Listen to thisLet’s hear it for Child and Youth Care in the good State of Texas! Our visit was to attend and present about Key Developmental Assets for children and young people in foster care and residential care. According to 40 years of Search Institute research, children and young people who fall into what SI call the “low assets” kids – those with 10 or less of the Developmental Assets – there are major issues to address.
Greetings from the Search Institute
This means that the children and young people which Child and Youth Care workers engage in residential and foster care placements have a lot going against them. The external worlds in which they lived have often failed to offer consistent opportunities for support, empowerment, sensible boundaries and positive expectations, or learning to use time constructively. The internal worlds for these kids in “looked after care” have rarely nurtured a commitment to learning, positive values, opportunities to develop social competencies or helped to develop a positive sense of their own identity – of gender, culture, capability and sexuality. Child and Youth Care workers know these kids.
Sand Etching Artwork at the Big Tent
Research by Starkman (2002) found that only 8% of the so-called “low assets” young people were achieving in school; 39% were already experimenting with drugs and alcohol; and 61% had already been involved in 3 or more acts of fighting, hitting, injuring a person, carrying a weapon or threatening physical harm in the past year. Do these characteristics sound familiar to you? If characteristics such as these feature in the lives of many children and young people in out-of-home care, does it not follow that as Child and Youth Care workers we should be trying to do all we can to intentionally break that cycle through providing deliberate assets building opportunities on a daily basis?
Youthful Dancers Strutting Their Stuff in the Big Tent
That is the message we shared in Houston, and will continue sharing wherever there is opportunity. While there is lots of talk about “evidence-based practice”, how often do we bother to check whether what we are doing makes any difference? There are a lot of anecdotal accounts. We can all share stories. But isn’t it often the case that we share fewer stories about our “failures”? How often do we carry out systematic reflection on the work attempted with the children or young people where what we were doing “didn’t really work”? This rarely happens, and when it does, we tell ourselves that we've helped these young people to manage “the next outburst” in a better fashion. We don’t really know that but we keep on saying it.
Doin' Youth Work Consultations the Frank Eckles' Way!
Do we ever stop and count the number of professionals who have walked through these kids'0 lives? How often does one hear the phrase “permanency planning”? It’s as though “the professionals” keep trying to find the “ideal placement”? So another family placement or foster placement is found when there have already been multiple attempts. When asked, care leavers will tell you just how many social workers they have had during the course of their time in care. The answers are scary! How come?
Waterside Fun Park After Sunset
In Houston, there was a special opportunity meeting up with old friend, Frank Eckles who invited us for a boat ride off Galveston. What an opportunity! The youth workers from Indiana and Ohio were amazing. Frank’s story about his boat wreck off Belize was also staggering. Thanks Frank! What a terrific opportunity to meet up and talk about Child and Youth Care work while cruising off Galveston.
