Listen to this

Merle Allsopp

Location:
Cape Town – the fairest Cape of them all, and today as I write this, the Cape of Storms!!!

Biography
I worked in a residential care setting as a child and youth care worker for a number of years before having the opportunity to go to America as an ILEX fellow. I remain indebted to Herb Barnes and Jerry Beker for the experience of working in Oregon for a year – giving me a wider purview of child and youth care work, as well as a chance to look at the South African child and youth care field from the outside. Upon returning to South Africa, still shackled by apartheid, I continued working in an exciting residential care center trying to realize a child rights approach – which was considered commie-liberal-threat-to-the-state stuff in those days.

Joining the staff of the NACCW in the watershed year of 1994, I have been here ever since, happy to be a part of this organization that has adapted to the changed times in South Africa. Now with a staff of close to 50, the organization continues to work towards bettering child and youth care services, through a number of innovative strategies, including mentoring developing child and youth care projects in unserviced areas of the country through the Isibindi model. Steering the NACCW ship is, as it was for my predecessors, more than a full time job!

How I came to be in this field
During my final year at university I volunteered as a homework tutor at a children’s home. I happened on one of a handful of South African children’s homes who eschewed corporal punishment – a standard way of keeping children in line in schools and institutions in pre-democracy days in our country. As the country burned (it was 1980) I found myself in a new world of 80 hurting children, and an even newer world of thinking – so care-full, so conscious of what children are entitled to, so mindful of the minutiae in each life. As I qualified as a teacher then, I applied for the job of ‘assistant housemother’ at the children’s home. So shocked was Vivien Harber (later to occupy the position of doyenne of South African child and youth care for many years) that someone who actually knew how taxing the job was, would apply, that she emptied the contents of an entire cup of tea into her lap during my interview! So this makes me, I think, one of the few child and youth care workers who entered the field through intent and not by accident!


A favorite saying –
“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility, a recognition¦that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.” – Barak Obama, Inauguration Speech.

A few thoughts about child and youth care
One of the things that plagues our South African struggle for the recognition of child and youth care as a profession, is that good child and youth care looks so easy to the untrained eye. Witnessing good child and youth care is like looking at art – you can go only as deep as your perception and knowledge will allow. In South Africa we are challenged as a field to lead decision-makers to an appreciation of the intentionality of the tone, structure, flow and texture that makes up good practice; to move beyond seeing only outcome and not process in child and youth care work.

I think there is a quality of spirit in child and youth care work as it is being applied in developing countries that could influence practice in more developed contexts. And linked to this, South Africa may be the country pioneering community-based child and youth care work on a larger scale and in a more conscious way than anywhere else in the world. In response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic as it has devastated our country’s families, we have come to terms with child-headed households. We are developing child and youth care workers in isolated, impoverished rural communities to work with children in their homes – I recently read a trainer’s report where some of the trainees have to walk through rivers to get to the training venue. We may have something to share with others, so we look forward to hosting the FICE 2010 International Congress next year on African soil.

NACCW staff at a staff development workshop held on Robben Island

Last thing I read, watched, heard, which I would recommend to others
Milk – the movie, for superb acting, and an inspiring call to activism for human rights

Standing on the Precipice edited by Gerard Bellefeuille and Frances Ricks – for transportation to a new era of child and youth care writing.

A favorite Child and Youth Care experience
How can one choose – there are so many, layered on one’s soul like shellac in a French polishing process.

A few thoughts for those starting out

Recommended Child and Youth Care reading link
https://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0308-phelanguest.html

Some writing of my own
As Virginia Woolf says, one has to have “a room of one’s own” to write – and I add: an hour of one’s own. Unlike many of my colleagues I have the former, but many of us here in South Africa lack the latter. We have 1.5 million orphans. This remains both incomprehensible on an emotional level, and an imperative to action. Who of us have the time to write? But I live in hope that we will develop a culture of writing ¦ and in the meantime there are a few bits and pieces on CYC-Net and in Child and Youth Care Work, the journal of South African child and youth care practice.

Influences on my work
I am truly able to say I stand on the shoulders of giants. The two previous directors of the NACCW are known in the developed world – Brian Gannon and Lesley Du Toit – both of whom have contributed to my work and that of many of my colleagues. In sharing their extraordinary capacities and energies to laying an institutional foundation for networking child and youth care workers through the NACCW, they have left a legacy that will outlast individual memories of their inspirational leadership.

I am fortunate to work in a team of people who daily inspire me, and I am mindful of my great privilege in working with all in the NACCW. Colleague Zeni Thumbadoo, provides constant impetus to think beyond the bounds of what is possible! And I am regularly humbled to a place of inarticulateness by the dedication and spirit of South African child and youth care workers.

Anything else
See you in Cape Town on December 7^th 2010 for the FICE International Congress for lively deliberation on the theme "Celebrating the Courage to Care in a Diverse World" – and for good food, beautiful sights, innovative program visits, dancing, sunshine – and a taste of the African spirit of ubuntu.