ListenLast month, I introduced six quality standards for residential care: sleep, eat, play, learn, be you, and community. I provided the context in which it is important to think about quality standards in residential care and some of the misguided ways that is currently happening. For anyone interested in avoiding the re-introduction of medical models in residential care settings, thinking about standards beyond clinical standards becomes very important. Last week I provided some possible framing of standards in relation to sleep and eat. This week, I will continue this process by focusing on play and learn.
Play
A child’s right to play at developmentally and socially appropriate levels has been captured in much of the child rights literature and regulatory frameworks globally and locally. Play is a fundamental right; but it is so much more than that, and in the context of being a child in residential care, play takes on a significant new importance. Specifically, the importance of play in residential care is that it maintains the status of children as children and of youth as youth. This is not to be taken for granted. Residential care environments are designed to see children and youth as clients to be changed in some way, using methods that are designed by adults for the purpose of achieving adult goals. It is not obvious or certain that one can be a child or a youth when living in a setting where the goal is to change or be changed.
There are multiple dimensions to consider in relation to play. First, play is an opportunity for the autonomous expression of identity, relational preferences and needs, and the discovery of one’s personality, disposition, and social resilience. I need to make clear that play in this context is not therapeutic play; I am not referring to the ways in which many therapeutic processes and treatments utilize play as a method for assessment or for enabling change. I am referring instead to play as a series of moments in a child’s life that are driven by the child’s imagination, self-determination, and stimulants for experiencing joy. Play can include objects (such as board games or cards), natural things (such as trees or fields), or no material items of any kind. Although there are many philosophical and spiritual belief systems in which non-human objects and nature (or land) have agency as well, in this case I am talking about play that is driven by the agency of the child and that may or may not intersect with the agency of staff or other children. Play can unfold individually, but more commonly unfolds either in a dyad or in a group. It is critically important to understand that play is not connected to any therapeutic goals, processes, or activities. It is not connected to the reasons for why a child is in residential care in the first place nor to the perceived needs of the child based on various assessment tools. Instead, I am talking about play that is disconnected from the material reality of treatment, care, and the therapeutic process. Essentially, in the context of the 24-hour day of the residential setting, play is the time owned and shaped by the child in its entirety. The less purpose it serves through the eyes of the staff or the treatment team, the better.
Quality Standard
Every residential setting reserves time and space for children and youth to engage in self-determined play, individually or in groups. To the extent that children or youth may wish to involve objects or equipment in their play, residential settings are responsible for ensuring a menu of objects and equipment are available to children and youth, and that such objects or equipment are never withheld as a form of consequence or punishment. Play is recognized not as a privilege but as a right. Objects and equipment available reflect the cultural and identity needs of children and youth (including accessible materials appropriate for physical and intellectual disability and neurodivergence) and enable both individual and group play. While staff and other professionals may be invited into play, they are guests within that play and are prohibited from settings rules or providing structure, beyond the provision of safe spaces for play and the equipment itself. Group play often results in conflict and tensions, but unless such conflict and tensions become dangerous or violent to children and youth, there are neither interventions nor consequences to approaches to play that staff may find objectionable. Play is understood not as a vehicle for teaching children and youth or for building their capacity for behavioural self-regulation, but instead it is understood as time and space in which children and youth self-determine their responses to challenges that may arise, and in which feedback about their responses to such challenges comes exclusively either through their own experience or through other children and youth participating in the play.
A note on technology: for the purpose of meeting the standard for play, digital technologies are not acceptable and do not count toward play time. This is because digital technologies (social media, video games, etc.) exercise non-responsive agency (you can’t argue with social media, but you can argue with other children you are playing with) and reduce the autonomous nature of play. This does not mean that children and youth in residential care should not have access to digital technologies; it simply means that the time during which such access happens is not play time.
Learn
Children and youth have a lot to learn. Depending on chronological and developmental age, much of what they may experience or encounter is new to them. Furthermore, children and youth are in school, where learning is structured and based on a predetermined curriculum. In thinking about quality standards in residential care, structured learning (in school or through the program) is a performance-based activity that is assessed and has consequences for decisions made about the child or youth moving forward. Learn as a quality standard is not about such structured learning (but also does not negate the value of structured learning). It is about learning who you are in relation to the world around you. Learn is the opportunity to experiment in relationship, to explore one’s own limits and comfort zones, and to be taught by self-talk, the method by which we help ourselves process new experiences. Learn is about everything that is not taught in structured ways. The goal of learn as a quality standard is to ensure that young people learn about how power operates in society, about grief, loss and sadness, and learn about how rules and regulations can be manipulated in ways that work for them. The standard of learn is about providing the opportunity (the space and the encouragement) for young people to learn how to become, whatever they might become, and how to make sense of the way in which the world either promotes or challenges their way of becoming.
Quality Standard
Residential care settings are prepared to prioritize children’s and youth’s informal learning processes and actively participate and engage in these. The environment itself is presented to young people as a learning environment as much as a therapeutic environment. To this end, all residential services provide cues for learning; this can include, for example, the display of globes or world maps in prominent spaces so that conversations about where we are from and what that might mean can unfold. Similarly, residential services provide access to news and current affairs, as well as to ways of exploring histories of peoples corresponding to the heritages of the young people currently living in the environment. Food and play similarly can serve to promote learning, with the caveat that such learning is self-driven by the young people and programs cannot predetermine the outcomes or methods of learning in these contexts. In an effort to promote opportunities for young people to learn, all programs must engage and provide specialized programming in at least three core areas outside of the therapeutic context that are closely associated with learning about oneself and one’s relationship to the world: examples of such core areas include music (music listening, learning to play an instrument), art (visual, performance), non-human relationships (horses, dogs, farm animals), and body movement (yoga, dance, tai chi). All residential services chart learning activities for every individual client and together with the client, update what has been learned through child or youth friendly media such that the child or youth always owns a representation of their learning.
Next month, I will conclude the description of quality standards by focusing on ‘Be you’ and on community as quality standards. I will also provide a framework through which one can understand the interconnectedness of these standards and operationalize these both in policy and in practice.
Until then, be well!
