Listen to this
I’ve been fortunate to work in a variety of settings in Child and Youth Care, both public and private areas. I also have had the privilege to teach at a few colleges in the Child and Youth Care programs. These experiences both contribute to my perspective on the state of Child and Youth Care practice in the province of Ontario.
While I want to always strive to be strength-based in my practice and conversations, there are always areas we can improve and language that we can change.
We are the Resource
In conversations with placement students, they are very excited to discuss the most challenging young people they work with; however, these discussions often end with scenarios where they are not sure how to support. There is an instinctive, knee-jerk answer that maybe the young person in question simply needs more resources, like counselling, maybe a diagnosis or medications. There’s a desire to outsource the support when we feel overwhelmed or unsure of what to do.
For any of us who have been in the field, we’ve all experienced this utopian belief that there is a solution or ‘resource’ out there that will magically change this child’s behaviours or challenges. For me, my ‘ah-ha’ moment during a recent class discussion was to simply challenge the students to ‘Be the Resource’. As Child and Youth Care Practitioners, we have completed an advanced diploma, 3 years of our educational journey dedicated to learning strategies in working with young people displaying challenging behaviours, we are the resource! Don’t wait around for a mythical ‘resource’ – BE the resource! We work the ‘Other 23 Hours’ and will have much greater impact on a young person’s life by being in their life-space and building a caring relationship than any other helping profession.
Strength-based vs. Deficit-based
A wise professor, Dr. Kiaras Gharabaghi, once told our class that Child and Youth Care is the only truly ‘strength-based’ helping profession. He elaborated by explaining why every other helping profession is ‘deficit-based’. In other words, similar to going to a doctor, the identified ‘patient’ has an illness (deficit) that needs to be fixed and the doctor may diagnose a solution.
While the skeptic in me wondered how this was possible, of course everyone who comes into the helping field will focus on strengths – but is that always the case? Recently, at a conference for Children’s Mental Health Centres, every person in management I spoke with (usually from other allied professions) discussed how their ‘clients’ were more ‘complex’ than ever. Are kids really any more ‘complex’, or do we just have so many ways to diagnose and describe them? My father tells tales of his behaviours growing up in the 50s and 60s that would make our modern ‘complex’ issues seems tame.
I wonder if the increased focus on reporting leads to a situation where by the time a young person arrives at our door, they have a binder (or hard drive) full of reports and issues. This supports the belief that the young people of today are increasingly ‘complex’ and ‘difficult’. I recall working in group care settings, each new admission would be presented by a social worker or psychologist, and by the time the report was done I had created a mythological, 7-foot-tall character in my mind. To my disappointment, more often that not, it was a pre-pubescent 14-year-old who liked to use the ‘F-word’.
The strength-based profession, while needing to understand their history and potentially diagnosis, remembers that they’re just a kid who have gone through some difficulties which are now being displayed in their outward behaviour. Don’t get caught up in the paperwork and buzz words. Stick to relational, strength-based practice and you will give that young person a brand-new experience.
