Developmental Group Care of Children and Youth

Concepts and Practice

Jerome Beker, Henry W Maier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317773863
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

A recognized leader in the professional development of the child and youth care field presents--in this single volume--a collection of his work related to group care work with children and youth. Henry Maier shares his observations about human development in the group care context, the perceptions of children and youth, the environments in which we work with them, the role of the worker, and the preparation of child and youth care workers. Dr. Maier's practical approaches reflect the most recent research and thinking in human development. This book is a practical text for courses in the child and youth field, as well as a useful handbook for child and youth caseworkers already on the job.BACKCOVER COPYIn what way can group care--non-familial living--assure children a developmental progress similar to that of children growing up within regular family care settings? In his practical new text, Henry Maier--one of the most vibrant, creative, and humane figures in child and youth care work today--answers that question for child care professionals using a developmental perspective in his approach to residential group care. He focuses on the developmental requirements of children and adolescents in relation to the care they receive while they are in no-familial, group living situations and also highlights training for the caregivers in order that they can effectively provide the kind of caring involvement that children and youth require. "The real contribution of this book... is that it cuts throught the confusion of competing values and competing points of view to focus on the care at the heart of child care work, " attests Richard W. Small, PhD, Executive Director of the Walker Home and School, Needham, Massachusetts (from the Preface).

Chapter I

Children and Youth Grow and Develop in Group Care

In what way can group care, that is, non-familial living, assure children a developmental progress similar to that of children growing up within regular family care settings? The following conversation can serve as an illustration of the kind of issues to be encountered wherever young people spend their daily lives.

On returning home from school, the author’s nine-year-old son, Peter, was overheard questioning his mother:

Mom, how come you don’t go to work like other mothers? … I was just wondering. I guess it’s okay that you don’t work. But why did I have to come home to change my clothes? I like it when you make me my crackers and jelly. How do other kids get their snacks?

What Peter is really wondering is how children receive care in the absence of their central caregivers. This is the very issue which is fully reviewed throughout this chapter. The focus is how children and adolescents have their primary developmental care requirements fulfilled when such care has to take place temporarily or for extended periods away from familial settings.

Peter’s questions allude to four important aspects of caregiving. First, that the judgment about who is a “proper” caregiver is culturally determined. One likes to live one’s life in a way that is similar to others in one’s own socio-cultural group (“Mom, why are you at home when other parents are not!”). Second, care as a personalized experience, is a basic human desire. (Peter likes personally prepared crackers and jelly.) Third, personal care emerges from give-and-take interaction. (Peter responds to his mother’s giving which enlivens her giving. He also assures his mother that she is “okay” even if she is not “at work” like other mothers.) And fourth, a questioning of the care received is part of the process of accepting that care (“Why do I still have to come home and change after school?”).

Peter’s first question: “Mom, how come you don’t work like other mothers? …” articulates his concern that his life is different from those of other children. This notion is central to the chapter. A nine-year old “is able to conceptualize the quality of his or her rearing and is sensitive to the differences in the environment between self and other children” (Kagan, 1974, p. 889). Children are apt to evaluate differences as negative and may conclude that something is wrong.

Thus, the child’s conclusion that he or she is not valued by adults depends in part whether the form of rearing is different from that of the majority. If the vast majority of children in a society were raised by surrogates … there would be no reason to worry about the consequences of that practice, for the culture would accommodate to whatever special traits were associated with universal rearing. (Kagan, 1974, p. 889)

We shall deal with those developmental issues in order to find ways to assure keen sensitivity to differences and explore ways to assure full developmental life experience for children and youth within the context of non-familial living.

The reader is first introduced to a major developmental premise about the interdependence of human beings and their needs for basic attachments. Care workers are then defined as the most likely “attachment objects” in group care in the light of contemporary research findings on attachment formation and human development. This is followed up with examination of the developmental perspective, a singularly emerging perspective in psychology, social work, and child care (Maier, 1986a). The direct implications of such knowledge for the practice of group care is explicated in this chapter; with the latter sections of it leading the reader into “steps” of practice, based on interpretation of the developmental stance. This orientation has much direct applicability to beginnings such as placement, starting counseling or group sessions, and the fostering of attachment formations. Separate segments on “grouping residents developmental,” dealing with questions of “consistency,” and appropriate program activities for children and adolescents are detailed at the end of this chapter. Throughout, current knowledge is cited as the bases for specific guidelines and interventive techniques for direct care workers in conceptualizing and implementing effective practice.

DEVELOPMENT AND CARE

Children and youth, whether in their own homes, day care, or around-the-clock group care settings, have the same basic life requirements for personal care, social and intellectual stimulation, leeway for creativeness and, above all, a sense of rootedness. Thus, the application of knowledge about human development as it applies to the major caregiving activities with the child or youth is particularly pertinent. Consequently, the focus in what follows is not on existing practice in group care (e.g., Arieli, Kashti & Shlasky, 1983; Whittaker, 1979); rather it is on what could be accomplished in group care on the basis of contemporary human development knowledge.

Nurturing care experiences are essential for the healthy development of all children (Ainsworth, 1972; Bronfenbrenner, 1979), but these experiences are even more urgently needed by children and youth lacking secure and permanent roots. Being placed in day or residential care, or even going away to school or camp, may weaken a child’s previous linkages and cause a search for new attachments. We are reminded of instances where, in the absence of a valid caregiver, individuals create substitutes. For example, children in concentration camps became caregivers for one another when other alternatives were absent (Freud & Dann, 1951). Rhesus monkeys attached themselves to wiremesh “mothers” in the absence of their mothers (Harlow & Menus, 1977). It is in the providing of such nurturing care that care workers, frequently perceived as generalists, are actually [or should be] specialists (Barnes & Kelman, 1974, p. 12). They are the “social engineers” for nurturing care experiences. Other services, such as education, recreation, counseling, and health care are supplements to this kind of fundamental caring.

Interpersonal Dependence as a Major Life Spring

Interpersonal dependence is an ongoing force in human existence. Throughout our lives, we tend to depend on one or several central persons – parent or an alternate caregiver, a partner, or friends – for intimate, mutual care experiences. Dependence on personal nurturance is as essential as our dependence upon food and shelter. Thus, we do not develop from a state of dependence to one of independence; development is a continuous process and movement occurs from one level of dependence to another (Maier, 1986d). Certain caring persons – e.g., parent, elder, or significant friend – tend to remain an ongoing part of our lives whether or not they are in close proximity.

In non-familial living situations, child care workers provide the main source and substance of care experience and are the pivotal people in the residents’ daily lives (Pecora & Gingerich, 1981). They are the people most accessible and instrumental in providing care; they are Peter’s care persons with “jellied crackers.” The child care worker, as the target of the residents’ demands, is taken for granted, criticized, and cherished all at the same time. For the child, the care worker provides the essential experience of being cared for, of learning how to respond and to interact and, finally, to develop the capacity for extending caring to others.

The Direct Care Worker as the Pivot of a Caring System

In non-familial settings, many persons tend to share in children’s lives and progress. However, only the designated primary caregivers, the direct care workers, carry the full obligation for and personal involvement in providing “caring care.” These institutionalized caregivers, like the parents or foster parents in a home setting, are the nurturers who provide life’s necessities, sustained presence; and intimate care. This nurturance has considerable sigificance in that the caregivers are the immediate representatives of societal norms and are a child’s personal backup in the residential living unit or family and in the world outside. In part, this is so central because

individuals do not learn their coping behaviors or their mores, social drives, or values from the larger society. Children learn a particular culture and a particular moral system only from those people with whom they have close contact and who exhibit that culture in frequent relationship with them. (Washington, 1982, p. 105)

Thus, the core care persons constitute three basic structural components: (1) the central person for caring and attachment formation; (2) the major norm conductor for primary group life; and (3) the legitimate representative of the norms of the larger context, including the ones of the immediate setting. Consequently, the care worker is always in the business of building a relationship, setting norms, and maintaining a linkage with society.

While focusing on the role of caregivers, one must emphasize the experience; because care has not only to be delivered but to be experienced as caring; it is not enough simply to “deliver” the elements of caring without the “message” of having “received.” Hearing such messages, or experiencing the care that is offered to them, is particularly difficult for many of the youngsters in group care. They may want and reject it at the same time, and this push/pull is what makes direct care work so complex.

In addition, care workers are constantly faced with this challenge– to provide children or youth with the experience of being cared for in the course of the daily activities – in the face of limited time, energy, and skills. Something as routine as requesting a child to put on fresh socks can be expressed as an act of caring; inquiring about a day in school can be experienced as genuine interest rather than as intrusion. Perseverance in the face of repeated rebuffs and tolerance of one’s own less than perfect approaches expressing concern (with the hope that the message is picked up) lies at the heart of child care work, and this is one of the human service disciplines’ most difficult challenges.

That the caring activities of residential workers have not received the degree of scrutiny and support they deserve is not surprising, for such fundamental personal involvement tends to impede organizational requirements (Maier, 1985a; Parsons, 1964; Resnick, 1980). For instance, allowances made for a child’s tardiness in being ready for school because the child is temporarily overwhelmed raise concern about the orderliness, uniformity, and managerial efficiency of the institution. Actually, care and control are interconnected and cannot be divided into separate functions (Harris, 1980). Therefore, the child’s tardiness may be viewed as an essential personal variation that will lead eventually to a greater measure of punctuality for this child, but this may also create apparent disorder in the observable scheme of group management as schedules are disrupted and other residents seek similar exceptions for themselves or attack the beneficiary of this exception. Such conflicting strains need to be understood as a natural part of residential child and youth care work (Maier, 1985a), in which constant attention is needed to ways of establishing and maintaining a balance between the requirements of nurturing care and what is needed to keep the system functioning. Experience suggests that, in the absence of such attention, system maintenance priorities tend to become dominant.

A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE

Child and youth care workers will do well to anchor their work in developmental psychology (Beker & Maier, 1980; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; VanderVen, Mattingly & Morris, 1982). To emphasize a developmental approach represents a break from previous attempts by child care workers to adopt behavioral, psychodynamic, or experiential theoretical stances of other professions. It means taking the lead in an emerging trend that moves away from personality and behavioral formulations toward a developmental perspective (Maier, 1986a; Whittaker, 1979).

This body of knowledge establishes a discernable progression of development (Maier, 1978; Jones, Garrison & Morgan, 1985; Smart & Smart, 1977). The actual timing and rate of specific steps of developmental progress vary from child to child as the nature of life experiences differ from one socio-cultural context to another. Nevertheless, developmental knowledge can serve as a guiding foundation in the pursuit of effective child care work. From this perspective, a child with unusual, that is, untimely behavior is viewed in terms of how this behavior fits into his or her developmental progression rather than as “deviant” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Kagan, 1978; Segal & Yahraes, 1978). The emphasis on “ordinary” development is important, for it demands from us an astute appraisal of the child’s behavior; how this person manages particular life situations. The worker thus gains an understanding of the individual’s pattern of coping – an invaluable basis for discerning what the next developmental task should be. Caring work means helping to meet an individual’s developmental requirements rather than a focus on working to undo or to correct unwanted behaviors.

For example, a big, boisterous Steven, 13, demands continuous adult approval as if he were a mere four-year old; he goes to pieces when he feels slighted. A developmental point of view looks at what Steven is doing rather than what he is not doing (i.e., not acting like a 13-year old or not “fitting in”). His demands for continuous adult approval and his temper tantrums when things don’t go his way are not “deviant” behaviors as much as efforts to reach out to adults and to get continuous assurance that he is succeeding in his efforts. When Steven is confident of his ability to make contact with adults, when he has “practiced” doing it and succeeded over and over again, this aspect of his development will be part of him and he will be off and running with another developmental task. “Promotion of competence and normal growth and development” as a treatment objective is discussed by Denholm, Pence, and Ferguson (1983), who state that this goal “can provide a concensus necessary for a collaborative effort of staff, the child in care, and parents, which (otherwise) often creates an adversary relationship between parent and child, and brings out decisive differences in staff.”

Working from a developmental perspective demands not only that a practitioner have a background knowledge of human development, but also he or she be able to observe and to verify what residents are doing and to ascertain their ongoing competencies– how each is actually managing his or her life. This attention to what a child or youth is doing might sound self-evident. Yet, in everyday accounting of children’s behavior, it is a common practice to report what youngsters are not doing. For example: “He doesn’t pay any attention to what I tell him!” The latter reveals only the caregiver’s expectation, but not the child’s way of handling her or his situation. In the illustration just cited, the child kept on doing what he was absorbed in and this may provide a clue to the situation. It may be necessary for the worker to gain his momentary attention before dealing with a secondary message. Moreover, in order to fully ascertain a child’s progression in managing life events, the concern needs to be with the “how” rather than the “why.” An explanation, whether real or assumed, may satisfy a worker’s puzzlement, but it will rarely mobilize a sense of what action to take next. The ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The Child & Youth Services Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Group Care Utilizing a Developmental Perspective
• Chapter I: Children and Youth Grow and Develop in Group Care
• Chapter II: Essential Components in Care and Treatment Environments for Children
• Chapter III: How Children and Adolescents Conceive Their World Beyond the Group Care Setting
• Chapter IV: The Core of Care: Essential Ingredients for the Development of Children at Home and Away From Home
• Chapter V: To Be Attached and Free
• Chapter VI: Learning to Live and Living to Learn in Residential Treatment
• Chapter VII: Influence Techniques
• Chapter VIII: The Space We Create Controls Us
• Chapter IX: Child Care Within an Organizational Context: The Inherent Strain
• Chapter X: The Child Care Worker
• Chapter XI: Teaching and Training as a Facet of Supervision of Child Care Staff
• Chapter XII: Emerging Issues in Child and Youth Care Education: A Platform for Planning
• References
• Index