Caring is for Everyone!

DISCLAIMER: Looking at child & youth care from a feminist lens is a complex and ever-evolving task.  What fits with feminism today might not fit with it tomorrow.  This is why it's important that we consider everything I propose here as a possible way to integrate the two practices.

The Foundation of Feminist CYC

Feminist child & youth care has four core tenants:

1. Caring is not an innate skill, nor is it exclusive to ciswomen
2. The ubiquitous and unconscious reliance on gender roles in practice creates ineffective services delivery and negative lived experiences for young people, their families & communities, and practitioners
3. Promotion of masculine traits via intervention perpetuates patriarchy
4. CYCP have a responsibility to advocate for systemic change

Wooooooo!  Okay, those feel like some big concepts--so let's break them down!  This week we will focus on the first tenant-recognizing that caring is for everyone!

#1 Caring is for Everyone!

Is caring a skill?

My day-to-day work involves caring for others.  And not just others but folks that many people actively do not want to care for.  When people hear what I do they say things like;

Oh my gosh!  That is such a hard job!

or..

Oh wow!  I could never do that!  How depressing!

Yet somehow, my ability to support young people through the hardest parts of their lives is considered something I was born able to do.  I just happen to have some innate ability to take the weight of others onto myself.

Spoiler alert: I don't.

Understanding how to empathize is a skill.  Understanding how to listen and notice are skills.  Knowing how to help another person uncover their power is a skill.  Being able to listen to trauma day in and day out without becoming consumed by grief is a skill.

Conducting assessments, creating interventions, and elevating the voices of others are all key aspects of CYC practice but without the care bit they don't mean much.  Caring is a skill that is cultivated through academic learning and work experience and it is no less difficult than skills in finance, medicine, or the trades.  

Why then, do we assume it is innate?  And why do we devalue it to the point of assuming it will be provided for free or with very little financial return?

The skill of care

It might sound silly to some, but knowing how to care for others effectively is a learnt skill.  Despite what much of society tells us people (yes, even cisfemale people) are not just born understanding how to care for others.   

In the current climate it is often assumed that women will take on unpaid care work–such as staying at home with kids or caring for elderly parents–because that is their 'natural' role.  This assumption harms child & youth care practitioners and all those in caring-based professions (not to mention the folx busting their butts doing two jobs!) because it delegitimizes the skillset that is caring. 

So how does this delegitimizing of care impact practitioners?  And what does it mean for the young people and families we walk with?

CYCP: the daycare teachers of the helping professions

I have heard it said more than once that child & youth care practitioners are the daycare teachers of the helping professions.  I find this interesting as 'daycare teachers' are actually 'Early Childhood Educators' with educational backgrounds and direct service experience.  Moreover, ECEs are responsible for working with children roughly aged four and under, and given the mass amount of brain development occurring in children before the age of three it would make sense that they would be afforded great respect and compensation for their work.

Unfortunately, this is not the case as early childhood work is considered a natural intuition and therefore the position is typically referred to a 'unskilled'.  

Child & youth care practitioners see the same struggle for their work.  Although CYCP are with young people for much longer periods of time than social workers, psychotherapists, or others in the helping professions their work is seen as simplistic and unscientific and thus not worthy of recognition.  Still, much like the ECE with their responsibilities during a crucial time in brain development, child & youth care practitioners with their consistent presence are able to do the repetition work that is crucial for young people, especially those who have experienced trauma.

When we downplay the ability to care we miss key opportunities for care recievers.

No free lunch: the impacts of devaluing care

By assuming all care to be equal, natural, and unskilled we disadvantage both carers and care receivers:

• Carers are not expected to have any specific credentials, and those with credentials do not see any benefit to their designation
• Young people are underserved by carers lacking key knowledge to care effectively
• Carers without appropriate skills are overburdened and overwhelmed
• Caring professions lack essential representation from groups not stereotyped to be carers
• Low funding rates for agencies are normalized and lead to:
• Operating with minimal staff, leading to overworking of employees
• Lack of appropriate materials for programming
• Low wages for practitioners, causing them to seek second or third areas of employment and/or added financial burdens and stress
• The outcomes of low funding inevitably lead to poor levels of care and support for young people

So...Caring is for EVERYONE

Feminist child & youth care recognizes these limitations and proposes that care be re-conceptualized as a skill full-stop.  Only when we begin to see care on an level field with other skills can we begin to see best outcomes for young people and those who walk with them.

• Feminist CYC ✌