Listen to thisI was wondering what I would write about in this issue of CYC-Online as there are simply so many areas I would like to share with readers when I had an interesting experience with some B.A. students. This occurred in the context of me speaking about collective identity in Child and Youth Care and exploring with them reasons as to why Irish Child and Youth Care workers appear to have lower self-esteem than their counterparts in related professions.
Perhaps the interesting thing about this particular class was that the age profile was substantially higher than the other five colleges I previously visited and lectured on the particular topic of “the future direction of Child and Youth Care in Ireland”. The youngest student in the class was about 28 and the range went into the late 40s, so there was a great deal of experience for me to draw upon. And yet, as I looked around the class I met rows of female faces (not, at all, a bad thing!) with just a couple of males dotted about the room. If this class was representative of the gender imbalance in that geographical region, at least, we have reason for concern.
The debate was, as they say, hot and heavy and I think I was probably fortunate to escape with my life at the end of the seminar! Nonetheless, I obviously survived if I am able to write this regular column so here are some of my observations. I want to concentrate on one of the areas identified by many that day – the reality that male practitioners are an endangered species.
This imbalance is, of course, unsurprising to many of us who have soldiered in Child and Youth Care over the years. If I look to my own Child and Youth Care programme in Waterford, I see that over a three-year period there are fewer and fewer males entering to study and train. In 2000/2001 for example, there are 33 females and only 4 males, last year there were 22 females and 3 males and in 1998/1999 there were 14 females and 2 males. An issue that is frequently brought up in class is around perceived male “ways of knowing” and female “ways of knowing” in terms of interacting or, indeed, not interacting with clients.
A snapshot of a young offender in care
If we take a brief look at the average profile of, say, a young male
offender in Ireland, we note that he comes from a chaotic family
background and, often, has experienced multiple male caregivers, or an
absence of a consistent father figure in the home whilst growing up.
Thus, such a young person is likely to have a somewhat distorted view of
adult males in terms of modelling behaviour. He is likely to have been
subject to emotional abuse and neglect in terms of key parenting skills
and is, thus, vulnerable when he arrives into a residential child care
environment. He will probably be confused in how he should interact with
adults. As Thom Garfat acknowledges, he will probably interact in ways
he has found “successful" for him in the past. The tragedy is, with an
absence of positive adult male figures in his life thus far what is he
to do? How can we respond to this?
Navigating the Child and Youth Care terrain
When such an individual attempts to navigate the increasingly complex
child care terrain he is faced with many issues, such as who will talk
to him, where will he fit into the established group hierarchy, will he
have his own bedroom or have to share with people he does not know, what
are the house rules and, crucially, who are his Child and Youth Care
workers? I suppose I am drawing attention to the fact that I feel males
must be much more actively targeted for entry into Child and Youth Care
than has been the case heretofore and they must be enticed to stay in
the field. I feel that male practitioners are essential to the lived
experiences of children and young people “at risk”. This is in no way
meant to devalue the wonderful work done by female Child and Youth Care
workers. At the end of the day, or night shift, all are practitioners
trying to cope as best as they can.
Nonetheless, it disturbs me deeply that many male practitioners report that they are reluctant to say what it is they actually do publicly for fear that their motives for entering this line of work would be perceived to be suspect. I am concerned that male practitioners have informed me that they feel they can no longer interact physically with a child for fear of being reported to an outside agency. I believe that we are all agreed that a simple touch can speak volumes. An appropriately given hug, at the right time, can be the difference between a child in care spending another night miserable because he feels totally unloved. This is reinforced when all the males on shift run for cover. Indeed, one of my evening students informed me last night that if a young boy in his care begins to cry in his office, he just provides the child with a tissue for the tears and asks him to seek help from one of the female members of staff instead. This is wholly inadequate, but I understand why my student might react to the situation outlined in such a manner.
I am aware that I have probably opened up a can of worms with this brief example, but I feel we have become so obsessed with proceduralism and legalism in this system that the individual child's emotional needs may continue to go unmet. I feel that those of us in “leadership” roles, whether they are academic, practice or management-focussed, must stand up and be counted. We must be prepared to be advocates for change and I welcome further debate on this.
Can this be achieved?
How may we achieve recruitment of more male practitioners I hear you
ask? The immediate answer to this is by our government making it a
stated policy priority. International readers may be surprised to hear
that the Irish government is unable to furnish us with an accurate
national profile on the number, gender, qualifications, age range and
pre-retirement status of Child and Youth Care practitioners in this
country. Fortunately, one of the Unions called IMPACT has established a
sub-group which is working with the Irish Department of Health and
Children to obtain, what I would consider, to be essential basic
information and we await the results of the data gathering exercise with
interest (we have been informed that this data should be available in
approximately six months, so I will keep readers informed).
Somewhat ironically, then, in psychiatric nursing in this country, the same Department of Health and Children has funded on a pilot basis instructors to travel to schools to discuss (with the aid of videos) the changes in their discipline and, basically, sell psychiatric nursing as a viable profession to seventeen and eighteen year-olds. This appears to have been met with some success as school children are learning that psychiatric nursing has moved to the community, buildings have been de-institutionalised and a definite career structure is in place.
Clearly, one of the major issues for us is the recent high-profile scandals in child care (and particularly residential child care) which have greatly disempowered practitioners and resulted in Child and Youth Care being bottom of the list in terms of career choice. As Ireland moves more and more into the global economy and embraces the “Celtic Tiger”, we move further and further away from caring about and providing for the most vulnerable in our society.
We could target mature students who worked in the area in the past but have now left it. We could also trawl through related helping and caring professions to see if we could “poach” back those who left Child and Youth Care in the 1980’s and early 1990’s because they were so disgruntled in the past. We could lobby the government to place an emphasis, early in the school curriculum, on the helping and caring professions. We could ask that teachers spend more time in exploring with boys and how they externalise emotions so that when we men arrive at adulthood we are better able to cope and verbalise how we feel about relationships. If we have self-empathy, we can empathise with others in our care. We can be proud to say that we are involved in Child and Youth Care.
Anyway, I just wanted to flag up this important debate once again. It certainly is not one we should discard as the lack of male practitioners in Child and Youth Care does us all a disservice. The question for us in Ireland is, what will actually be done about this? I know that I have much to learn from my international colleagues. I will keep readers posted.
