by Danny Henderson
Danny works at Care Visions Children’s Services, a residential child care and fostering organisation based in Scotland, in a development role. Care Visions operates 29 children’s homes across Scotland, supporting young people whose lives have been shaped by adversity, trauma and disruption. The organisation has been built around a belief that relationships are the foundation of meaningful care: that safety, belonging and the conditions for growth don’t come from systems or structures, but from the quality of human relationships that surround a young person every day. Joining the SPPA feels like a natural step in a journey that began over two decades ago.
Beginnings: A Relational Vision for Care
Care Visions was established in 1998 with the opening of our first children’s home in the South of Scotland. This service offered a kind of care that was unusual in this part of the world, based on the principles of community work. The design was premised on a relational approach with strong emphasis on the social life of the home as integral to the milieu of therapeutic care. This was complemented by an active orientation and grounded in routines and rhythms of care designed to nurture a sense of safety and community within the everyday lives of those who lived and worked there. Inherent in this approach was the understanding that when young people experience adversity and their fundamental human needs for safety and nurture are unmet, distorted or compromised, their behaviour reflects these experiences. Creating a safe, nurturing environment within which needs are met with authentic care and experiences that imbue a sense of belonging, their relationship with themselves and the world around them can be transformed.
Discovering Social Pedagogy
While not originally framed in these terms, Care Visions’ early approach intuitively echoed many of the principles that would later be articulated through our engagement with social pedagogy. This began in 2008 when some of our practitioners and managers engaged in a course facilitated by Thempra, arranged by the Scottish Institute of Residential Child Care. This was inspiring for many of our staff. The learning environment and methodology combined to create experiences that provoked wonder and rich dialogue about the purpose and nature of the work we did. This led to an enduring interest in social pedagogy and an ongoing engagement with the community of interest and network. This relationship was further enriched through our participation in a mobility project to Copenhagen in 2012, to experience how social pedagogy was enacted and articulated in a range of children’s services there. The impact of this experience was transformative for those involved.
Learning from Denmark
The themes that emerged from our experience of Danish children’s services centred on the contrast between familiar practices and the different ways in which the work was framed, particularly how difficulties were understood, perceived and addressed. Across the range of services, there was a strong emphasis on citizenship and on the creation of a social-educative milieu at every stage of a child’s development. Relationships were treated as inviolable, providing both a foundation for meaning and a secure base for learning. The strength of the social pedagogues’ professional identity was especially striking, as was the confidence and pride with which they spoke about their work and its contribution to society. This appeared to be supported by a relatively enabling and benevolent socio-political environment. The mobility experience was transformative for those involved, challenging our assumptions about how we think about children, what they are capable of, their place in society, and how these beliefs influence our approach to their care and development.
From Experience to Practice: Roots to Growth
These experiences created an enduring commitment within Care Visions that has shaped the development of our own practice framework – Roots to Growth. This framework foregrounds care practice in relationships within a culture that enables these to thrive as the primary method in supporting young people’s wellbeing. It is also concerned with helping young people to develop and sustain a healthy sense of self, with the competence to navigate their way through life and sustain hope, wellbeing and happiness in the future. Roots to Growth is essentially a conceptual map that supports us to lean into complexity and make meaning of experience in context according to need and circumstance, to create the optimal conditions for individual and collective wellbeing and development. The framework has also been designed to enable continuous professional development and in this respect is a means to an end. We envisage that this will grow and develop as we learn through cycles of action and reflection. An important aspect of this for us, as practitioners and leaders, is locating ourselves within context of our work. This involves testing and challenging our assumptions and beliefs, recognising the dissonance between what we value and what we experience, and responding with authenticity and fidelity to our purpose. Roots to Growth builds on Care Visions’ history and draws on the ethical basis of social pedagogy and a range of theoretical perspectives.
Learning emerges through connection, dialogue and collective exploration, we at Care Visions are excited to have joined the Social Pedagogy Professional Association. While we will undoubtedly benefit from being part of this creative community of practice. We are also keen to contribute and look forward to connecting and working with you all in pursuit of our common values and interests.