Listen to thisA recent discussion thread on CYC-Net about jargon in our field has
highlighted what I think is a longstanding and problematic issue in
Child and Youth Care – a split between CYC academics and CYC
workers. The discussion came about in a response to an anonymous
posting by a woman (I’m guessing about the gender) who had been reading
about “postmodern counselors, and politics of mutual liberation, and
about some [CYC] conference concerned with the intricacies of embodiment – [and] other words and phrases referring to ideas and concepts that I
just don’t understand.” She went on to ask, “Why are people
speaking about our work in a way that makes it so hard to understand
what they are saying? Is it the old “academic tower” thing “are we
developing our own “elite” “are the people who are talking about
oppression, putting themselves above everyone else?”
Having had the same reactions, I joined the discussion with further
examples, and some critical remarks about academics. Nevertheless,
I think we are a profession desperately in need of academics. But,
we need academics whose field of study is the actual work of child and
youth workers (CYWs). My model for this kind of academic is Jean
Piaget, someone who studied his own children minutely to come up with a
theory of cognitive development. We need academics who are
prepared and able to study CYC work/workers minutely to come up with a
coherent theory of, or framework for, child and youth work.
Before saying what I think these types of studies might be, I want to
make it clear what I mean by Child and Youth Care/work. We did an
analysis of the term a few years ago in Ontario and found at least three
distinct meanings. The most general referred to any work with children
and youth. The second referred to basically anyone working front-line in
mental health with children and youth, regardless of their training or
way of working (essentially Child and Youth Care as an employment
category). The third referred to what I would call professional CYC, or
perhaps traditional CYC. This is the one I'll
be using here.
But, to be absolutely clear, the definition of Child and Youth Care I’m
using is this: the use of the daily environment/milieu, and particularly
the social aspects of that environment, to change kids' behaviour. Although this approach is rooted in residential
treatment, the particular setting (residence, school, home, street,
etc.) doesn’t matter. And although we focus on the social aspects
of milieu, part of the genius of our approach is that it can involve any
aspect of the environment – food, furnishings, routines, etc., – anything found in the daily environment. The other possibly unique
part of our approach is that the social part is not limited to
interactions between us and the child as in other professions. We
can use peer groups, friends, family, the school bus driver, whomever,
to promote change. And finally, the last piece of the approach I
am talking about, is our focus on the impact/meaning of that environment
on/for the child. For instance, if an arts and crafts project on “self-esteem” makes the kid feel inadequate because he doesn’t have the
fine motor skills for it, that’s what’s important, not the stated aim of
the activity or the number of studies that show its effectiveness.
So this would be my initial condition on the type of academics we need,
those that would subscribe to this definition. I am not concerned
(here) about those academics who have an interest in issues affecting
children and youth generally (childhood poverty and exploitation,
childhood development, etc.), those in such programs as child and youth
studies, family studies, psychology, etc. As potentially relevant
as such studies might be, their starting point is not Child and Youth Care (as I’ve defined it). And this may be part of the problem
identified in the CYC-Net discussion. Some of the jargon users the
anonymous writer was referring to, “the people who are talking about
oppression,” may simply be people who are not “speaking about our work.”
In this case, there is no real split between CYC academics and CYC
workers, the problem is, like the one we encountered in Ontario, one of “mistaken identity,” a problem of definition. Two groups are using
the same words but meaning different things. And this is precisely
why we need CYC academics “to develop a coherent framework for the
profession that makes it clear what is meant by (professional) Child and Youth Care.
Interestingly enough, the clearest statement about the present status of
such a framework was made by two non-academics (at the time).
Referring to the framework as a “professional discipline,” Gaughan and
Gharabaghi (1999) made it clear that though there has been a lot of
writing about our profession, “there has not been a conscious process of
delineating the boundaries of the discipline.” And this is why I
think we need academics, but actual CYC academics, ones who are prepared
and able to put the work (and the workers) itself at the centre of their
studies. Ones who, like Piaget, are prepared to bring their
academic training and resources to bear on what other academics might
consider a lowly subject – his children in Piaget’s case, our work in
our case.
For instance, there are all kinds of studies of autistic children,
sexually/physically abused young people, and kids that are oppositional
that are based in other disciplines like medicine, psychology, etc.
And though CYWs work with such kids, the studies and even the terms for
such kids are at least one or two steps removed from CYC. My guess
is that if we had CYC-based studies, we might have completely different
terms, comprising quite a different range of children.
For instance, I think such studies would start with the point at which
the child and the milieu/environment meet, the point of meaningful
impact between child and environment that is fundamental to CYC, the
point where all front-line CYWs work. This point, by the way, is
one for which we do not yet even have an adequate word that I am aware
of. Besides giving us some possible terms for this point, CYC
academics might be able to classify these points. I can imagine,
for instance, one set of such points involving touch, pressure, etc.,
whether it be from a person or an object. CYC academics might be
able to classify a group for whom touch has high impact (positive or
negative), and another group for whom it has little or no impact?
And my guess would be that the high impact group would be made up of
certain kids (a subset) that others call autistic, abused, and
oppositional.
Though we might not avoid some jargon (we might refer to such kids as “tactiles” for instance), there would be no split between CYC academics
and CYC workers. The workers already know that certain kids are
sensitive to touch, even proximity without touch, that some need to be
cued prior to touching, others that crave touch, etc. It’s just
that the academics would provide them with the means to look at, and
talk about such kids in a different way. This in turn might lead
to new or altered programs. Instead of having an activity/program/residence for autistic kids, there would be one made up of kids
with high touch impact “some autistic, some abused, some oppositional.
Such studies done by CYC-based academics might also be useful for CYWs
in schools, for instance, where there is a no-touch policy. They
would have the language and the empirical evidence to show that such a
policy was highly discriminatory (abusive?) for certain students and
then be able to get the necessary exemptions/ accommodations that the
physically handicapped, sight-impaired, etc. now receive. Studies
of this type might also help in refining a lot of the black-and-white,
pro-and-con arguments that come up in our field and elsewhere about
touch. Instead of “Touch is good” or “Touch is bad,” it would more
like, “Touch (or this type of touch) is crucial in this type of person
but inconsequential in this type.”
And think of where we’d be now as a profession if we had had CYC
academics focusing in on the touch aspect of milieu a few decades ago.
Temple Grandin, the famous autistic author and professor may not have
had to go through the trials and errors she did to come up with her
squeeze machine to calm her down. Or if she had, she might have
done it as a professor within a CYC program rather than ending up in an
agriculture program.
This is just looking at one small piece of the milieu and the daily
practice of CYWs. Just imagine the possibilities that would come
from examining any of the other aspects, such as the one that appears to
be unique to our profession, our use of kids' peers. I suspect the
present public discussion of bullying, same-gender/same-race classrooms,
etc., would be a lot different. Or consider where a significant
number of group homes, treatment centres and other child-serving
agencies would be if CYC academics started to examine systematically the
CYC idea of relationships. If we could operationalize that concept
so that it could be taught and practiced (or selected for if need be),
there would be 100s of agencies finally able to drop their reliance on
half-baked behaviour modification concepts.
And finally, I don’t think that putting the therapeutic milieu, CYC
work, or CYC workers first as the primary focus of academic inquiry and
scholarship means giving up on such current academic interests as social
justice “the “oppression” that the anonymous poster on CYC-Net reacted
to. For instance, the concept of “locus of control” appeared in
the 1960s in CYC, but was never examined beyond being a key element in
therapeutic activities. But, I have no doubt that were that
concept elaborated, it would lead directly to issues of social control
and social justice. The difference would be that what is now “the
old 'academic tower' thing” to the anonymous CYC-Netter, would become
something that she and every other CYW deals with every day, issues of
control.
But let’s be clear, for those academics who would prefer to stay with “the politics of liberation,” or even developmental psychology, family
studies, etc., as their primary focus, they would need to take their
rightful place outside professional Child and Youth Care as one of the
many sources of possible inspiration for actual CYC academics. And
from the definition of professional CYC I’ve given above, I can think of
a number of potentially more inspiring sectors of academia.
Studies in business on retail marketing (e.g., store layout) for
instance might be more useful in looking at the use of space/the milieu
to influence behaviour. And business management researchers and
writers might be more relevant to professional CYC when it comes to
aligning processes and policies in the milieu, in their case to produce
a better product, in ours to “produce” kids with a greater sense of well
being. Or even neurobiology, such as that outlined in Doidge’s book, The Brain that Changes Itself (2007) that looks at how a
particular structuring of the immediate milieu (a form of therapeutic
activities as we would call it) can change the brain, looks quite
germane to front-line professional CYC.
So, who needs academics? We do. So let’s get on with
re-connecting academia with the front line. But not at any cost.
If the split is between academics more interested in youth issues, etc.,
let’s recognize and even promote the split. Because ultimately,
professional Child and Youth Care is not about “youth issues” but about
the science (or business) of making kids healthier and happier in daily
life.
References
Gaughan, P. & Gharabaghi, K. (1999). The prospects and dilemmas of child and youth work as a professional discipline. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 13(1), 1-18.
Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself. London: Penguin
