Listen to thisReflections on her work with children in families in the community ...
"Will you miss me when I'm gone?
Oh yes.
Will you kiss me when I go? Would you like me to?
Yes.
Good then I'd love to.
But you'll have to give me ten kisses because I'll be gone for ten days."
What is deprivation, abandonment? As long as I worked in an institutional setting it seemed so clear, defined, catered for. But now, having left the children's home environment and working as a child care person with kids in the private sector within their family homes, I am filled with questions and wondering.
I first worked with two boys of divorced parents; they had been living with their father since the divorce (when they were six). They were not removed to care because their father runs a respectable business, doesn't drink or abuse the boys physically, he provides a decent house in a decent suburb, food to eat and clothes to wear.
Only, I soon discovered he was totally absent from their lives in every sense of the word. I found two wild, undisciplined and very angry boys aged 12, totally unmotivated at school where they were two years behind their class, and now entering adolescence ahead of their peers; nothing seemed to make sense in their lives. And they simply acted out their anger and fear and hatred in a school which punished them mercilessly and boringly in the same fashion with little or no thought, and certainly with no caring. The good name of the school was what mattered, and, after all, these days all schools have waiting lists, so no one needs bother with uncompliant and difficult kids. Move them on down the assembly line to the inevitable end.
When the boys returned from this daily torture it was to an empty house with a T.V. set as their sole companion and a father who returned late, always late, except for the one night he played basketball at a club. And when he was at home he too, sat in front of the blessed T.V. which he switched on while he switched off.
So when I came into their lives I searched for a tiny thread of hope, something to work with. And there was time left to give them a better experience of the world, time to have fun, to unload their laughter, to let them be little boys, time to dream, to sing, to walk in the forests and discover the wonders and the kindness of nature. And time to teach them the words they needed for their anger, their sadness, their rage against an adult world which was oblivious to their pain.
I introduced them to other adults who saw them, really saw them, and liked what they saw beyond their angry exterior. They slowly learnt to trust a little, to believe a little, to try a little and finally to hope a little. And maybe, just maybe, they won't join the hundreds of angry, violent, raging young men and women who blindly destroy the world around them and themselves in their anguish.
* * *
How very protected I was as a staff member in the children's home, from the horrors of the reality of abuse on a daily basis; from the silent, passive and unspoken abuse. In the residential care setting there's always someone to turn to in times of trouble or need, someone to explain away the pain, using clearly-defined and much-used theory.
Everything we do in the children's home is carefully planned, explained and written up. We classify, label, regurgitate, repeat and find better or newer theories to comfort and guide us. And out there in the market place where the abuse happens to the children every day, our voices are silent. Our social workers are overburdened and hampered by a bureaucracy that demands paper the completion of endless forms in triplicate, applications, proposals, written histories. Instead, we, the custodians of morality and the good life, decide who and when to remove children from their homes and work with them in ivory towers.
While the children continue to suffer.
Who helps the parents, who teaches the parents the necessary skills, who supports them, guides them, eases their often unbearable burdens? We talk of deprivation, and it is easy to understand what that means when we work with children from poor areas. Is the deprivation suffered daily in so many middle class and upper class homes less painful, less damaging?
* * *
My work now is with three little boys in an upper class home where there is lots of money and little else. All the latest technology but no creativity, no warmth. It's the father's birthday. I help the two little ones to decorate the table with leaves and flowers. We blow up balloons, decorate the cake, they draw pictures for their dad and get more and more excited. This is a novel experience for them; a surprise, we're making a surprise! We get the music ready and wait breathlessly.
The parents arrive; the six-year old almost wets himself with excitement. Father dances a bit with the little one, the candles are lit, we sing and the cake is cut. I see the six-year-old tug at his father's sleeve, eyes shining, with the shy little smile he has. He asks 'Did you like your surprise?' The father replies 'Where is it?'
We are insulated in the children's home from the real pain, the daily slates and hurts, the things that slowly, grindingly break a child's spirit. How can we really understand the world they come from in our artificial environment surrounded by sensible theories and solid practice.
I miss the protection of working on a team; I miss the supervision, the challenge of new theories. But know that the kids who live out there in the real world, who have no one to hear their lonely voices, need us as much as those we have removed.
I wonder, too, if a child whose poor parents drink or abuse drugs might not find that easier to live with, to rationalise, than the child who lives in physical luxury, yet whose parents are always absent, because they're out there making the money that provides that abundance. There is no rage permitted for such a reasonable absence "it's all for the child's good, for its future."
And the child lives with an empty today, with no place to rage, only a huge sense of guilt that she or he is so fortunate. The children know that the parents pin all their hopes on the T.V., the Nintendo games or the videos to fill their empty hours. No time to create memories with their children, no time to read stories, no time to explain away fears, no time to explore the world, to have small adventures.
I know that these three little boys will one day wield power because they will have money, and I hope that I can ignite in their little hearts some warmth, some caring, some sharing, some reflection. And maybe someday they will be better able to parent children.
So two years out of the children's home environment I wonder why we haven't rather created 'safe houses' in communities; places where both children and parents can come for help and go back home when they feel strong enough; places to teach the skills in the very place where they are needed not artificially in a rarified atmosphere.
We child care workers need to be seen and heard in homes and schools and streets, sharing our practice and skills with parents and children, teachers and pupils alike. We need to be bridges, not props.
