Narrating Practice with Children and Adolescents

Mery Diaz, Benjamin Shepard

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780231545679
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

In Narrating Practice with Children and Adolescents, social workers, sociologists, researchers, and helping professionals share engaging and evocative stories of practice that aim to center the young client's story. Drawing on work with a variety of disadvantaged populations in New York City and around the world, they seek to raise awareness of the diversity of the individual experiences of youth. They make use of a variety of narrative approaches to offer new perspectives on a range of critical health care, mental health, and social issues that shape the lives of children and adolescents.

The book considers the narratives we tell about the lives and experiences of children and adolescents and proposes counternarratives that challenge dominant ideas about childhood. Contributors examine the environments and structures that shape the lives of children and youth from an ecological lens. From their stories emerge questions about how those working with young clients might respond to a changing landscape: How do we define and construct childhood? How do poverty and inequality impact children's health and welfare? How is childhood lived at the intersection of race, class, and gender? How can practitioners engage children and adolescents through culturally responsive and democratic processes? Offering new frameworks for reflecting on social work practice, the essays in Narrating Practice with Children and Adolescents also serve as a vehicle for exploration of children's agency and voice.

PART I

Ethnographies, Narrative Inquiries, and Life Stories

Chapter One

FROM DISEMPOWERMENT TO SELF-BELIEF

A Center of Hope for Vulnerable Youth in Cape Town

Sharon Johnson

In 2012, the courts sent two twelve-year-old boys, Bulelani and Liam, for protection to the last remaining education-managed youth care and education center (YCEC) in Cape Town, South Africa (SA). This chapter shares their stories of five years at the residential male state institution, where they both were enabled to heal dramatically from abusive and neglectful backgrounds. At the YCEC the boys developed self-belief—a trust in their own abilities—thanks to restorative care practices. One such practice is the “circle of courage” (Brendtro, Brokenleg, and Van Brokern 2002), which provides a behavioral support pathway toward belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. These qualities were fostered by the boys’ faith and effort, culminating in positive outcomes (Pickhardt 2013).

Restorative care practices are increasingly recognized for their effectiveness in building strength and self-confidence in children and adolescents, encouraging them to become motivated and to develop life goals. As an emerging approach, these practices focus on restoring and building relationships between individuals by encouraging the expression of feelings, as well as strengthening community social connections (International Institute for Restorative Practices 2016). The systemic use of informal restorative practices creates a positive milieu, an environment described by Wachtel (2013) as fostering responsibility, awareness, and empathy, rather than relying on punishment and sanctions. Initially focused on delinquents and at-risk adolescents, this practice area has broadened and developed scholarship, research, graduate education programs, and professional development courses for families and communities. Restorative justice, providing tertiary prevention after a harm has occurred, is related to this emerging modality.

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is a key period for the nurturing of a sense of self and an identity (Erikson 1980), and both Bulelani and Liam were at this sensitive developmental stage when they were helped to overcome violent and addictive elements in their lives. Growing up in a rural village, Bulelani described his new self-belief as “wak[ing] up my mind.” Liam, who was from the violent gangland of the Cape Flats, also found a belief in himself: “God helps me and you must also help yourself.” Along their paths, both boys encountered difficulties, but they experienced the benefits of care through personal connection, encouragement, love, and respect not only from staff and teachers but also from their peers. This care helped them overcome the distrust they had in their own abilities, which was fostered by the disempowering core beliefs of their traumatic childhoods. They learned to have faith in themselves, to remain committed, to persevere and try hard, and to focus on their futures.

Analysis of the narratives of adolescents is a process that not only reveals the past but also considers the future (Cohler 1982). In examining adolescents’ life stories, professionals are challenged in conducting social research to go beyond the typical structure of a research paper: the problem statement, literature review, method, results, and discussion (Witkin 2000). They are encouraged to explore social and cultural contexts to describe the implications of meaningful life experiences and to present coherent outputs. And so I integrated the powerful experience of working with vulnerable youths, while collaboratively making sense of narratives within their specific contexts. In this collaborative process of meaning-making, I was caught up in a hermeneutic circle.1 I listened to Bulelani and Liam interpret their lives, trying to make sense of their stories as a researcher, transforming them into a study received, applied, and interpreted by you, the reader. At times I added the voices of others to provide new perspectives; the exploration of the transformation of the boys’ disempowering core beliefs, for example, was triangulated by interpretations of YCEC ’s educational psychologist.

MY RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

My research in high-risk schools in the Cape Flats as I pursued my master’s (Johnson 2010; Johnson and Naidoo 2013, 2017b) and doctoral degrees (Johnson 2013, 2015; Johnson and Naidoo 2017a) measured the efficacy of interventions to prevent teacher stress and burnout. Educators were struggling with violent, disruptive learner behaviors and children suffering from HIV/AIDS. During three years of participatory action research (PAR) with YCEC teachers and staff, a dated punitive discipline approach was replaced by contextually appropriate restorative care practices (see figure 1.1; Johnson 2019, in review).

I was both a consultant and participant researcher at the center. For the seventy to eighty boys (aged eleven to eighteen) housed in hostels there, I was a mother figure; for the forty teachers and staff (aged twenty to seventy), I was a peer. The YCEC, formerly classified as “colored,” is now multiracial: a melting pot of cultures, traditions, religions, races, and ages. Conscious of power dynamics, I tried to model humility and compassion by recognizing the strengths and abilities of others, while being acutely aware that my whiteness reflected an abusive racist history.

FIGURE 1.1 Prison-like security at a Cape Flats School, Cape Town.

I came to know Bulelani and Liam as they turned eighteen and were about to leave their institutional home. Bulelani was a rural Xhosa from the Eastern Cape, a handsome, charismatic, well-built youth. Liam seemed more vulnerable; tall and slender, he was of Dutch and African descent, bilingual in English and Afrikaans, and came from the urban Cape Flats. Narrative perspectives give an intimate view of the participant’s world, and perhaps the ideal setting for Bulelani’s interview would have been sitting around a fire under the African stars, in the heart of a rural village. For Liam, it would have been the vibrant sprawling suburb of the District Six urban setting, where colored communities used to live in close proximity to the city center before being removed by harsh separate development legislation. This land is still largely unoccupied, a barren testament to inhumane past policies. Now, in postapartheid SA, both had found a safe space at YCEC.

After obtaining multilevel ethical approvals, I proceeded to conduct individual interviews with both young men. Each in turn settled confidently next to me on the lumpy, bizarrely bright orange and red couch in the therapeutic center’s quiet counseling room. It was a darkened intimate space; there was only one small window covered by a flimsy curtain flapping in the breeze. Both were willingly engaged and reflective throughout, speaking fluently with little interruption.

The interview had three focus areas: The first was: “What brought you to the center?”; The second was: “What care have you received?”; and the third was: “What are your future goals?” Within these topics various questions were asked to encourage further insights or clarify points. They first solemnly described their difficult experiences before coming to YCEC, philosophically acknowledging their remarkable achievements at the center and reflecting on their mentors and surrogate parents, as well as difficult relationships and struggles. Finally, they contemplated life ahead as independent young adults. I met them several times, checking and rechecking their narratives, trying to ensure that the text accurately reflected their life stories. Knowledge is greatly shaped by changing sociocultural and historical factors (Schiff 2017): their narratives helped contextualize their experiences and gave shared meaning to the care practices that prepared them for independent living after adverse childhood experiences.

THE CONTEXT OF CHILDHOOD IN SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa is burdened by increasing violence and abuse against children (Optimus Study SA Technical 2016). Every year between 18,000 and 20,000 child sexual abuse cases are reported to the police; statistics from 2013/2014 reveal 18,524 cases: that is 51 incidents reported daily. One in three children have had some experience of sexual abuse, persistent over the lifetime and present in their daily lives. Boys and girls are equally vulnerable to sexual abuse. By the time they are fifteen years old, many children have suffered sexual, physical, or emotional abuse; neglect; and high levels of family and community violence.

The communities surrounding the YCEC have suffered a long history of colonial and racist exploitation that culminated in apartheid, a pernicious political system that entrenched white minority privilege. Sixty percent of all gang activity in the country occurs in Cape Flats, with its community members turning to crime and drug trafficking in the face of high unemployment and poverty (Plato 2012). An inhumane past and violent present provide a challenging context for children, who continue to suffer from the effects of intergenerational trauma and suffering.

In the 1970s, vulnerable children became heroes by marching for their human rights, demanding an equitable education. The June 16, 1976, uprising in Soweto—when students protested against the enforcement of the Bantu Education Act, which mandated learning Afrikaans in schools—changed the political landscape. The uprising’s terrible toll was 69 children killed and 186 wounded, marking a turning point in apartheid resistance. This event is commemorated each year as a public holiday, Youth Day. Although SA has experienced more than two decades of democracy, racial tensions still run high: the black majority still suffers from historical injustices, with children being especially vulnerable.

Child care for abused and neglected children is currently provided in community foster homes, child and youth care centers, and temporary shelters; these children are also incarcerated in secure care centers alongside juvenile offenders (Bosman-Sadie and Corrie 2010). The phased-out YCEC model of care and education had its origins in colonial industrial schools and reform schools for juvenile offenders. As late as the mid-1990s, YCEC staff described discipline at the center as coming from the “dark ages” and being enforced by corporal punishment, with the children housed in detention cells and lockup facilities. The transformation of the care system began postapartheid around 1996, following the release from prison of more than one thousand children; many were transferred to unprepared places with inadequate facilities, exacerbating weaknesses in the residential care system and creating a national crisis. The system continued to improve, with the Children’s Act of 2005 being implemented in 2010, when provision was made for alternate forms of care. Youth care facilities were transferred from the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) to the Department of Social Development (DSD) (Johnson, in press b), and the service delivery model changed to conform more to international best practices and regulations. As YCEC’s educational psychologist explained, “In 2009 staff were trained in the ‘circle of courage’ to shift the mind, but I realized that we also needed to shift the heart.”

INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

Since 1994, all SA laws addressing child care have been governed by local and international conventions. Along with 196 other countries, but excluding the United States, SA ratified an international human rights treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), that sets out the economic, social, health, civil, political, and cultural rights of children (United Nations Children’s Fund 1989). Providing global ethical guidelines for child care, this convention considers developmental issues, but has been criticized for not including children’s voices: it gives adults the responsibility to make child care decisions (McNamee 2016).

The South African Children’s Act (Act No. 38 of 2005) consolidates and reforms the law on matters related to children. Although a Bill of Rights is enshrined in SA’s Constitution, its implementation at the community level is often inadequate. For example, children in SA have the right to be raised by their own parents in their own culture and with a relationship to both parents, but this right was not available to Bulelani and Liam. In addition, although the law states that no child should be deprived of liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily, current lockup facilities in SA for behaviorally challenged vulnerable children may be in violation. In gradually moving from punishment to care since democracy in 1994, a new ethos of care began to emerge at YCEC, which can suggest a way forward for youth care throughout the country.

ETHOS OF CARE

The “circle of courage” ethos of care originated from research with Native Americans (Brendtro et al. 2002). This theoretical circle has four quadrants—belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity—which are part of a pathway to healing. These universal values are believed to develop resilience and self-worth. The YCEC manages violent and disruptive behavior through a focus on children as symptom carriers of family and community intergenerational trauma. A YCEC educational psychologist explained,

Our youth need to feel close to someone. They need to feel proud of something, like school achievement, athletic skill, peer acceptance, and good behavior. They need adults to be present, attentive, attuned, and responsive in their interactions. In short, youth at the extreme end of behavioral breakdown have survived social ills and need a place to recover. Young people who find themselves at the end of suspension and expulsion, despite intensive proactive and preventative interventions, need specialized care to enable them to access a school curriculum responding to their needs. We propose a behavior support pathway of multiple practices.

This pathway to healing includes elements such as narrative meaning-...