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Translating Social Justice and Anti-Oppression in/for Child and Youth Care Practice

Kiaras Gharabaghi

Theories of social justice, anti-oppressive practice, anti-racism, sanism, and other aspects of inequity are often complex. Some of this theory is barely readable and demands a nuanced understanding of everything from history to philosophy, ethics, Indigenous ways of being, and multiple knowledge systems, some of which are not easily accessed given their combination of oral and often intentionally and violently erased roots. Add to that decolonization, intersectionality, and various other knowledge and identity frameworks, and we are very quickly talking about something that likely very few individuals can meaningfully engage, and many others simplify, corrupt, or misinterpret in a desperate effort to be seen as relevant, allied, and – dare I say it – woke. And yet, these theories are in fact important, vital even, if any measure of democratic ideal is to be sustained. We cannot live without these theories, without the sometimes seemingly esoteric nature of these theories, and without the contestations, arguments, debates, and even battles about which theoretical movement holds greater promise in the context of social justice and equity more generally. To those who advance these discussions, I say thank you. No injustice can be fought through silence, avoidance, or lack of engagement. No action, however well intended, is likely going to lead us anywhere better without becoming subsumed in theoretical debate, without being theorized in context, without being historicized and materialized to its core elements.

Notwithstanding the importance of social justice and the theories that engage with this idea, I find myself thinking about the many child and youth care practitioners I have encountered over the years across diverse settings in many different countries around the world. There are a few observations I can make about what to me represents the overwhelming majority of the field of child and youth care. Here are some especially important ones:

Very few child and youth care practitioners actually engage with any of the theory on anti-oppressive practice that has been put forward by theorists; most have never encountered it.
Most practitioners around the world have no specific post-secondary education background before embarking on a career in child and youth care.
In fact, a strong majority in most places in the world don’t actually know that they are child and youth care practitioners; they just do the work to the best of their ability, and it often turns out that their abilities are enormous and superb.
Those who do encounter the theories in their studies often struggle to find any connection between those theories and the job duties assigned to them by their employers, and therefore quickly focus on practice-based knowledge they gained during their studies rather than theoretical knowledge.
And finally, those who do engage the theoretical world of anti-oppressive practices with great enthusiasm and commitment during their studies often either bypass practice altogether and pursue graduate education and an academic or teaching career, or alternatively, enter practice, become frustrated with the demands of practice that prevent them from working differently than their employer’s expectations, and then leave practice to take up further studies or to change careers.

All of this makes me think that we have not yet arrived at a meaningful way of preparing people for practice in child and youth care while at the same time taking steps to move that practice into much more equity-focused directions such that there is an impact on how young people, their families, and their communities experience the field of child and youth care. One reason for this is that notwithstanding the importance of considering context that is embedded in anti-oppressive practice, there is at best a very limited engagement of how the practice of child and youth care manifests across different settings and why certain patterns emerge that cumulatively provide the practice-based evidence for excellence in child and youth care practice. In fact, I think a particularly unhelpful way in which attempts are made to introduce anti-oppressive practices to child and youth care is based on an attempt to mirror the experience in the field of social work. There is no denying that some forms of social work have had considerable success in introducing anti-oppressive practices into curriculum and impacting social work practice generally in good ways. But even in social work, the success has not been even. Clinical social work practice, for example, continues to unfold overwhelmingly using the same practice methods that have always been at play; anti-oppressive practices are very much add-ons and peripheral in the more clinically based social work field, and as a result, have had at best minimal impact. And yet, the demand for clinical social work practice is growing rapidly, particularly in a post-COVID world that has seen a universal increase in mental health challenges and addictions (to drugs, to social media, to gambling). It is of course good to be critical of the modalities of clinical social work practice, but this doesn’t stop social workers from providing clinical social work services to individuals and small groups, equity gaps notwithstanding. I fear that this is also what is happening in child and youth care practice, except that instead of clinical practices we speak more about interpersonal practices or group work. Attempts to make child and youth care curricula and training efforts more equity-focused have not had the desired impact on such interpersonal and group work practices. These continue largely outside of the curricular changes unfolding in child and youth care programs, and they don’t appear especially responsive to the equity training industry either. Somehow the worlds of anti-oppression theory and everyday child and youth care practice have not yet collided in a constructive manner.

In very general terms, I strongly support a greater emphasis on anti-oppressive practices, anti-racism, anti-ableism, and anti gender- and neuro-normativity in the field of child and youth care, and I have appreciated the contributions of anti-oppressive theorists to the discussions. But I am also conscious that the experience of a child and youth care practitioner, be that in a well-funded residential treatment centre in North America or an unfunded street outreach program in Mumbai, an in-home family or kinship support program in Germany or a care program in child headed households in the Isibindi projects in South Africa, is one that has benefitted enormously from the relational, in-the-moment care practices of individuals present as child and youth care practitioners, even if that is not their title. Daily life events, as Garfat and friends have argued, really are at the heart of that experience. For this reason, I want to encourage approaches to equity-focused work that directly engage with the experience of care and caring, with the significance of daily life events, and with the broader impact of relational connections in ways that practitioners on the ground can relate to.

I do believe that it is in fact possible to do this better and more effectively and with greater impact in the context of anti-oppressive practices. In fact, I think there are many approaches already underway that aim to do precisely that; in Canada, I am thinking about the work lead by Varda Mann Feder, for example, on ethics in child and youth care practice; or the work led by Tara Collins on child rights in child and youth care practice; or the work led by Nicole Ineese-Nash on youth participation in Indigenous communities. I am also thinking about how the work of the National Association of Child Care Workers in South Africa, led by the brilliant Zeni Thumbadoo, has impacted equity in child and youth care practice. What sets these kinds of approaches apart is their direct engagement with the on the ground experience, an understanding of job descriptions of people hired into child and youth care jobs, and a respect for daily life events.

I am all for developing new ways of knowing and doing that are informed by anti-oppressive practices, anti-racism, and other equity-focused frameworks. But I also think that one could have far greater impact doing this specifically in the field of child and youth care if the efforts to create change actually engaged that field of practice across its many settings and contexts rather than dismissed this field of practice as oppressive and therefore not worthy of improvements. Sometimes theory can be the vanguard of change; a friend and colleague of mine, Juanita Stephen, has theorized the concept of care through Black feminist lenses in ways that directly engage child and youth care practice; as I read her work, which she refers to as care-full writing, I not only learn about theory, but I can vividly imagine her direct engagement with young people, with families, and with communities in ways that transform our practice not out of a desire to dismiss, but out of a commitment to make care better. And this, for me, at least, is the core of the matter: Anti-oppressive practice cannot lead to anti-care and caring practices. When it does, something is still missing from how we are engaging equity in child and youth care practice. This is why I think we would do well to theorize care and caring more, because the connections between care and caring and child and youth care practice offer far greater potential for social justice in our practice than what we are currently doing.