The world of work is turned upside down for me at the moment. I’ve been offered a new job in a new county and have accepted it, albeit subject to not the usual round of CRB checks and references that my new employers will be chasing; but more centred around my own thoughts, feelings and ultimate decisions to make the break.
It’s funny how you can live somewhere for years and not really appreciate the roots that you put down. I now properly understand the theories around attachment.
The people you meet, the trials and tribulations that you face along the way and the sense of belonging that on one hand feels almost transient in the ever changing face of the world of working with children and young people. And yet you suddenly realise that you too are part of the fabric that yields and shapes the way that the services develop.
I feel like I have been here for five minutes, but my cohorts and I have spent fifteen years together and during that time I’ve had seven different jobs! I’m a great believer in ringing the changes, and more importantly seizing opportunities when they arise. I’ve worked in sexual health, local democracy, for two national voluntary organisations and a local authority social care department and in all that time there has been one common factor – children and young people in care.
I remember as a health worker approaching a social care manager to talk about how we could work together. And the more I learned about children in care, the more passionate I became about the need to highlight the reality of their lives.
And over the years, in various settings I’ve watched our kids grow into adolescents, struggling with the changes and experiencing the same growing pains that we all do.
Many have extra struggles due to the reasons that they came into care in the first place. They struggle with attachment as people in their lives come and go, placements break down and workers change and change again. We’ve tried to hang onto them, albeit with an invisible and sometimes not so invisible safety net to try to keep them from falling.
We had the Laming report, now we’ve got Every Child Matters, and we’re reminded what happens when the safeguarding isn’t there every time we hear something new about Jersey.
I heard one prominent Children’s Services Director speak at a conference the other week about how care isn’t as bad as it’s made out, and he’s right in lots of ways, but there is still always room to get it better.
He needs to meet the local residential unit manager who will barely let me through the front door in case I ask too many questions!
He needs to meet the service manager that agreed that it was acceptable for a lad to return from school to his foster carer to find his bags packed and his social worker there telling him he was going into a residential unit that same night with no warning.
He needs to meet the young woman who was moved twenty times in three years. These situations still make me question – does every child really matter? Are the needs, wishes and feelings of our children being met and their rights upheld? Or does the needs of the system come first?
I will always believe that we need to take the needs of ALL our children seriously, and act to make sure that they are as fully met as possible. My new job will still entail doing that, but from a different perspective.
I’ve been thinking a lot about attachment theories these last few weeks and find myself needing to let go of my life as it has been, my job, my comfort zone and the children I have worked with.
And do you know what? I’m really looking forward to the changes. But it won’t be as easy as I thought.