Listen to thisArticle Series in Association with SOS Children’s Villages
Improving the quality of child and youth care through Family Strengthening and in Alternative Care Services
SOS Children’s Villages’ core programme services, family strengthening (FS) and alternative care (AC), serve one main purpose, namely that every child and young person grows up with the bonds they need to become their strongest self.
These bonds are built on the supportive, reliable, and trustful relationships that parents and caregivers in alternative care offer children and young people in their care.
This sounds simple enough but those among us who are parents are under no illusion that it is not - even for those of us fortunate to live in countries with well-established social welfare systems. For parents living in unsafe and unstable societies, the challenges of providing a stable and nurturing home for their children become immense and grow exponentially.
That is why SOS Children’s Villages strives to support them in trying to overcome some of these challenges and develop the attitudes and skills required to provide quality care to their children.
In alternative care, where each child has, at a very minimum, suffered the trauma of being separated from their parents, caregivers are faced with the task of providing each child and young person with a new home (even if temporary) and a relationship that can grow over time and which supports the child in their healing, growth, and development. As a caregiver in Cameroon puts it: “My main learning is that I need to create a strong bond with each child in my care to ensure their development, their balance, and to boost their self-esteem.”
Therefore, strengthening the parenting competencies of parents through family strengthening services, as well as ensuring proper preparation and ongoing learning opportunities for caregivers in alternative care services are key elements in achieving our organizational purpose.
This is where relational child and youth care comes in. It provides parents, caregivers, and other CYC practitioners with the approach, methods, and tools crucial to creating a safe, caring, and nurturing environment for each child in a way that enables them to become their strongest self.
The term “strongest self” refers to the holistic development of the child or young person, including their physical and mental health, emotional and social competence, as well as education and employability. For children and young people to be able to become “their strongest selves", they need to experience love, security, respect, and a sense of belonging.
Relational child and youth care empowers children and young people, reduces their risks of harmful experiences, and the need for later interventions.
The L&D Approach and Framework for CYC Practitioners
CYC practitioners play an essential role in supporting such positive outcomes for children and young people who have lost their parental care or who are at risk of losing it. Their safe recruitment, decent working conditions, and continuous learning & development are therefore vital to achieving our mission.
We want them to be motivated and engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities to gain new and additional forms of skills, attitudes, and values, building on their own experience. When we appreciate each adult as an autonomous learner who wants to perform well and reach their full potential, L&D will be sustainable and will lead to positive outcomes for children and young people.
The organization’s L&D approach and framework for CYC practitioners conveys relational child and youth care principles and methods to parents, caregivers, and other CYC practitioners, so they can strengthen their child and youth care competencies.
Most people want to thrive, develop, and build their skills in a meaningful way to improve their performance. When we experience direct positive effects of our learning in our job, we are motivated to take responsibility for our own development. If we feel acknowledged and appreciated as a unique individual, we will fill our professional roles with the richness of our human potential.
The 4 Ds of Workplace Learning
In our workplace, we learn in four main ways - “The 4 Ds of Learning” (Jane Hart, Modern Workplace Learning, 2020 [1]):
The maybe surprising part are the numbers: Only 15% of what we learn happens in traditional learning formats like classroom or virtual training or in online courses. Most learning happens through our own discovery, such as web searching and browsing, reading on- and offline, watching videos, films, TV, and listening to podcasts. We learn a lot by DOING things, such as daily work activities, and from feedback and guidance from other people like a supervisor or a coach. Finally, 20% of what we learn comes from interaction with our peers or in social networks.
In other words, individuals learn continuously in many ways, not just by being trained (didactics), but by finding things out for themselves (discovery) as well as by interacting with others (discourse), and by doing their job. For this reason, we are not recommending purely knowledge-based training but rather supporting CYC practitioners in these various ways of learning, so that they can continuously grow and develop their competencies in a self-reflective manner while doing their job.
Development of the L&D Approach and Framework
The L&D approach for CYC practitioners builds on the “human drive to learn” and takes the different above-mentioned learning forms and formats into account.
All regions that SOS Children’s Villages operates in participated in the development of this modernized L&D approach. A team of internal staff members in cooperation with external consultants - namely Jane Hart, L&D expert from the UK, Werner van der Westhuizen, RCYC and social work consultant from South Africa, and Maryvonne Lorenzen, coaching consultant from France - brought it together.
Based on inputs from the countries and from regional colleagues, a first draft was elaborated between 2020 and 2021.
In the 2nd half of 2021, amidst the Covid pandemic, eight member associations participated in a pilot process that tested the L&D approach and framework. The learnings were summarized in a pilot evaluation report and incorporated into the approach and materials.
Here a few quotes from caregivers who participated in the pilot training workshops:
From January 2022, the official rollouts in two African SOS regions started. Until today, staff members in 39 countries were trained in the approach and capacitated to implement it in their country.
Key Principles of the L&D Approach
The L&D approach and framework aims at providing guidance - for the practitioners and those who support them - on how they can develop and strengthen the required competencies to provide quality care. The focus is on performance outcomes in contrast to the traditional input paradigm. It is all about DOING and not solely about KNOWING.
The approach is underpinned by these 5 key principles:
The role of the organization is to provide as much support as the individual requires to thrive in this new learning environment.
L&D Framework materials and tools
The L&D approach and framework consists of an umbrella-document, the L&D Framework for CYC Practitioners, three Competency Portfolios (for caregivers, youth development workers, family strengthening workers), workbooks for practitioners, a self- assessment tool, an elaborated 5-weeks Initial Training Workshop for Caregivers, and additional workshop outlines such as on Youth Development or Leaving Care. One on key competencies for family strengthening will be available by the end of 2024.
The Competency Portfolio for Caregivers, for example, describes 44 competencies, which are categorized in four main areas: self-development, child and youth development, family development, and cooperation with the organization.
To capacitate the main L&D support roles in a country, there are three training programmes available:
In addition, “Rafiki” - an AI-powered Digital Care Assistant (DCA) available on mobile phone - provides CYC practitioners with instant access to information on child and youth care topics, based on the L&D competency portfolios.
Localization and Contextualization
The L&D Framework provides an overall structure for the development of CYC practitioners. However, it may need to be contextualised and localised to ensure it is relevant:
Country and state regulations need to be adhered to, and the L&D Framework should be used to complement the required country training content and hours, based on a thorough reflection on the Competency Portfolios. In counties with no state regulations on CYC practitioner qualification requirements, the L&D framework can be used as an advocacy and capacity building tool to lobby for strengthening learning and development for CYC practitioners within the Social Welfare system.
Overall goal of the L&D Approach and Framework implementation
Caregivers and other child and youth care practitioners in Alternative Care and Family Strengthening Services play the essential role in achieving positive outcomes for children and young people. The focus of the initiated L&D initiatives is therefore to strengthen them in developing the required competencies to provide quality care and support to children, young people, and families.
The L&D approach and framework build a comprehensive approach to supporting the continuous personal and professional growth of caregivers and other CYC practitioners. By becoming autonomous and life-long learners, they can provide quality care and contribute to good outcomes for children.
If implemented properly, this approach will promote change in terms of real empowerment of caregivers and other CYC practitioners in our organization - and hopefully all CYC practitioners in the countries’ social welfare systems - in the future. They will become the leaders and drivers of their own, unique profession.
[1] Jane Hart: https://www.modernworkplacelearning.com/cild/ https://www.modernworkplacelearning.com/cild/mwl/5-features-of-ow-modern-professionals-learn/ ; https://www.modernworkplacelearning.com/cild/mwl/how-much-people-learn-from-the-4-ds-of-learning/
This is the first article in our series. In future editions of CYC-Online we will take a deeper look at some elements of this “L&D approach and framework for CYC practitioners” and share some examples of the 25+ countries that are implementing it. The next article will focus on the main roles supporting the L&D for CYC Practitioners implementation process.
