The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
The central tool of our trade is the relationship we offer and fulfil with the youngsters who are our "clients". Child and youth care workers, in the process of their own growing awareness and becoming, add a critical dimension to the awareness and becoming of the youth alongside whom they live and work.
But there are inevitably gaps and boundaries in this relationship. Care workers may be off duty, on leave, busy with other youth or other tasks; physically or emotionally "unavailable" – or not adequately representative of the customs or culture of the youth. So there is a need for the agency itself (its philosophy, its practice and its team) to embody and represent the qualities and values of its individual staff members – to back them up, complement them, substitute for them. There are a number of aspects to this ... which you will surely be able to add to:
1. When I, as a Child and Youth Care worker, am away from the program and the youth I work with, both the youth and I need to know that the work being done, the presence being exercised and the interventions being applied, will be reliably sustained (qualitatively and quantitatively) in my absence.
2. While I am on duty, I know that I have responsibilities, that I have things to do, something to say, attitudes and philosophies to represent. It is therefore necessary that, when I am not there, the agency similarly has "something to say", and values and procedures which accord with my own practice.
3. To the extent that I may be a positive identification
figure for the youth I am working with, the agency, also, must be a model of
integrity, trustworthiness, respect, success ...
I know that my relationship with a child is temporary, that the experience
of the relationship must in due course be loosened and generalised to his or
her other relationships.
One of my responsibilities as a Child and Youth Care worker is to engage in this dialogue with my agency (my superiors, supervisors, colleagues) to ensure that my relationship with a child corresponds with, is backed up, supported and matched by a parallel persona ...
The persona of the program.
