130-134.
Maluccio, A.N. (1981a). Promoting Competence – A New/Old Approach to Social Work Practice. New York: The Free Press.
Maluccio, A.N. (1981b). Promoting client and worker competence in child welfare. In The Social Welfare Forum -1980. New York: Columbia University Press: pp 136-153.
Maluccio, A.N. (1983). Planned use of life experiences. In Rosenblatt, A., and Waldfogel, D. (Eds), Handbook of Clinical Social Work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. pp. 135-154.
Smith, M.B. (1968). Competence and socialization. In Clausen, J.A. (Ed.), Socialization and Society. Boston, MA: Little. Brown and Co. pp. 270-320.
Sundberg, N.D., Snowden, L.R., and Reynolds, W.M. (1978). Toward assessment of personal competence and incompetence in life situations. Annual Review of Psychology, 29. pp. 179-211.
White, R.VV. (1963). Ego and reality in psychoanalytic theory. In Psychological Issues (Vol. 3). New York: International Universities Press. p 3.
