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Goals: Looking beyond the presentIt’s a truism to say that whatever we are doing, we need to keep in mind our goal – even if we are only reading a book in the sun. Likewise, wherever we are heading, we need to keep in mind our destination – even if at this exact moment we are taking our ease over lunch at the roadside.
In Child and Youth Care work it will happen that our goals and destinations are often obscured. Things happen often, fast and loud, and we are easily drawn into dealing with the immediate while forgetting where we are headed over the long haul.
Example: James, ten, has come to our program as an extremely anxious kid with problems around attachment and impulsivity. He is often under our feet looking for attention and this prompts some of us into irritability; equally, he is over-demanding as a compensation for his many unmet needs. Our team has decided to stick with a sustained program of containment and reassurance, so that over a number of months he will be less dependent and more responsible for himself.
Suddenly down the passage there is a loud crash with sounds of alarm and breaking glass. We rush out to see what has happened. James has come into the kitchen for his milk but we have forgotten to get it ready for him. He has gone into a rage, grabbed Jean’s tea and thrown it against a wall. Jean is screaming, part in anger, part in fright. Several other kids have collected and all are shouting the odds. With high drama playing out in front of us, it is easy for us to forget the "plan" outlined in the previous paragraph. We go for James who has shredded our well-organized afternoon. Really, this is too much! James gets yelled at, told to move away from the mess, told to come and clean it up, told to apologize, and again told to move away ... We calm Jean, clear the crime scene, clean the mess – and then we see James huddled against the wall of the garden shed , tight in a ball, frightened, sobbing.
The stories may be different (and less dramatic) but we often replay scenes like this. Acting in the moment, often out of our own anxiety or sense of order, we lose sight of the way ahead which we have planned. Too late we realize that it may take us another week or month to get James back to this stage his journey – the journey we momentarily lost sight of in the "storm in a teacup" we have just stilled.
Today in our practice we remember that we are in the process of bringing young people towards the goals of more security and self-confidence, better coping and function, greater autonomy and responsibility, and that whatever we do in a particular situation is more helpful if it is aligned with such goals.
