The extra mile

At the beginning of May (we were trying valiantly to fly the International Child and Youth Care Workers' Day kite, remember – we’ll keep trying!) we considered a feature on the web site about the special work of child care people. We would have liked to express some acknowledgement of people who commit to a particularly formidable job, who enter a field of great uncertainty and responsibility, who take on seemingly impossible odds, who go the extra mile with kids on whom others have given up ...

As it happened, we couldn’t find much material for this idea. During the month we found one or two shorter items for our new Quote for the Day feature (you an view these here: 1, 2, 3) but there wasn’t a lot to pick from.

Now we might well say that this a patronising thing to do, to pat people on the back simply for doing their job. One doesn’t afford such acclaim to dentists or bus drivers or civil engineers. But then these occupations do not combine the challenges and risk of Child and Youth Care work – starting off by definition with a daunting minus score; entering a world which is, also by definition, filled with hurt and loss and anger; moving often beyond mere empathy into committed relationships; facing from the start a high probability of failure and rejection; expecting much trial and error and the need to start all over, time and again; unwillingness and criticism from supposed colleagues in related professional fields – and at stake for our clients possibly whole lifetimes of continuing struggle and unfinished business.

What is noteworthy against this sombre, minor-key reflection, is the number of triumphs, both small and great, which we can celebrate. I believe that just as our work is essentially moving with young people and families through experiences which disprove their hopelessness and pessimism and unearth new possibilities, so what keeps us at this work are these same experiences which are as affirming for us as for our clients.

There is a multiplier effect operating. A child's single experience of meaningfulness, hope or success can tip the scales between despair and optimism and send him or her into a changed future; that very same experience also mobilises us towards engagement with the next youngster we will work with. Our belief and courage and effort evokes similar courage and effort from the youth and the energy created is enough for both of us to move onwards. More. When this happens with you it energises your colleagues and their clients and it energises me. And this is why we need that International ritual of celebration and affirmation.

And we couldn’t find much of that in our literature.

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If you read nothing else in this month’s issue, read The Loss of a Child. It is from a colleague of all of us who has been through the best training and experience in the field as a practitioner and administrator, but of whom circumstances are now demanding her best work – in an area she neither expected nor chose, but where she draws her energy and courage from that of her colleagues. This has nothing to do with the first part of this editorial “but then it has everything to do with it.