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Listen to thisMost teams prepare treatment plans for young people in care. These may be long-term permanency plans, extending over a year or more; and they may be shorter-term plans, looking a month or two into the future, during which we work towards particular goals.
But the real action in our work with young people takes place moment by moment. The very next interaction, the very next moment between you and a youngster can be the moment when something truly significant happens. What are the essential things we need in order to make that possible?
1. Being there
Sharing space and time: Does the daily timetable have me moving in the same spaces and times as the child so that I am there at significant times?
A good daily program creatively “mixes and matches" staff with children. I will be no good at all if I am not actually present with the youngsters I work with. Usually (though not always!), the more formal and controlled the activity (study, mealtimes) the more predictable the situation; the more unstructured and spontaneous the activity, the greater the risks and the opportunity, the greater the need for alert and on-the-ball adults.
Relationship: Have I already established some working relationship with the child which gives me permission to be part of the action in his or her life?
The whole point of Child and Youth Care is the relationship through which we value and show interest in each others' lives. We must have some reason for “being there" in kids' lives. They will be uncomfortable with unexplained adults lurking around. We achieve nothing without initiating this relationship.
2. Observing
Selecting behaviours: Do I have some observational frame which helps me sift out behaviours which are significant or those I should let go?
Our general experience of children and youth helps us to recognise what is normal and what indicates potentially problematic behaviour. Our specific briefing (from staff meetings, individual programs, etc.) tells us what is important for certain youngsters. We prefer to “go with the flow" and intervene as little as necessary, and as often as not we choose to “not see" certain behaviours.
Signalling: Do I have some way (a nod, eye-contact) to let a child know that I have noticed some growth or picked up a critical incident for special attention or observation?
It is reassuring for the children to know why they are in the program and what skills and issues we are working at together. In our contracting with them we will agree on things like “more sharing" or “try to express that in words rather than hitting out". When we have established the learning tasks or critical behaviours, we can use simple eye-contact or a cough to let the youngster know “This is what we were talking about.”
3. Intervening
Are we skilled in (and can we choose between) the various levels of intervention which may be necessary? Here are four levels to consider:
Monitoring: Am I good at maintaining a level of simple alertness on my part, “keeping an eye" on a situation?
This is not an unimportant level: it includes a deliberate act of care-fulness and a time of being present with young people, when we consider ourselves to be “on duty". This is the stage when Child and Youth Care workers look out for risks and opportunities. As we become more experienced, we get to “recognise the tunes” of kids' interactions – both the major and minor keys!
Accompanying/approaching: Can I choose the time to move nearer to a youngster or activity to reassure or to communicate my adult presence?
Think of this as “moving away from the wall" and entering the “hot spot" of the action. The coach of a soccer or netball team often moves closely alongside a particular player or group with the message: “I am right here. I am interested in how you manage this, I recognise that this is a significant moment, we may talk about this later". We choose to move into this accompanying mode carefully, because the closer adult presence often triggers changes in the behaviour of the youngster or the group: perhaps an attempt to demonstrate skills and improvement, perhaps a studied indifference and independence ("I don’t need you around right now") or perhaps resentment and frustration at the adult challenge to their inappropriate behaviour or dominance.
An important reason for approaching is to help to de-escalate a situation which might be brewing – better now than picking up the broken pieces later.
We stay “with" the group or the child until we are sure that things will continue positively by themselves. This does not necessarily mean that all risk must have ended and that there is peace and quiet; on the contrary, it is good that robust, challenging and demanding interaction can continue, but that the kids concerned are managing the situation with the potential of learning and growing through it.
Enriching: Am I skilled at adding some new element from the sidelines, an observation, some information or encouragement, suggesting some choices?
This is the core of Child and Youth Care work – adding value to the experience of the young people in the program, without interrupting their activity. As always, we try to go with the flow: we usually don’t want to stop behaviour, but rather to enable, facilitate and optimise it. Enriching is the best level for intervention because it is rooted in the things the youngsters are already doing naturally. Here we have the opportunity to reinforce positive behaviours, add information and skills, encourage and reward effort and success, and to work with the whole group at the same time as being able to single out individual performances and issues.
A plus and a minus: Enriching is of great value because it can happen anywhere. We don’t need a special room or a special activity to practise enrichment – meal breaks, classrooms, talk sessions, sports training, activity groups, just hanging out – all are occasions when we have the opportunity to be with kids while they do their own thing. BUT this does not mean that we have to keep tossing “good advice" into every situation. Child care work should be a good dialogue, with us doing rather more listening than talking. Enrichment should add spice and stimulation; it should not be boring. We ensure that our contributions are well-chosen and we keep them to the minimum. This process of enrichment can be profitably workshopped in your teams and discussion groups, because each program has its own special settings and possibilities.
Engagement: Last of all, what are my skills when actually intervening in a process to influence its direction, to avoid unhelpful developments, to teach alternatives – or to instil new skills and possibilities?
There are two levels at which we intervene.
At one level we include youngsters in more formal learning or treatment routines – such as activity/therapeutic groups or social skills classes. These formal interventions take children out of their life space for a period, build new awareness, attitudes and abilities, and then return them to daily life. All child care workers need some skills in such “extra lessons" for troubled youth.
At another level we learn to work within the children's life space. This is the whole area of behaviour management, crisis intervention, and what Fritz Redl called “life space interviews" and “therapy on the hoof". It takes courage to interrupt negative behaviours and difficult situations, and it takes skill and experience to be able to engage youngsters in running repairs and then return them as soon as possible to the action. The circumstances of such engagement are often tough, because through our monitoring, accompanying and enrichment phases we will already have tried to head off the simmering situations.
However, the better our earlier levels of intervention, the less often will we have to interrupt crisis processes.
4. Outcome
Follow-through and debriefing: Do I ensure that the incident, the learning or activity resulted in a positive and usable experience?
By reflecting on an experience afterwards, a youngster can often make more sense of it. We can highlight the changes and the growths achieved, and we can translate the experience to a verbal and conceptual level which allows us to talk about it subsequently. Troubled youngsters are often satisfied just to “get through" a difficult experience and simply feel relieved when the pressure is off. That’s not enough, because they will often then live in some suspense or anxiety anticipating the next crisis. So it is crucial that we show them the steps they have made, how we are all changed – strengthened, made more aware – by our experiences, and that the next challenges or task will be different. Perhaps even more important is helping youngsters to generalise what they have learned to other areas of their lives, for example, keeping my cool in the ball game improves my ability to keep my cool anywhere. So part of follow-through is providing further opportunities for the kids to put into practice and reinforce their new learning, to see how it works.
Programme adjustments: Do I take away from the incident any information or tasks to contribute to and enhance the youngster’s individual programme?
How many kids earn adult approval by doing the same old tasks every day “tidy your room, get up on time ... ? When we see growth and help the child or youth to see growth and change in himself or herself, then our program must respond accordingly by also seeing him differently. His individual program is now different. From today we should be working at a slightly higher level, with different challenges, different tasks, different expectations and goals.
Creating moments
Throughout these four levels – being there, observing and assessing, intervention and outcome – we make sure that we never miss an opportunity to offer youngsters something different from what they have been used to – within themselves and from others. We offer them interest instead of indifference, responsibility instead of blame, strengths instead of anger, inclusion instead of turning away, encounter instead of attack, commitment instead of rejection, getting things right instead of punishment – but above all the energy of maintaining impetus, keeping going, expecting new stuff, growing.
