The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
Rumour and anxiety feed off a lack of information. Managers know that a failure to be transparent and generous with information causes unease and resentment down the line as staff members feel untrusted and excluded. It is amazing how often we are tempted to play our cards close to the chest – but equally amazing how much information should rightly be in the public domain anyhow.
Destructive as information meanness can be for adults, it eats away at young people in our programs. Kids who have been "removed" and "placed" easily feel impotent and dependent. We often hear youth in care asking questions like "Are we allowed to ...?" or "When will we be able to ...?"or "Do we have to ...?" just as we hear the adults saying "Not until I say so," or "I will let you know about that." Good information-sharing is like the oxygen in our blood, part of an organisational vascular system which maintains the health of our program and community.
A sound rights culture includes the right of people, young and old, to know their rights. But it goes deeper than this. Withholding information to retain power and status is less than fair when we are at the same time expecting young people to learn to be responsible and to plan ahead. The resources to be competent include not only skills but also knowledge. We enrich kids’ lives when, rather than dispensing pieces of information like candy rewards, we inform them fully about coming events, about opportunities and facilities at their disposal (in our program as much as in the neighbourhood and the town at large), about their rights and responsibilities, about any changes currently being considered ... and about those things on which they can continue to rely as they think ahead.
Today in our practice we will be aware that the greater the knowledge people have, the more independent they are – and that (in case we have forgotten this) it is to independence that we are supposed to be leading our youth.
No clogged arteries.
