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24 SEPTEMBER 2010

NO 1632

Value systems

A "sharply defined value system" is one of the factors in successful residential care identified by Martin Wolinsl in his study of residential care in several countries. In a way, this should not surprise us: most residential care in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was developed by people with very strong humanitarian aims, and any list of leading residential work practitioners of this century would be dominated by people whose commitment to residential care arose out of a sharply defined personal value system.

There is no "correct" value system; the pioneers of residential care took people into care for many different reasons -— to protect those who were at risk, to help those who had suffered, to give a family and education to those who had neither. In this century people as diverse as Makarenko, a communist; Neill, an anarchist; and Wills, a christian; have created successful examples of residential care. What matters is not that residential workers accept a particular value system but that each home has its own value system.

I think there are two reasons why values should be so important in residential care. Firstly, creating a home, be it short term or long term, for a group of people is a complex task (most parents have at least six months to plan and admit only one resident at a time over a number of years). People need to have some idea of why they have become involved in the task and where they hope to go. That goal or ideal is needed to sustain them through the inevitable setbacks and disappointments.

Secondly, residential care in nearly all its forms involves "taking over" some parts of a person’s life — even if it is only providing somewhere to sleep. Anyone who takes responsibility for even part of another person’s life needs to be very clear in their own minds why they have accepted this responsibility and what they are going to do with it.

The problem, if values are so important, is how to decide on a value system for any particular home and what to do about homes with poorly defined or non-existent value systems.

One difficulty in the UK is that most residential care is managed by central and local government organisations whose aims can change according to political changes. Thus a home which develops a particular value system can have political pressure brought to change a value system which conflicts with that of its political masters.

Another difficulty in the UK is the widespread view that residential care should always be second choice, should always be for as short a time as possible and should never become a person’s "second home". In most of the homes that I have known with a "sharply defined value system" none of these things are the case. Staff believe in the home as first choice for the residents; they don’t mind how long it takes to reach their goals as they believe they will get there in the end and they welcome residents’ commitment to the home.

In a situation where committing a home to a value system can bring you into conflict g with your political masters and with views about the place of residential care in society, it comes as no surprise to find that many residential homes avoid any clear commitment to a value system.

I said earlier that there is no "correct" value system but it may be useful to give some examples of value systems I have seen in residential homes.

One type of value system starts from the idea that people sometimes need to have responsibility for parts of their lives taken from them for a time and the home is organised to take certain decisions away from the residents. The idea is that the home’s value system can provide a framework either for support through a crisis or as a basis for a new way of making decisions about one`s life.

Another type of value system starts from the idea that people will grow and develop naturally if the environment in which they live allows such growth. The differences among value systems of this type come from the different ideas about what sort of environment encourages growth. Some homes offer an enviromnent in which residents are encouraged to be responsible for their own lives; others aim to take away the pressures on residents so that they find it easier to make their own decisions; others set out to provide residents with natural opportunities to develop relationships because they believe personal growth depends on the quality of relationships.

Another type of value system starts from the idea that we can all learn from each other and that we need to develop two way communication at all levels to enable people to share their own learning and experience. But to be successful any value system needs to be "sharply defined" and the two main problems I see are where they are poorly defined or non-existent.

To take the second problem first, the most unsatisfactory example of residential care are homes which take away decisions from residents or say they are providing a good caring environment without any idea of what they hope to achieve by it.

The problem of poorly defined value systems arises in several situations: sometimes a home takes over the easy decisions but leaves the difficult ones to the resident; at other times the home claims to provide an environment for growth but frequent changes of routine or staff make the environment so unstable that no growth can occur; then there are homes that call themselves "therapeutic communities" but have never thought through the implications of trying to become a therapeutic community.

I don`t underestimate the problems; the political and social pressures on homes to conform to others` stereotypes of what residential care should be, make it difficult for any home to develop and sustain a sharply defined value system. But the evidence seems to point to the need for residential homes to stand up to these pressures because, ironically. they are likely to be more help to the residents if they have a sharply defined value system (however unacceptable to the outside world) than if they bow to the outside pressures to be all things to all men. That way they become nothing to anybody.

JOHN HUDSON

Hudson, J. (1981). Every home should have a value system. In Chris Payne and Keith White (Eds.) The Best of In Residence, Vol. 2. London. Social Work Today/Residential Care Association. pp. 178-179.

References

Wolins. M. (Ed.). (1974). Successful Group Clue: Explorations in the Powerful Environment. Chicago. Aldine.

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