Activists' Community

Dear training staff,
Dear training-colleagues,

First of all, I want to say that I enjoyed the training very much! Meeting and talking to people from different backgrounds made the experience even more prominent.
We work in a residential setting so I particularly liked the lecture about vigilant care. I think this is something essential but also very difficult for our educators. How do you make contact with a child, knowing that there are 9 or 10 other childeren and adolescents waiting for you, that you have to make sure that everybody has his meal in time, his homework corrected, the laundry done... It's living in a big family but with no biological (and thus another position) connection. Playing with the distance between you and the child: when becomes something danger instead of experimenting and what if you think different from the parents? How can you keep a professional "distance" but also show the care without becoming his friend? I already had great respect for their job and this only grew!

Second: The part about consilidating the support network left me with some questions: I see the importence but do you have any experience working with parents who have mental disabilities? The parents we work with often have problems with mentalization. Some of the parents from children in our institution, stayed in a residential setting when they were young. They now live mostly separated from any of the family (no contact because they don't know any familymembers), have only contact with social workers and live in a neighbourhood where they don't want to speak with neighbours because they have even more problems (so they think they will be involved in the problems of the neighbour when they even can't handle their own).

Third: my last question involves the "universal rights of the child". I think (amoung other principles) that the NA gives back the right to give bounderies to the child, as long as they are based on principles of care, duty and not because you want to controle the child. Please correct me if I misunderstood this. Our institution gets it refunds from the government. In one of the last declarations they stress upon the fact that the rights (within an institution of care) of the child are central (which is very nobel ofcourse). But they don't speak of limits, bounderies. I got the feeling that this ties the hands of caretakers
Their translation of one of the rights: for example "every child has the right on an allowence (5 euro every week) and they can do with this money what they want. You can't use it to punish and you can't withhold it". And this is where the problems come in: an obese child has to follow a diet but we can't provent it from bying sweets with his allowence. Do you have any suggestions how we can deal with these situations? Any experience in residential settings?

Kind regards,
Eveline

Dear Eveline

Great to know that you enjoyed the training, indeed I also got the feeling that one of the most powerful results of the training was the possibility to meet professionals from different countries working in different settings while trying to implement the New Authority concept to their work. I truly think it was an extensive training – we wanted to share with you broad aspects of the possibilities the New Authority concept have to offer in different settings, while also introducing the basic ideas. We hope that this forum as well as the website will enable us to sharer more, learn more and also to create a potential for broadening the possibilities of applying this concept.

As to your questions – I agree that the vigilant care concept is not easy to accomplish or act upon it but it is important to understand that the 3 levels enable you also to adjust the right "distance" in different situations and in that way it helps in preserving "energy". In residential setting for example the levels can be adjusted to Childs' behavior for example if s/he is well you can provide only the basic needs (that also includes of course love & understanding in "small talk" from time to time), if s/he starts to show signs of unrest in her/his behavior than you move to a different level of vigilant care – you come more close to the child. The distance now is shorter – we, as authority figures (a parent, a caregiver, a nurse in a ward etc.) watch the child more closely and the care activity may also include acts of resistance to the Childs' behavior. But the most important thing to understand is that usually when a child "misbehaves" we tend to try and exhibit more control over her/him, acting as a new authority figure means that our state of mind should be – "We have to watch more closely initiate care or resistance if needed, but we can't control the child.

The concept of consolidating a support network is much easily understood than vigilant care but as you mentioned not always possible to activate. In the circumstances you described when the parents have no family or social contacts it will not be possible to use it. From my perspective in the training we didn't have enough time to work more on this important concept. More than that, our team wanted to make a role-play on the supporter's' meeting and ways to overcome dilemmas concerning who should we recruit, but the training timetable prevented that. But the critical issue in consolidating a support network is to constantly try and seek for adult support for the child. If parents are not there, is there another family member, or a neighbor or a teacher etc. who in some way we can be in contact with him/her. Consolidating a support network means that part of our work should be to recruit as many people as possible in order to create a net that in one way or another will later on be there for the child. As was explained in the training we are not looking for the "right" people who will be there, we as professionals usually tend to look for "supportive" figures in terms of therapy but support can also come from people who are not our cup of tea in terms of relationships. As Haim mentioned in his example at his lecture we will be willing even to recruit the Mafia if needed :-)…

As for the third question. You raise an interesting dilema concerning childrens' rights but right now I have to rush for my kids... ;-) so I'll try to answer later. Meanwhile maybe others also have more inputs on that…

Hello Eveline,
Hello everybody,

great to have this forum! I also enjoyed the training very much and I'm looking forward to reading and hearing more from all of you.
Working in a residential setting, I recognise very well the difficulties that you describe.
Being an educator is a profession that asks a lot of ongoing commitment to caring for children, who are sometimes not that open to messages from adults. The messages that the children send are influenced by how they perceive the world and therefore difficult to interpret.
I have struggled also with the concept of presence (in stead of control) in our child psychiatric ward. The only thing I was able to do is by being present myself (as head of the unit and therefore responsible for the wellbeing of the children and staff) during one meal a week. Having diner together with the educators and children is a great opportunity to do what I am commited to, that is getting to know the children and to feel the atmosphere. My actions are limited to being my curious self and telling little things (not to personal of course) about myself that children recognise. So for the educators themselves in your setting, could it be possible that they start to focus on being present in a vigilant care way during some small moments. If they see that this leads to chaos, is it a possibility that more people from your setting would eat together with them?
Your second question is also very relevant. I would like to think about it some more.
The third problem is of course the result of the current society way of thinking and organising things. In our setting we experience also many boundaries that make working a challenging thing. In our setting I try to focus my attention to what we can work with (making it much easier for the team members to work) and showing acceptance for what we can't change. In the example you describe, is it a possibility that this obese child has low selfesteem, that influences it's eating behaviour? If this is so, is it a possibility to accept the boundaries that are there and focus on giving positive feedback to the child (because we believe in him and we want to say this).
On the level of governement I also dream of informing them about our mission and invite them to support! This will of course be a slow process that will need a lot of preparation and mutual support in making it a coherent request coming from different settings, but with one focus (the well being of the children). Maybe it is possible?
So thank you for this forum as an opportunity to support each other.

Kind regards,
Elfi

Dear Eveline,
You raised a very interesting and importance dillema- how to protect the child without taking his basic rights? to me it is a question i am asking my self in every day
At evrt therapy meeting with a child or with a parent and even with my own children- where is the boundary of letting the child learn by him self and when to say what we think and further more, to decide for him.
there is no easy answers.
I think that the boundary is at risk behaviors- in yours example, i am sure your goverment will agree to take his allowance if he use it to buy drags. to this obese boy candy is like drugs- it is dangerace for his health. in that case i think you can give him his allowance but keep it in a place that he canot rich without your help . for example, put the moeny in a safe (little gip box safe) that only you have the key. in that way you give him the moeny but he cannot use it without your control of what he is buying because he will need your permission (and perhaps your escort to use the moeny) .
this is what we are doing in NVR treatment-putting the boundary to every spesefic child with in his own caracter and behavior- for one it is drugs , for anthor it is binging eating or wandering at nights with bad company or not going to school. If your goal is not to control but to interrupt dangerous behaviors the quastion of boundaries become a little bit less difficult
Your, Irit schorr sapir