Andrew Jarrett
Abstract
Child and youth care professionals who
practice In a school milieu risk being misunderstood with regard to their
role and degree of accountability. To avoid being treated as an assistant or
having their role misunderstood in other ways, child and youth care
practitioners must take initiative In ensuring that strategies are in place
to avoid potential conflicts and misunderstanding. In addition,
organizational strategies such as a team approach to planning and decision
making, mechanisms for coordination of intervention strategies, supervisory
supports to the Joint and individual needs of the professionals, and an
expectation of coordinated program preparation and development must surround
and support the professionals trying to work together in the classroom
situation.
When I was a supervisor in a therapeutic school program for emotionally disturbed children, I was fortunate enough to be part of a larger organization (the Dellcrest Children’s Centre) In which the lines of accountability and supervisory relationships were very clear. The Child Care Workers reported to the clinical supervisor, a manager in the employ of the Children’s Centre, and the teachers reported to a principal, who was employed by the local school board.
Several other factors contributed to maintaining a necessary balance of power in the program:
From this description, one might surmise that the child care workers were, in fact, the dominant forces in our therapeutic school program. This was not the case! This situation supported a model where teacher and child care worker were no more than equal partners in the classroom.
Why, with all those factors in their favour, were the child and youth
care workers not the dominant professionals in this program? Was it
necessary to have a structure which favoured the clinical professionals to
maintain a balanced approach In the classroom? I’m not sure. I can tell you
that, even with such a biased model, there were frequent clashes between the
education staff and the clinical staff, where one side viewed the other as
attempting to impose the priority of Its discipline at the expense of the
other’s.
Was this staffing arrangement unusual? Yes, it was! The conflict
however, was not unusual. What was unusual was the situation where a child
care worker operated in an environment with children in their "home turf,"
with a clear and accountable supervisory relationship. This developed into a
rich learning situation and the following observations maybe useful in other
situations where child and youth care professionals must work with teachers
and the public education system.
Most child care workers operating in school environments are outsiders attempting to do their work In the domain of teachers who see themselves as:
In my experience. both at Dellerest and during my years as a consultant, most child care workers are not so much in conflict with the teacher or teachers with whom they are paired, as they ale Ignored. Their frustration comes not from being in conflict, but from being treated like assistants.
Can this conflict be avoided? I think so. I believe that there are three key perspectives to consider: that of the child care worker, that of the teacher, and that of the system in which they work. From my experience of these three perspectives. I have identified:
Personal strategies: Child care worker
How does the
child care worker negotiate a viable role in the education milieu?
Tactfully, but confidently the child care worker must:
Personal Strategies: Teacher
Like the child care
worker, the teacher should locate or create a job description which
clarifies both the responsibilities and the limits of the position. This
provides focus and assists in communicating and clarifying the teacher’s
role to the child care professionals.
Similarly, the teacher should establish lines of accountability at the outset, letting the other professional know to whom they report and how decisions are made regarding the teacher’s role and performance.
The teacher should be invited to explain the educational program, its rationale, and the intended effects. Personal interests and priorities need to be specified.
System Strategies
Ensure that planning to meet the
needs of a client or client group occurs in the team context. This does not
mean that every aspect of a program must be vetted and approved by all
parties. It does mean that there must be agreement about the needs of the
client and the objectives for Intervention. It also means that any change in
these elements of a plan require the involvement of the team. Team members
are left to themselves to select methodologies which are appropriate, based
on their professional judgment and bounded by their standards.
Ensure that intervention strategies are coordinated. This sounds simple, but tends to be the most frequent source of trouble. Though discussions of detailed methodology have no place In the client-planning forum, there must be attention to issues like scheduling of intervention activities to ensure that they are complementary, not contradictory.
Ensure that there is a supervisory relationship which supports the front line workers (child care and teachers) and ensures that they adhere to the expectations of respective professions. Furthermore, in instances where a teacher and child care worker are expected to work as a team, there should be a supervisory mechanism which facilitates coordination of effort and provides a confidential forum for working out differences. For example, at Dellcrest we quickly realized that if the child care workers from the respective classroom teams reported to a clinical supervisor and the teachers reported to the principal, then the principal and supervisor ended up trying to sort out a lot of detail from a second-hand viewpoint. We resolved that primary "supervision" for case and program issues was a classroom team affair, whereas primary supervision for personal development and performance issues was restricted to the one-to-one meetings between supervisor and supervisee in the respective systems. Once a week at 3:15 (the children left at 3:00 p.m.) the classroom team met to discuss the program and the children who populated It. Though we had initially discussed an ideal where both the principal and supervisor were present, it must be said that the principal soon determined that it was very difficult to attend the several classroom team meetings held each week, as well as case conferences, given his range of duties and part-time responsibility for the School. Consequently, the typical meeting involved the child care worker, teacher, and clinical supervisor, with occasional visits by the principal and other service providers.
A joint program should be developed which draws on the expertise of
professionals from both disciplines. An integrated approach does not just
happen. It is the result of:
preparation (e.g., time spent together
before the students arrive each term and each day), planning (e.g.. mapping
out an annual cycle of activities and the daily schedule),
discussion and
coordination of roles and responsibilities (especially related to those
duties which are appropriate for both or either professional), and
monitoring and evaluation of program activities and using the results to
make adjustments and Improvements.
Conclusion
It was this experience at the Dellcrest
School whlch crystallized a number of key messages.
This article is reprinted from The Journal of Child and Youth Care, Vol.6 No.2 1991, pages 57-61
