Listen to this
I’ll start with a wish for all of you reading this. I hope that you will be as fortunate as I am and have been. I sit here looking back on a 60-year career in Child and Youth Care Work with enormous gratitude, innumerable memories – wonderful, horrible, laughable, and some almost unbelievable (except I was there!). Regrets only about some of my own practice mistakes but none about my choice of career. Everyone should be so lucky. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
I’ve lived a long time and have met a lot of people. Take it from me, you will never meet more wonderful people than you will in Child and Youth Care Work: funny; earnest; dogged; loving; some, a little strange; others just quirky – but each and every one interesting. I met my friend Don in 1964 on my first CYC job; we never lost touch or stopped loving each other until he died this year. For his memorial I sent pictures of him and me with the kids. Neither of us was much older than the kids. My friend Margaret and I email every day. One of my employees became a friend, and we also email every day. I would never want to lose touch with these two even though we live thousands of miles from each other. My best friend Connie was my best friend until she died too early; we worked together in two CYC agencies. I exchange email and holiday cards with other remaining “pioneers” – as we have been called. They will always be part of my life and I am so honored to have known and loved those others in my age group sometimes referred to as “Pioneers”: Thom, and Karen, and Carol, and Martha, and Mark and Dale. All of them.
Of course, we come for the kids – and I have pictures of many of “my” kids from the 1960’s on. Like those who choose to work in our field they are each “one of a kind”! Yes, they are challenging, frequently obnoxious, traumatized, deeply wounded, developmentally challenged, and a host of other qualities. But at the same time, they are funny – sometimes hysterical – interesting, unique, inspiring, and often to our surprise quite loving, and unabashedly grateful.
But the mix of the wonderful and challenging and interesting kids are matched by the co-workers you are now laughing, and crying, and sweating with on jobs. There are tomorrow’s “Pioneers” that you are working with now. Congratulate yourself on choosing CYC work as a career and take the time to thank and appreciate those at your side while you laugh and wonder and grieve. The good ones you will remember all your life, and they will stay in your head and heart to accompany you on your life’s journey. Trust me on this one. Some you will have in your life forever.
I was fortunate and blessed to spend many decades with my Life-Partner who was also a CYC worker. You should be so lucky. You will not be surprised to know that one of our frequent conversations was, “Well, we don’t have money but we sure do have the memories, and lots of stories, and the gift of knowing we made a difference for some kids, worth more than gold”. Call me sometime and I’ll tell you about the “old days”, when it was common to have to “live in” with the kids; and when they (administration) would sometimes forget to give you a day off for quite a long stretch. I can also tell you about driving to the drive-in movies with a van full of a dozen teenagers - because if one went, we all went. Of course, they would spend the drive threatening to “tip the Van over”, necessitating lots of false stops and turn-arounds to get them to behave. You’ve probably been there. Who else has the mixture of fun and terror like this?
Until I retired as a professional trainer and consultant I had the habit of counting people who were in the room – professional workers and completely unnecessary since it didn’t matter– a habit left over from the previously necessary habit of counting kids over and over to see if one ran away, or if one picked up someone who didn’t belong to us. I’m sure you’ve returned to the agency with one too few or one too many. If you hang in there, you’ll probably develop some strange habit too. It will keep reminding you of “the days” when …! And you’ll smile even though no one around you “gets it”.
Once you have found a home in Child and Youth Care you will be at home with people and places doing our work anywhere in the world where harmed and hurting children and kind and healing adults share space together. I was always astonished at how immediately comfortable I was walking into a residential treatment center anywhere. Walking through the halls at Marymound in Canada or the Raddery in Scotland or Marsham Hatch in England or the Children’s Home in Prague. I always felt “at home” and there was an immediate connection with the workers I saw with the kids. A group of us oldies were visiting a treatment facility in Czechoslovakia when there for an International conference. We didn’t understand them and they didn’t understand us, but we smiled and hugged and nodded because we all understood each other perfectly.
If you hang in there you will never regret the time you spent with our unique and wonderful children, youth, and staff. I certainly never have. Treasure your moments, your times when things go well and your times when things are awful, but you got through it. Treasure the way the kids start to trust you and come to believe that you really do love them and wish only the best for them. Treasure your colleagues and your supervisors who laugh with you, throw up their hands with you, who help you with insight and who bolster you up when you feel defeated. There are no better people. And you are one of them.
