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Listen to thisWhat do you think about taking a communal approach to care?
In my eyes, the world has become very individualistic. In a way this has certain benefits, because people are driven to compete and rise to the top, but in fields such as ours this can be very problematic. In the group homes, I do not see a community of people with a common goal, but a bunch of individuals stressed out and trying to keep their heads above water. There must be a better way for people to work together and combine their ideas and strengths.
One of the roadblocks to this approach is hierarchy. Those workers with the least status are very rarely allowed to share ideas and have very little freedom of speech. I do not think the answer is to destroy the hierarchy but instead give a voice to all employees and have regular discussions about how to make the group home better. Everyone has a different perspective and I am sure by sharing ideas people can find a way to work together in a harmonious way.
Energy is an important part of the workplace, often neglected by a materialistic society. In modern society we tend to focus on the physical, but there is also the deeper levels of reality such as emotions and/or energy. For example, in a workplace where employees get along and there is a lot of collaboration, the energy will likewise be very positive and healthy. However, in a rigid atmosphere of individuals trying to work in a hierarchy, the energy will also be very rigid and there will not be a lot of healthy energy in the workplace. Particularly in our field where children and youth are vulnerable and emotional, energy is hugely important to their success. Positive energy will awaken the spirits of these lost souls, while negative energy will have the reverse effect.
It is very easy in the field to forget about the deeper emotional lives of ourselves and the young people we help, because we are so busy with mundane tasks. My suggestion is do not forget about the power of emotion and the power of collaboration. We need to work smarter, not harder. A communal approach will get rid of all the ego games that prevent this field from being really great and therapeutic.
Braden Freeman
...
Thank you Braden.
Yes this is so true. Positive energy and a communal,
community centred, family and child centred approach goes a long way
towards meeting the needs of each child and family, within the group
care setting. It is also been our/my experience that effective and good
teamwork is an essential part of good Child and Youth Care practice.
Enthusiasm (to be filled with spirit) is such a powerful quality in our
work. And this energy needs to be supported and understood as a creative
force which builds, connects, inspires, develops, and moves us closer/
alongside the youth in our care. In BEING WITH .. The youth and WITH
families and WITH each other as colleagues and partners in the field.
Recently I had contact with someone from our group home. Now nearly 30 yrs old, this young woman thanked us as she realised that we were about her age(now) when we cared for teenagers. And she recalled the positive energy amidst the emotional struggles. 'It takes a village to raise a child'.
I always remember Brian Gannon's teaching: ' what am I going to do today? What is it good for? And, how do I know?'
To consider, what brings JOY..
May our life's work be blessed
Love
Ruth Bruintjies
Cape Town SA
...
I couldn't agree more that we need a communal approach to care. It will
surprise no one that I take a slightly more radical position in that I
think hierarchies need to be utterly abandoned and that the
individualistic approach is actually extremely dangerous with no
redeeming qualities. I would propose that young people and adults
working together need to seek out common issues, concerns and political
agendas. They need to negotiate how they might collaborate on joint
projects that address these common concerns in practical and political
ways. I would suggest that we need to move away from any focus on
individual psychopathology and/or archeology and move towards an
investigation of what each of us brings idiosyncratically to our common
goals and purposes. To do this takes the notion of relationships within
our work quite seriously. Of course a central element in building any
set of relationships is the role of emotions and affects. I have
proposed in my writing that we need to become sensitive to the emotional
temperature of the milieu that constitutes our work together. This
means moving away from centering emotions within the individual and
towards understanding how we produce affects communally. Kathleen
Skott-Myhre and I have tried to explicate the role of what we have
called revolutionary love in this way. We have suggested that we need to
see emotions and social relations as a kind of ecology that needs to be
cared for and that has suffered enormous damage under the existing
system of global capitalism. We have suggested that if we work in
common, we must be attentive to how desire functions in our work. Not
the empty desire of acquisitiveness premised in a sense of lack, but
affirmative desire as the capacity to act and create. Desire as capacity
is related to positive effects such as joy, while desire as lack is
related to the sad passions. We would argue that work in common is most
successful as an investigation into how we might amplify our
unique and idiosyncratic capacities for action and creativity. Such
capacities flourish under conditions where our work together is
responsive to our actual material needs and desires. They suffer under
conditions where abstract hierarchies are built on the needs of
corporations, stock markets, bureaucrats, governments agencies, or money
per se. However such love is neither passive nor spontaneous. It is not
bounded by the binary world of the couple, the stifling confines of the
family or the paranoid configurations of the nation, the people or the
community. Indeed, Hardt and Negri propose that we seek to love those
most alien to us first, in order to expand the field of love as far as
we can. This is love of the crowd as those closest and those furthest
away. Implied here, is the idea that love does not simply happen to us,
as if it were an event that mystically arrives from elsewhere. We must
actively love in the same way we actively create our lives and our
selves together from all the elements available. This are some of the
elements for me in what it means to work in a communal approach to care.
Hans Skott-Myhre
...
I cannot tell whether you don’t get along with your
boss or your co-workers are telling you not to bother.
Where I work hierarchy is what keeps us together. We have the veteran
staff (not always the boss) help and support the rookies. Give them
advice and work through ideas. Also we (I’m 23 years in job) teach not
only the residents under our care, but also the new staff. We also use
some of the ideas and discard others (because it didn’t work before).
Seems you need a conversation with your boss not us.
Donna Wilson
…
Hi Braden
The principles you describe are exactly the principles on which the free training programs at www.fairstartglobal.com are based: improving cooperation between leaders and staffs through dialogue based development of care.
Just click Europe at the site, pick the English version, choose Institutions and click Scorecard – opens as a PDF. The training sessions are at the same place.
If you are interested in intervention and education
in care systems in low income countries, I just co-edited this special
issue of Journal of Infant Mental Health:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/imhj.2014.35.issue-2/issuetoc
, where the editorial outlines the general principles of successful
development, based on the practical experiences of all the authors.
Med venlig hilsen/ yours sincerely
Niels Peter Rygaard
