Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief

Brian Gannon

Some of Ian Carpenter's friends used to kid him over what they called his 'brass plate fetish'. He was a great one for titles, and everyone who worked in Broadlands Children's Centre (of which Ian was principal) had a posh-sounding name on his or her door. Some of these reflected no more than their real professional roles: Social Worker, Psychologist, Remedial Teacher, etc. Others were created around specific task areas – and looked no less impressive: Careers Adviser, Recreation and Sports Coach, Estates Manager, Education Director.

"We're waiting for a new sign: Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief!" teased some of Ian's friends after a session of squash at the local sports club one evening.

"Seriously, why shouldn't we use those titles?" argued Ian, gratefully swallowing a cold fruit drink. “It defines people's jobs clearly, shows everyone that we have covered all the bases, and helps the kids to see exactly who's who." And why not, indeed? It does help to affirm staff in their work when they see their titles and job descriptions clearly stated. An organisation's expectations are thus unambiguously expressed, and there are strong and visible lines of responsibility for the many tasks of a large children's program. So by all means let Ian Carpenter have his Nutritionist, his Nursing Sister and Transport Officer.

So why then, were things not really working well at Broadlands? The kids weren't doing very well at school, there was an unwillingness to participate in sports and activity groups, and there were general complaints from the professionals that children were always late or missed appointments. Laurie Engel (Groundsman) was discouraged by the condition of the lawns and gardens he and his men worked so hard on; Bill Watson (Maintenance Manager) by the damage to windows and painted walls. Peter Schoeman (Clinical Psychologist) talked of a “pervading dispirited attitude which presented as strong clinical resistance and pessimism" in the youngsters he worked with. Trish Mills (Remedial Teacher) remarked that her young clients brought no energy with them into her sessions, and that progress was minimal. Mike Mouton (Education Director) called the kids simply “unmotivated". These problems disturbed Ian Carpenter. The undoubted enthusiasm with which he had built up his team was dampened, but much more seriously, he began to feel deep down and not yet put into words – a sense of ... was it resentment towards the children? “We have provided here a thoroughly planned service, we have provided all of the specialists they need we have provided everything they could want."

Evaluation

One cannot question the good intentions of Ian Carpenter. He has obviously worked very hard at assembling what he thought was a complete set of solutions to the problems of the youngsters at Broadlands. He must have an extremely supportive Board of Management which has been prepared to fund so exhaustive a staff team. In fact, one probably would like to keep this whole team intact. Ian certainly has, as he says, “covered all the bases".
His problem might lie in the simplistic idea that human problems can be approached like engineering problems or chemical equations: a bit too much (anger, hopelessness, pain, suffering, deprivation, self-doubt) on one side, so we balance it with a bit more (rehabilitation, treatment planning, programmes, specialist staff) on the other side. In human service fields like Child and Youth Care work, this is never true. We do not solve human problems by throwing money at them – and still less do we solve such problems by throwing big words and ambitious programmes at them. In fact, we can never claim to have an education programme or a recreation programme or a clinical programme unless they are working.
It is not enough to have the room, the facilities, the tools and the staff. The youngsters must first be managing their own loss, confusion and hurt; they must then participate in designing and buy into the offered programme and see it as something possibly helpful and meaningful to them; and finally they must trust the programme to be able to help them, before they can make a commitment to it and it truly becomes a programme. With troubled kids, it usually takes a little time to reach this stage.
It is here, exactly, that we find the role of the child care worker. The child care worker knows that you don't simply plug kids into programmes like electric toasters into wall sockets. There is a major leap for these youngsters to make from their positions of rejection, hurt, betrayal, mistrust and failure to the point where they are able to start working at their lives again. It is the child care workers who walk with the children across these wastelands, who stand beside the children as they face their own personal horrors and who help them back to a sense of self-acceptance, forgiveness and belief in themselves. Only then do we come looking for the specialists.
Mike Mouton (Education Director) put his finger on it when he said the youngsters were “unmotivated". Certainly, it must be recognised that those staff members with names on their doors are able to perform vital technical jobs with troubled kids. There is no doubt that each of these specialists are trained and skilled to focus helpfully and successfully on the specific problem areas of youngsters in care. But in most cases, the child care workers first have to do the emotional and motivational work to get the children as far as the specialists' doors.
Remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? The highest order needs are for self actualisation – and these include things like the need for emotional integration, educational achievement, social fulfilment, cultural identity and vocational success. But the child cannot begin to work at these high-order needs until the lower-order needs have been met – physical needs, needs for safety, belonging, love and self-esteem. Ian Carpenter can quote Maslow to you, too; he learned all about this in his psychology classes and in his management courses. But he somehow didn't quite see the relevance of it in his child care programme ... he didn't translate it into the human warmth, the welcome, comfort, reassurance, understanding, affection and affirmation of child care workers which were necessary before the technical work was possible.
Child care writer Christopher Beedell made the point long ago that initially children who come into care need the human experiences of care, comfort and containment before they can move on with their normal development or with re-education and treatment. He went on to emphasise that the child needs to experience this warm and human response as real for himself “that it is no good for us simply to tell him that we care about him or that we are providing for his needs. The child feels this human support most intensively when these experiences are not so much provided as given by the worker because of his or her feeling response to the situation child and worker are in." So, Ian Carpenter learns, there can be a coldness in merely 'providing' for children.
Child and youth care workers generally do not have names on their doors, for they work not in offices but in the 'life-space' of the children – in the passageways, the breakfast tables and the bedrooms. They work in the rowdy, active places and in the quiet, lonely places. They work through the standard program routines and through the private and personal confusions and crises of the children. They help to keep youngsters publicly on track and privately at peace, seeing them just through today – and seeing them through the longer uphill and challenging times. They are generalists who work towards the point where the specialist services can be enlisted and integrated in the young people's path back towards good function and resumed development.

They have no name on their door, not even a lapel badge, but hopefully they demonstrate a set of attitudes and skills which make each one instantly recognisable to needful young people as 'Child Care Worker'.