Social Claire

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.

Hi there folks, how are you all doing?  Hope all is good in your worlds. 

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, running around all over the place training and attending meetings which so often seem to be held for the sake of holding them, rather than actively working towards or demonstrating any real or tangible outcomes for children and young people.   Maybe I just should call them what they are – talking shops?!  

I head counted last week at a seminar I attended – there were forty people there all on middle to senior management salaries.   It must have cost a good couple of thousand pounds for us all to sit there hearing what we had heard before and enjoying a good lunch afterwards.   But hey, it ticked someone’s box.

Talking of which, I recently attended a conference where some young people spoke about their experiences of being looked after.   Unlike previous experiences, this wasn’t just a box ticking exercise – the young people were on after the morning break, and not at the end of the day when everyone was rushing for trains.   Fair play to the organisers.

Now I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I truly believe that adults need training to work with young people, and not always the other way round.   And on this occasion I was proved right yet again.

The youngsters sat at the front of the auditorium among the great and the good, looking nervous about their imminent presentations.   

‘What brings you here then?’ enquired one bouffanted doyen.   ‘Are you doing this as part of your school work?’   

‘No’, replied one the young people, ‘We’re working today.’   The woman hooted loudly.  ‘Oh, you call this work do you?’   The young people looked at her incredulously.   ‘Yes, it IS work – we’re here to give a presentation.’   ‘Oh, bless’ she smiled indulgently, then turned to the person next to her and started another conversation.   The young people looked nonplussed.

When they were introduced, the audience broke into applause.   The woman turned to the person next to her and smirked ‘They may consider this work, but they’ve a lot to learn about the world.’

What she didn’t understand was that the young people had taken part in intensive training on presentation skills and public speaking and that they were part of a properly funded children in care council which, among other tasks enables young people to interview staff, attend meetings and mentor younger children in care.

The young people were fantastic and really spoke from the heart about their experiences of being looked after.   As they left the stage and took their seats again, I could see the woman had been taken aback by their stories, but also by their skills and confidence.   It takes a lot for anyone to get up and speak in front of an audience, especially when most members of that audience have probably never been near a child in some time.

It reminded me that young people are to really feel valued then we have to find ways of working with them that makes them feel like their input and views are taken as seriously as those of a head of service.   That way we could hold our heads up and honestly state that every child does matter.

Achoo!   Excuse me whilst I sneeze.   Just blowing the dust and cobwebs off, as I stir from my silent Miss Faversham statue pose.  

Hello again my darlinks, Social Claire is back in business, wired for sound as Cliff used to say and raring to go.   Since I put my pen down those long nine months ago, I’ve been gestating away and now I’m ready to burst forth once again with the pattering, not of tiny feet, but of my laptop keys as I get ready to set up my new blog.

So here we are on the internet then, and who’d have thought it!   The age of technology finally hits an old croc like me.   I can do a nifty email, and I’m a bit of an E Bay queen but that’s about it.   I’ve dabbled in MySpace but the only people who want to be my only friends are people I’ve never clapped eyes on, and would probably never want to.

The whole concept of blogging is a new one for me, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it and am looking forward to hearing from you too – unlike writing in print, we actually get to talk to each other!

Since Children Now joined forces with Young People Now, I’ve regularly scoped the back page with a mixture of envy, nostalgia and not a little bit of competitiveness, sighing ‘It was never like this in my day; we’d have done it this way, I’d have said…’blah blah.  

Having said that though, I have enjoyed the variety of writers and have been surprised and not a little impressed as to how varied people working with children and young people’s week seems to be.  

The new writers all seem to be senior bods as well, which is a bit intimidating for a ground floor kinda gal like me but hey, we’re all the same at the end of the day.   Aren’t we? 

So what’s been going on in the world of children and young people since I last wrote?   Hey ho, same old.   We’ve had the continued vilification of young people in the press, with all of our kids being portrayed as a nation of feral, fat, boozed up, violent thugs who are either pregnant or on an ASBO by the time they’re fourteen.  

And of course, we know that those stereotypes are exactly that – minority, exaggerated views of young people.  

Strangely enough, I continue to work with children and young people in care and have yet to come across anyone fitting this description. 

So Social Claire is here to put the other side, to celebrate the achievements of so many of the young people I work with, to question, argue and take a wider view and to reflect when it all goes sadly wrong.  

Get in touch, tell me what you think, join the debate.   I’m looking forward to hearing from you.   It’s great to be back.