The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
ListenHow do we group youngsters in residential settings? If we are a specialist program, for example, for teen drug abusers, then our program is already grouped. But if we are not a specialist program and young people of various ages are admitted for various reasons, then we can decide on how we group them.
A common tendency is to group youth by age. The argument is that we can then concentrate on age appropriate needs in each living unit, with an obvious focus on young kids here, older kids there. It is true that some careworkers are "better" at younger or older clients, and also that different age groups have different time schedules – little ones are in bed earlier, for example.
But grouping by age sacrifices the normative experience of life in a "family" group where there are older and younger children. It also places young people in essentially competitive groups, where several young people present similar needs at the same time.
It often happens that programs "separate off" the older
kids into a "teen" group because it is hoped that their "negative influence"
will be contained and thereby removed from the younger ones. While this
might be seen as a positive idea, it is often a case of force majeure,
when we feel defeated by the older kids and simply wish them out of here.
It can be scary for a teenager to be admitted to a group of other teenagers,
for while there is already enough family and adolescent and school "stuff"
to be dealt with, he or she must now also cope with the politics, intrigue
and rivalry of the peer group.
Separating our living units into age groups also loses for us the potential of the "hierarchy of care" whereby older and younger kids often meet each others’ needs.
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In facing choices about grouping, a frequent mistake is to assume that the living group by itself can provide for all of a young person’s needs. For example, if we have an adolescent in a mixed group and we fail to make provision for all of his or her adolescent needs (like normal opportunities to mix with similar aged friends both inside and outside the program, not to mention normal opportunities to behave like a normal teenager within the unit!) then we are failing in developmental youth care work anyway.
Another, more sinister, mistake is to assume that a youngster in our program is not going to improve, to make gains and move on. This is to expect the worst of a youth, and is similar to stigmatising kids or creating self-fulfilling prophecies. If we place a young person into a living group for hopeless cases, we dispute the efficacy and hopefulness of our own program.
In grouping youth in our programs we try to retain the maximum possible normative experiences and opportunities for kids, never being seduced by what is lesser and "easier".
