Do you know what you are doing?

It was a nice afternoon. Warm summer breeze lifting up from the water and drifting across the lawn of the residential centre. Inside it was muggy and still; the scent of a dozen bodies lingering like a stale smell left over from a long night's sleep. The young people hung around the television. The staff huddled together in the office. I was a visitor. What everyone was doing was really none of my business. But sometimes I just can't mind my own business.

I wandered in and sat down with the kids. After a few minutes I stepped in the office to talk with the staff. We chatted about the weather and then I asked them to help me understand their model of working with kids. They explained that they were non-behavioural, relationship-based and believed in letting the kids set the pace. I asked them if that was why everyone was inside on such a nice day. They explained that they had offered to do something with the young people but that they did not want to do anything.

I asked why they were not in the other room watching the television with the kids. They explained that the kids didn't like it when the staff did that – the kids preferred to be alone, together as a group of adolescents. They explained that when the youth wanted them, they would come and get them. They kept an eye on the young people to make sure that they didn't get in to trouble but otherwise they 'let the kids lead'. They let the young people 'come in to relationship' at their own pace.

I wondered where they got the idea that this is what relationship-based work was all about. How could anyone think that this was the intention of the model? How could anyone think that 'going with the kids' or letting them lead meant that you didn't do anything. And it led me to think of other programs I had been in where staff operated according to a model which it seemed to me that they didn't understand.

It seems to me that a lot of us don't really understand the models of our programs. That we take a few principles and thinking that we understand them, we let these few principles guide our every action, the end result of which is that we really have no model at all. Kids hang around, staff make few interventions, and then we talk about how the kids 'don't respond' to our program.

I can't blame the staff and I don't. In most cases the supervisor doesn't understand the model either. As a result we have relationship-based programs where the staff don't actively engage in relating; behavioural programs where staff just wait for negative behaviour; cognitive programs where the staff don't process thinking or ... well, you pick.

We have a responsibility to the young people who come in to our programs. And that responsibility requires that we know what we are doing.

How well do you know your model? Do you know what you are doing?

Thom