April 2007

Editorial : A gift of faith…

By Merle Allsopp

A friend was given a gift the other day and she kindly passed it on to me.

The gift was received from a woman who had been in a children's home for four years, following extreme family trauma and betrayal. My friend, a child and youth care worker, had worked with this woman as an adolescent.

"I want you to know that that was a time in my life that I really felt safe. I felt cared for and understood," said the woman to my friend.

This was the gift. So small a statement, but at this point, so great a gift passed on to me. For in the face of so many messages coming from so many sides invalidating the practice of child and youth care work, this is surely a statement from the universe encouraging us to battle on! What can be more valid an affirmation of the quality of service delivery than this unsolicited remark from a service recipient - who obviously feels very powerfully about the matter?

Here was a person who was proclaiming the impact of having experienced what we refer to in our work as a 'reclaiming environment'. She had experienced in residential care, not a therapist (she had had many of those and vehemently refused any more), but professional input in the 'other 23 hours' - by a team of child and youth care workers. It was not a single therapeutic relationship that gave her the experience of being socially and emotionally safe, but care-filled moment-by-moment interventions by those who were living and breathing alongside of her - that built a world-within-the-world where the toxic elements of her past experiences could leach out.

This gift is a reminder of the value of child and youth care work for vulnerable children, and I pass it on in the hope that it will fuel our continued advocacy efforts, so needed at this time.

The research on the 'demarcation of social services' has continued throughout the past two months with consultative meetings being held in all provinces. Word has it that in many of the provinces the legitimacy of the child and youth care profession has been challenged in these meetings. But in those provinces where the departments of social services have creatively, and without fear of loss of face, embraced child and youth care work, the place of the profession in social service provision has been clearly and warmly acknowledged.

We will shortly hear about the impact of this research on our professional status. There is nothing more to do on that front at present.  

But the need for ongoing advocacy continues. The other important process that is unfolding is that of the Children's Bill. Many colleagues have made submissions at provincial hearings on the need for including child and youth care work in the Bill. Provinces have now developed their 'mandates' - those points in the Bill that they wish to change - and will go to the national debates with these points, and these points only. In some of the provinces the petitions made by the NACCW have been included in these mandates. In others this is not the case. We ask that people who represented the field at these hearings now follow up and where our points have not been included, use the democratic process and follow up to ensure that Members of Parliament are indeed raising our issues in the national debates. Lucy Jamison's article on page X of this issue says how this is to be done. It will take some effort, but without this final thrust our efforts to include child and youth care workers in the Bill (and the all the other important points) will have been wasted.

And having been given this gift, I am once again reminded that this battle for recognition of our field is not being fought for us child and youth care workers. It is being fought for vulnerable and at-risk children - whose lives we can so powerfully affect for the better.