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114 AUGUST 2008

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ADMINISTRATION

The handover process – a problem in child care work

Hy Resnick

It is a commentary on child care work that sometimes the biggest problem facing staff and management is not the direct handling of the children in care but rather in dealing with the more seemingly mundane administration matters such as the handover situation – the handing over of responsibilities for the unit from one shift to another – and getting it right.

For many reasons the handover situation usually has a number of problems including:

Some of the causes of these problems include:

1. The skilled manipulation by the kid clients;

2. Poor information giving or poor information listening skills of staff or management ;

3. Different handling approaches/styles of staff or management ;

4. Poor management oversight;

5. Staff or management favoritism of some kids;

6. High turnover of service delivery staff.

1. Skilled manipulation by kid clients
Many of our kid clients are quite skilled in the art of manipulating staff. They are quite capable of dissembling by telling an incoming staff member that she is mistaken when she tries to follow through on a suggestion from the previous shift . “I didn’t do it . It was Johnny” is a well known excuse of a savvy kid who knows how to avoid responsibility for some behaviors occurring in the previous shift.

2. Poor staff information giving and receiving skills
Sometimes the staff on a shift isn’t precise when informing the next shift either what happened between some kids in the unit or/and the incoming staff doesn’t do active listening to the message and gets it slightly wrong.

3. Different handling approaches/styles
In child care agencies today many of the staff come from different educational programs or cultures and consequently have a wide variety of theories to underpin and guide their practice with kids resulting in different approaches to kids. These different approaches can result in different ways of dealing with kids . Its quite possible that staff with differing theoretical approach’s will interpret a handling order from a staff member for a specific kid differently. This can lead to confusion of the kid and resentment of the staff member who recommended the handling order

4. Poor management oversight
Management has the responsibility of making sure the handover procedures are clear, well understood by staff (and management too) and is realistic. When they don’t insure that the above is institutionalized in each of the units, problems will surely occur.

5. Staff or management favoritism
All of us suffer from having special affinities/feelings for some kids and not others despite our efforts to professionally deal with such feelings. We may not even be aware of these emotions – the consequences of this favoritism can be “softer” handling of some kids than others by staff.

6. High turnover of service delivery staff
Probably because of the low salary, sometimes unpopular schedules, youth of the staff , difficult kids and organizational tensions/problems there is high-turnover of service delivery staff which can result in poor understanding of handover procedures/practices by new staff who need time and experience to “get” the procedures right.

What to do?

Establish a staff-management working party to create a process to improve the handover procedures. The following process might work: Select one or two staff representatives from each of the shifts to meet (on their own) with the following tasks:

By developing a jointly arrived at plan created by both staff and management using a true participatory process , problems in handover situations can be substantially reduced.

The International Child and Youth Care Network
THE INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK (CYC-Net)

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