Crisis in Child and Youth Care

A few years ago I contributed a chapter on our field to an international reader edited by Meir Gottesmann. I remember a colleague writing to express the view that mine was “a very odd way of writing about Child and Youth Care” ... and on re-reading it I realised that it was mostly about politics and health and education and housing and the economy in South Africa – and not much else. But at that time, what we managed to do for troubled kids in our country was completely dominated by these subjects. It is, still.

While there were a number of programs which were abreast of and influenced by first world thinking in Child and Youth Care, certainly the majority of us worked at a far less sophisticated level. When one-third of the children born in one region of the Eastern Cape were dead within their first year of life because of malnutrition, when millions of people lived in corrugated iron or wooden shacks, when 40% of working age people were unemployed and hundreds of thousands had no access to health care or education, it was hard to think of principles of supervision and the niceties of professional boundaries.

Such circumstances constituted crisis enough for Child and Youth Care in South Africa, especially since we knew that for funds we had to stand in the same queue as other sectors such as housing, education and health. But then we became aware of how AIDS could ravage a nation. With the prospect of millions of people dying from AIDS, and even more being radically affected – for example, uncountable orphans being left destitute – we now see national resources in a further massive sideways shift into this new disaster area, and we know that our programs may never look the same again.

This month I visited a number of programs in a rural area of South Africa – not established programs, but new projects improvised as needed and hoping one day to meet the requirements of official registration. Here one may truly view a crisis in Child and Youth Care. These new ventures find themselves in the no-mans-land between, on the one hand, urgent needs demanding attention today, and, on the other, the expectations of government departments and the Child and Youth Care profession itself. Against poverty, sickness, isolation and weakened local communities, we find individuals and groups coming forward to establish places of refuge, protection and care for a numbed generation of kids and families.

Fifty children and youth may be accommodated in an old house which has one bathroom and an ordinary domestic kitchen. Sleeping arrangements may vary between five small children placed sideways on one bed, or three to a bed sleeping head-toe-head, or eight double-bunks crammed wall-to-wall in a small bedroom. Amongst the children there will be HIV-positive kids, youngsters already suffering with AIDS, and the newly-orphaned.

At this stage, the exigencies of today obscure any plans the adults might wish to make for tomorrow – whether the tomorrow of the children or of the program. There are Child and Youth Care workers who work 24-hour days for two weeks and then get a weekend off ... starting another two-week shift on Monday. What with the cooking, clothing and tending to the sick, they may miss the coughs or infections or limps which would normally draw their attention, let alone those needing comfort in their loss and confusion.

How does one write about child care work in such circumstances? How does one measure “crisis" after visiting such places? Where do they fit into our conception of the field? The nice surprise is that the local child care association has already found some of these new places, however remote, and is offering support, information and even initial training. Perhaps our best hope is to bring them into contact with their colleagues and peers, locally and world-wide. In the weeks to come they, too, may meet colleagues they didn’t know they had; you who have read this have now met some associates you may never have heard of.

And you will find them in other far-off places, in Indonesia and Venezuela and New Zealand and Estonia – each working at their own level with the issues which dominate troubled children and families in their lands.