Isolated communities, isolated workers

Did you get the interview with Jeannie Karth in the February issue, or Shelley Gilberg and Grant Charles's article last month? If so, you will have noticed the striking similarities, in countries as far apart as South Africa and Canada, in perceptions and views on isolated and rural Child and Youth Care.

Geography often imposes vast isolation on our colleagues who work in rural programs – not only social and professional, but also in terms of the issues and problems of the community served. By their nature, rural communities are built on their tight histories and circumstances, and they inevitably develop their own distinctive characteristics. Gilberg and Charles put it like this:

Rural communities in many ways are not different from families. Our orientation and philosophy in how we think about working with rural communities is as critical as our beliefs and orientation about how we work with families. Perhaps the first and most important thing we know is that all families are not the same, neither are all rural communities.

Those of us who work in cities can be reassured that our supervisor is as near as the telephone – or at least that we can discuss ideas with colleagues in the downtown coffee shop. For rural workers, fellow workers are not so easily at hand, and the issues which they might like to talk over are probably more complex and local than we can understand.

(Isolation is, of course, not restricted to rural areas. We all know fellow workers who work in communities or programs just down the road who may similarly feel themselves to be remote – philosophically, culturally, denominationally – and who also appreciate the inclusion and contact of colleagues.)

A funny thing about Child and Youth Care – there may be a clear and comprehensive “curriculum" of things we should know and which we can learn in our training, but all of this becomes secondary, just a small part of the action, when we actually engage with a client. Suddenly there are no fixed formulae or standard methods; the situation is new, the encounter will have its own possibilities; we may know nothing that is useful. And yet we nevertheless need that curriculum, because it is at least a collection of reference points, maps, hyperlinks, stories and ideas which add to the simple people we are when we practise our own special craft.

And it is, certainly, an assortment of stuff we can offer to others, to apply (if applicable!) in their own situations.

The Royal Netherlands Government, CYC-NET's major sponsor, has asked us this year to try to connect with as many rural programs as we can. Technically this is easier than we thought, for the infrastructure is such that the most isolated rural settlement (even in South Africa) can connect to the Internet for the price of a local telephone call. But connecting with them professionally may prove harder. We will not understand the problems, resources, values and politics of one small area “nor those of another community ten miles away. But we can listen, learn, and offer what we have.

This is just to remind everyone that when you read and write on our e-mail discussion group* or when you visit the web site, there will be even more of our colleagues who are geographically isolated. Welcoming them into an internet fellowship where they can feel supported and less professionally isolated will be up to us.

As Jeannie Karth observed in her interview,

... an important message for them is that, whether just over the mountain, in the next town, or five hundred miles away, there are people just like them who work with children, young people and families, who struggle, just as they do, in trying to understand and teach ... and here are some things your colleagues are trying, or having success with. I find that a desire quickly arises to meet and talk and be connected with colleagues.