CYC-Net

CYC-Net on Facebook CYC-Net on Twitter Search CYC-Net

Join Our Mailing List

Quote

Just a short piece ...

21 JULY 2010

NO 1605

Residential work

Anyone with appreciable experience of working both in a residential unit and in a fieldwork agency, will know that vast differences exist between being a residential worker and being a fieldworker. However, there are also similarities, and most of us would agree that the fundamental principles in both disciplines stem from a common foundation. It is this common foundation, or the notion that residential work is a method of social work, that has spurred on the growth of shared training for residential and field practitioners.

Shared or integrated training can provide a very suitable medium for achieving some basic and long sought objectives, all of which are critical to developments in residential care. First, to bridge the hostility gap between field and residential disciplines; second, to acknowledge and promote the changing role of the residential care-taker into residential social worker; and third, to prescribe a model for integrated practice.

Which is all very fine in theory. In practice the reality may be somewhat different. In their efforts to create a fully integrated course, with a single conceptual framework for linking different intervention methods and different theories of explanation, some colleges have sacrificed detailed teaching about residential work for a more generalized overview. Achieving exaggerated emphasis, on the common core of social work practice , while at the same time playing-down the differences between different methods and settings.

Adding a residential component to an already established course (without increasing the length of training) inevitably means either diluting the fieldwork concentrate in the social work teaching, or reducing the input of non-social work subjects. Not surprisingly, both the social work tutors and the subject lecturers see their contributions as critical to the curriculum. So, if no space can be found for the introduction of material specifically relevant for training residential practitioners, an expedient way round the problem is to accentuate some of the areas of fieldwork that relate (to a greater or lesser degree) to residential practice, while ignoring some of the specialist knowledge and skills particular to residential intervention. This way, nothing need be cut from the curriculum (even if little is added), and all students can receive a general smattering of residential teaching. More, the approach can be justified in the interests of generic training (in which it is impossible to teach everything) and an integrated course (in which concentration on any single method of social work, is seen as splitting rather than unifying).

However, insufficient teaching time and curriculum cramming are little more than excuses for failing to take a macro view of training. lf input on residential practice is low, perhaps this reflects the real status attributed to residential teaching. While verbal commitment may be high, actually achieving a genuine balance between field and residential input can be fraught with difficulties.

Teaching and learning about an integrated approach is meaningless unless we are able to make connections between disciplines in practice as well as in theory. Making connections depends on developing a clear understanding of the components to be connected. In training for residential work, the residential social work student requires certain areas of knowledge and skill that are very particular to his job, but which might be of minimal value to field or other social workers. First, working in a residential community demands a level of personal involvement far more pervasive than is normally demanded by other social work groups. Communications and relationships between clients and workers develop in a more intimate and intensive way, and the power and control of one person over another can be far more extreme. For the residential worker, group work method must be studied and experienced in greater depth than for other students.

Secondly, at an interpersonal level, residential work demands greater spontaneity, more frequent confrontation, and more physical contact than may be likely in other social work relationships. This is not fantasy, but the stark reality of residential life. Thirdly, the residential social work student may well be preparing for an immediate leadership role, whether as a small-group leader or as an officer-in-charge. He will need skills in team leadership and staff support, as well as leaming how to obtain support for himself, and to function as a team member.

Fourthly, residential work involves a large area of administration hardly relevant to other methods of social work; such as budgeting, banking, ordering supplies, and taking responsibility for the care and maintenance of property. Responsibility for fire precautions, and decisions about risk taking, planning staff rotas and chairing staff meetings are integral parts of the residential task. Yet the study and practice of residential administration tends to be neglected, or at the best, given only a couple of sessions during the course.

Where there is failure to sufficiently account for the specific differences between residential intervention and other social work methods, residential students experience their training as if they were being trained to be fieldworkers. Most people recognise that not everything can be included on a two year course. This is logical and realistic. However, it seems decidedly illogical to resolve the curriculum dilemma by simply ignoring vast areas of residential practice in the interests of maintaining an integrated approach.

Residential work is about enabling people to cope with day-to-day living by providing space for the living to happen. Put another way, it is a period of intensive care , purposefully planned to enable an individual to self-manage his life-tasks by strengthening his coping capacities in and with his outside world. Whichever the preferred definition, training for the job involves all the fundamental values and objectives, the knowledge-base and the skills that represent the core of social work professionalism. Additionally, it involves the very particular expertise for building an ongoing environment conducive to this expertise, the unit becomes an institution, with a group of workers doing things to and doing things for a group of dependent clients. Indeed. the facts and the fears about institutions are so well known and documented. students often receive more negative information than positive as the basis for their learning.

Maintaining an appropriate group environment is probably the most exacting and recurring task facing the newly qualified residential practitioner. Unless his training course adequately covers the dynamics and the logistics of residential life, he may be worse off rather than better off for the experience, that is, as far as residential practice is concerned. Under such conditions, no one should be surprised if he opts for a fieldwork post. It would after all, more readily pertain to his training.

LIZ WARD

Ward, L. (1979). Knowledge and skills for residential practice. In Payne, C. and White, K. (Eds.). The Best of In Residence, Vol. 2. London. Social Work Today/Residentail Care Association. pp. 160-161.

The International Child and Youth Care Network
THE INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK (CYC-Net)

Registered Public Benefit Organisation in the Republic of South Africa (PBO 930015296)
Incorporated as a Not-for-Profit in Canada: Corporation Number 1284643-8

P.O. Box 23199, Claremont 7735, Cape Town, South Africa | P.O. Box 21464, MacDonald Drive, St. John's, NL A1A 5G6, Canada

Board of Governors | Constitution | Funding | Site Content and Usage | Advertising | Privacy Policy | Contact us

iOS App Android App