|
Essentials for Social Work with Adolescents
ASSUMING
A STANCE OF UNCERTAINTY: ESSENTIALS FOR Andrew Malekoff** Assuming a Stance of Uncertainty Beyond credentials and labels Having worked with countless teenagers for over thirty years, I discovered early on that whatever world I occupied outside of their presence with my professional reputation and credentials, these meant little to the kids I worked with or, for that matter, to my own kids. A few years ago I found something that one of my sons wrote about me in school. The heading on the page was, “My Dad.” Naturally I read on with great anticipation and a swelling sense of self-importance. Underneath the title he wrote, “My dad is 6’1”, bald, wears glasses, and busts my chops. He likes dogs. My dad has brown eyes and brown hair, at least what’s left of it. He’s a social worker.” The kids I work with, and live with, invariably draw their conclusions about me as they get to know me. In turn, I draw my conclusions about them as I get to know them, despite what might be called their credentials, that is - the often-negative labels and diagnoses assigned to them. One young person,
who was living in an extended care residential setting, described her
experience as a labeled person through poetry. She wrote, in part, Teenagers demand to be taken as whole people It is essential to understand that teenagers demand to be taken as whole people. Social workers may find it especially difficult to work with teenagers if they begin by taking a position of certainty, relying on scientifically sanctioned knowledge as the supreme truth. One cannot gain access to what another person is experiencing without also reaching for other legitimate sources of knowledge, not the least of which is the reality expressed through the narrative voice of the young person him- or herself. This requires that we “assume a stance of uncertainty” (Pozatek, 1994), a commitment to developing relationships with teenagers that transcend the traditional model of practitioner as expert and client as dummy. “When your tongue is silent, only then can you hear” My colleague Camille Roman wrote about growing up in an economically deprived and chaotic family and how desperately she struggled as a teenager to be heard, and how no one was ever listening. During one particularly troubling and heated exchange at a holiday gathering Camille, whose family is from Puerto Rico, remembered, “…my face apparently betrayed my fear and confusion to an elderly aunt who was secretly thought to be a witch. Tia Mercedes turned to me with her soft face and wise eyes and whispered, ‘when your tongue is silent only then can you hear.’” Camille said, “My Tia was telling me that…something else was going on here…and if I didn’t get caught up in the noise then maybe I could understand and make sense of the chaos and it would be less frightening and I would not feel so powerless.” And so this powerful bit of homespun advice became a life lesson for her and one that she credits with her success as a social worker. As a long time group worker I understand this very well. Often it is the noisy and always on the move kids’ group that has more order to it, a method to the madness if you will, than the rational, tightly controlled and superficially polite staff meeting of adults that is rife with underlying disorder in the form of power struggles and hidden agendas seething just beneath the surface. As we professionally enter the group setting assuming a stance of uncertainty enables us to see more clearly the logic of the seemingly irrational and frenetic teenage group; as against the often illogic of the seemingly rationale, cool, calm, and collected grown up group. Remember Tia Mercedes? “When your tongue is silent only then can you hear.” Psychologist Jim Garbarino (2004) advises, “We need practitioners who think and look deeply before proceeding. A lack of depth is a dangerous underpinning for practice.” Assuming a stance of uncertainty is one way of saying how important it is for us to be open and reflective, to listen intently to the kids we see and to watch for telltale patterns as the dynamics of each situation unfold. Only then can we think more deeply and outside the box. By embracing our ignorance and uncertainty and fallibility without shame, the optical delusions that confront us on a daily basis come more clearly into focus. One of these delusions is the self-serving propaganda about life in the suburbs. Myths about the suburbs There is a long held perception about life in the suburbs that belies the reality, where images of affluence and self-sufficiency still prevail. One result is the insulation of those who live in the suburbs from those on the outside, including legislators, government officials and philanthropists who turn down proposals from suburban agencies because they say they have “inner city” priorities. Many of the young people in the suburbs are struggling with the same problems as their inner-city counterparts. But because of faulty perception of their lives they have become an invisible generation to many scholars and funding sources. The issue should not be city-suburb, either-or. We need to hold hands and stand together to erase mythical boundaries and affirm the value of all young people. My poem invizible kidz on the edge of 5 boroughz, from which the title of today’s conference is based, contains many stories about life on Long Island. The stories begin with nationally publicized events, some of which you will recall. They are: the kidnapping of a child in an amusement center in the early 80’s, a young adult’s membership in a cult and participation in mass suicide in the 90’s, mass murder on the Long Island Railroad, the explosion of flight 800 passenger jet over the ocean in eastern Long Island, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center with its many suburban victims, and the sexual abuse/hazing incident on a local high school football team. The less publicized stories that follow in the poem are based on actual encounters I have had with young people over the past 30 years. The poem ends with an imaginary plea to the late poet Allen Ginsburg. invizible kidz
on the edge of 5 boroughz he built an remember me? remember me?
a little while
later remember me? remember me? roll call i have a guidance
counselor who called me a slut. soon. y'know, now that's a pretty
cool thing it's the darned-est thing. so, and then we can okay? Framing the suburbs as affluent and self-sufficient makes it easier for those who have the power of the purse to turn their backs on us. Tuning in to how things are framed, who does the framing, and what the framing means is an important assessment tool for social workers working with teenagers. It is as important as making a sound DSM diagnosis or doing an inventory of kids’ strengths and assets. If you remember nothing else about my presentation, I ask you to remember that context counts. Context counts. The more clearly we see the frame, understand the context, the more likely we are to uncover the so-called truths that are imposed on us. We need, as Indian essayist Arundhati Roy (2004) so eloquently says, “to see the gap between what we know and what we are told, between what is concealed and what is revealed, and between the ‘real world’ and the virtual world” (p. 96). One must “look,” as social work scholars Ruth Middleman and Gale Goldberg advise, “with planned emptiness.” That is, “to cultivate an area of one’s mind that is reserved for the unknown” (Middleman & Wood, 1995). More myths: Mental health, discretionary funding, and managed care Office of Mental
Health or Office of Mental Illness? Discretionary services
or essential human services? Managed care or managed
cost? Beware of Mangled Care: DSM R US third party hats and
favors kids like us abhor
the ride that we can visit
ten times only measurable outcomes
to help us cope it's not so bad to
get no vote but tell me why we
get a label a story spun by a
lonely few powered by a system
blind, the tide comes in,
the tide goes out, but not without a fight. Now that I have saturated you with the virtues of uncertainty and ignorance; the importance of context; the necessity of looking with planned emptiness; the myth of the self-sufficient suburbs; the Office of Mental Illness; the folly of the term discretionary funding; and third part hats and favors it’s time to move on. More Essentials for Social Work with Teenagers Maintaining a sense of humor I mentioned at the beginning of my talk that kids are not impressed with my reputation and credentials. This thought leads to two related essential aspects of good social work with adolescents: maintaining a sense of humor and willingness to check your ego outside the door. By a sense of humor I don’t mean that you must have comedic skills, but that you develop the ability to see the humor or absurdity in a situation. Although ours is a serious business, it doesn’t mean that we have to approach it with deadly seriousness. Someone once quipped that seriousness is the root of all mental illness. Checking your ego
at the door To work with teenagers one needs to be light and fluid and flexible and grounded all at once in order to effectively adjust to the changing tides of equilibrium and disequilibrium and the shifting sands of conflict, playfulness, calm, constructive activity, fighting, tension regulation, attending to task, and affectionate feelings. Seeing the humor in a situation and losing one’s self-importance help. Remember, it’s not your credentials that impress kids. Or at least mine don’t. The following encounters illustrate how different teenagers I have worked with questioned my intelligence, my charisma, and my sexuality. On intelligence On charisma On sexuality Everything I needed to know about social work with adolescents…. I was fortunate to first learn about social work with teenagers as a young volunteer (Malekoff, 2001). You know the book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? Well, VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America, was my social work kindergarten. I had no choice but to assume a stance of uncertainty since I didn’t know anything. At least I felt that way. I formed my first teenage group when I was a 22-year-old VISTA volunteer living in Grand Island, Nebraska. The community that I called home for nearly three years was largely Mexican-American. None of the roads in that part of town were paved. When I first arrived I roomed with a local family. A short time later I rented a tiny two-bedroom house on the edge of a cornfield. The rent was one hundred dollars a month. A few blocks from my house pig and cattle auctions were held on Mondays and Tuesdays. Living in Nebraska was nothing like my early years growing up in Newark, New Jersey where the landscape was concrete and telephone poles and the closest thing to a cornfield was the corner bakery. The group I formed in the spring of 1974 included six kids. There were three boys and three girls who ranged in age from 13 to 18. All were first generation Mexican-Americans. They all knew each other well, living in this close-knit place where everybody seemed to know everybody. After some time the group became known as Los Seis, the six. In forming the group I met an 18- year old young woman Mariel, who was soon to become the senior group member. I found out through the grapevine that she had been through drug rehab more than once. I was advised by someone to go to Mariel's home and meet her parents who were described as very conservative. I was warned that there was no way I'd get anywhere with Mariel without her parents' consent. I would eventually seek the consent of all of the kids’ parents, including Hector’s dad who, at the time, was just released from the state penitentiary after serving time for manslaughter. Although my meetings with Mariel’s mom and dad took place inside their modest home, I first met Hector’s dad in a local bar, then in the Latin Club, the local cultural center and intergenerational gathering place, and finally at his kitchen table. Reaching out to each of the parents, and in some cases older siblings was a different story for each family. These were wonderful lessons. I learned never to cut parents or other relevant people in kids’ lives out the out of the picture. It made sense to me that the parents of these kids would need to trust the gringo stranger who had suddenly appeared in town. Yet, over the years I have met countless colleagues who perceive anxious parents as a thorn in their professional side and use the cloak of confidentiality to factor them out of the helping equation. Anxious and angry parents are not our enemies and we must collaborate with them and form alliances with them if we are to be successful with their children. Many parents suffer from profound isolation and self-doubt. We must learn to embrace their frustration and anxiety rather than become defensive and rejecting. They get enough of that as it is. As Los Seis took shape I worried that I didn't know anything about Mexican culture. I decided that the dance floor at the Latin club was a good place to start. The most spirited dances were communal, young and old circling the floor as a large group, accenting the need to stay connected in the present by preserving the past. I also learned that the alcohol flowed freely in this little corner of town. If I could learn Mexican dance at the Latin club, I figured that there had to be others in town that could teach me and the group other things we needed to know. I thought that if I could find such people and get to know them that I could convince them to help me, help us. I didn't know anything about alcoholism either. So I found out about an alcoholism program across the street from the cattle auction. I got to know Jim, the director of the center. We spent some time together and he provided me with literature on the subject. Jim told me that he was in recovery and invited me to an open AA meeting. I didn’t know what “recovery” meant, so he taught me. He agreed to help in any way he could. I also met an elementary school teacher who lived in the community. Dolores was a dynamic woman with a great smile, unlimited knowledge about her heritage, boundless energy and a burning desire to help the young people in the community. She was dying to help out. I told her about the group and she agreed to teach dance and sprinkle in some history lessons along the way. Being partners with parents and giving up control Soon I met others who, as they learned about the teenage group wanted to pitch in too. There were women who offered to sew traditional dresses for the girls to dance in, men who loaned their cherished sombreros to the boys, people in recovery willing to talk about addiction and the road to sobriety, and so on. Soon the group had a small army of helpers. And all I had to do was ask. And so I learned two important lessons, two more essentials for working with teenagers: the importance of forming partnerships with parents and relevant other people in teens’ lives and understanding that I didn’t have to control everything. When I realized that I could depend on others, others being the kids themselves and the grown ups who had a stake in them, it took a lot of pressure off me. It meant that I didn't have to know everything; I didn’t have to be the central helping person. And, if I didn’t have to know everything then I could ask questions. I could afford to be uncertain and ignorant, so long as I was willing to trust others and have faith in what they might have to offer. That is what true empowerment is all about. I later discovered that this was a very unpopular way to think among colleagues who revere a one-to-one medical model, where professional is knowledgeable decision maker; client is passive recipient, pathology rules, and DSM is the holy bible. Helping teenagers to make waves Not having to control everything is key to the next essential facet I learned about good social work with adolescents: maintaining a dual focus by tuning not only to the near things of individual need but also to the far things of social change or what I like to call the importance of helping teenagers to make waves. Our young people need to see the potential of changing not only oneself but also one's surroundings, so that they may become active participants in community affairs, so that they might make a difference, might change the world one day where we have failed to. It is essential that we help teenagers to make waves. We can help young people make big-turbulent-crashing waves, small-gentle- soothing waves, and in-between sized waves. In time Los Seis became best know as a dance group that traveled throughout the State spreading a message of cultural pride and drug and alcohol abuse prevention. In a sense they became advocates, extending the bonds of belonging beyond the group itself. A highlight was their first public appearance before a gathering of the local community. One of the poems chosen for the event is an epic of the Mexican-American people, the most famous poem of the Chicano movement in America. It's called "I am Joaquin" or "Yo soy Joaquin", written by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, long involved in the civil and human rights movement of the Mexican-American people. The book length poem give voice to what many in the community felt. As the lights were
turned down in the community center, the group members took turns reading
by candlelight as a hundred of their family and friends, young and old
looked on and listened. Incidentally, just before the event Hector’s dad (remember the ex-convict?) gave Hector his cherished sombrero. After the performance Hector approached me, with his eyes welling up, and said, “Andy, my dad told me he was proud of me. He never told me that before.” Los Seis made waves, small but powerful waves in their home community where they instilled a sense of spirit and cultural pride and even bigger waves as they spread their message in performances across the state. We need to help teenagers to make waves. Fighting world-wide
poverty Shaving their heads
in solidarity with a sick buddy Faggot Gang or street organization? As I talk about making waves I am sensitive to the fact that there might be some in the audience who might be thinking, “Oh that making waves stuff is fine for those kids he talks about but what about the kids I’m working with who are much more troubled. If I’m correct that even one of you is thinking that I ask you to consider the sentiments of internationally renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk who said, regarding his work with trauma survivors, “…talking about the trauma is rarely if ever enough; trauma survivors need to take some action that symbolizes triumph over helplessness and despair. This may take the form of writing a book (or a poem), taking political action, helping other victims, or any of the myriad of creative solution that human beings can find to defy even the most desperate plight” (van der Kolk, et al, 1996). And then there is
the group boys identified with serious emotional disturbances who fought
for better bathroom conditions in their alternative high school (Malekoff,
1999). As one of them said, “Do you think they have any idea how
humiliating it is to go to the bathroom with no doors on the stalls?”
They went on to make a list of demands that they first rehearsed and then
presented to the principal: Making waves suggests that teenagers have something to offer and have an interest in changing the world, whether it is the world with a big “W,” as in fighting poverty and corporate greed; or the world with a small “w,” as in showing solidarity with a friend who has cancer or writing a poem about one’s journey through a traumatic experience like 9/11 or fighting for better bathroom conditions. To help teenagers to do this and to work effectively with them it is essential for social workers to have an appreciation for paradox and ability to differentiate between the words and music. If you know teenagers you know that they often reflect two sides of the same coin. They can be selfish and altruistic; vain yet humble; and rebellious yet loyal. They can appear remarkably apathetic, yet their passion is unmatched when the cause is right. Their music and words don’t always seem to fit together as in the contradictory messages that we are all familiar with like, “take care of me and leave me alone,” “hold me and don’t touch me,” “stop me and get out of my way,” “understand me and don’t question me.” I recall asking a 13-year old, several months after 9/11 if he thought about the disaster anymore. He said, “No,” and then I discovered a poem he had just written that told a different story. The poem, entitled “Fate or Fantasy” provided the music behind his contention that he no longer thought about it. Fate or Fantasy - Darren Malekoff, 2002 Getting familiar with fallibility Finally, to work
well with teenagers, it is essential that you get familiar with your
sense of fallibility in order, as the expression goes, to keep it
real. I feel that it is my duty to advise you that although we live in
the era of evidence-based models, there are no perfect solutions. Alfred Whitehead (1967). said, “Once you understand all about the sun and all about the atmosphere and all about the radiation of the earth you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.” We cannot afford to miss the radiance in the kids with whom we work, nor the radiance in ourselves. Just as there are no perfect solutions, there are no perfect social workers working with teenagers. Teenagers bring out our flaws and imperfections and evoke their own often well-concealed insecurities, fears and anxieties in us. That’s their job. If you want to make a career of working with teenagers, don’t expect the work to look or to be perfect or polite. My advice to you is not to expect to be perfect and don’t sweat it if you sometimes look and feel awkward and amateurish. It is their job to make us feel that way. Their job is to scrutinize, question, and challenge the adult world that we represent, to discover ways in which we screwed it up so that their generation may have an opportunity to try and get it right. Our job is to let them challenge us and to love them just the same. Our job is not to let the uncomfortable feelings that they evoke in us cause us to abandon them as they may have been abandoned before. Remember the part about putting your ego out the door? Conclusion Social work with teenagers is a tricky business and an important calling. I hope that you will hang in there for the long haul and not bail out as too many an adult already has. There are too many kids who need people like us. In closing I leave you with something that has helped me along the way and that I hope might help you. Please don’t forget, as you experience the highs and lows of this difficult and inspiring work that, “Perfection is not lovable, it is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable” (Joseph Campbell in Keen, 1970). References:* Dalrymple, J., and Burke, B. (1995). Anti-oppressive practice: Social care and the law. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Garbarino, J. (2004, April). Workshop on adolescents. Roslyn Heights, NY: North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center. Gonzales, R. (1967). I am Joaquin. New York: Bantam, 98-99. Keen, S. (1970). Man and myth: A conversation with Joseph Campbell. Voices and Visions, New York: Harper and Row, 67-86. Malekoff, A. (1994). Beware of mangled care: DSM R US (Poetry). Social Work with Groups Newsletter, 9(2, July), 15 AND in Child Welfare League of America Residential Care News, February, 2005, 7. Malekoff, A. (1994). A guideline for group work with adolescents, Social Work with Groups, 17(1/2), 5–19. Malekoff, A. (1999a). Book review of adolescent gangs: Old issues, new approaches (Ed. Curtis Branch), Social Work with Groups, 22:2/3, 196-198. Malekoff, A. (1999b). Pink soap and stall doors. Families in Society. May/June, 219-220. Malekoff, A. (2000). Bureaucratic barriers to service delivery, Administrative advocacy, and mother goose, Families in Society, 81:3, 304-315. Malekoff, A. (2001). The power of group work with kids: A practitioner’s reflection on strengths-based practice. Families in Society, 82:3, 243-249. Malekoff (2002). Invizible kidz on the edge of 5 boroughz (poetry). Journal of Progressive Human Services, 13(2), 69-73 AND in The New Social Worker, Winter 2002, 15. Malekoff, D. (2002). Fate or fantasy, In Captured Visions. Long Beach, New York: Captured Press, 15-18. Malekoff, A. (2003, July 28). Services are essential. In, Letters to the Editor. Long Island Newsday, A21. Malekoff, A. (2004). Group work with adolescents: Principles and practice, second edition, New York: Guilford. Middleman, R. & Goldberg, G. (1995). Contextual group work: Apprehending the elusive obvious. In Kurland, R. & Salmon, R. (eds.) Group work practice in a troubled society: Problems and opportunities, New York: Haworth, 5-17. Middleman, R. & Wood, G. (1995). Skills for direct practice in social work. New York: Columbia University Press. Pozatek, E. (1994). The problem of certainty: Clinical social work in the postmodern era. Social Work, 39(4), 396–404. Roy, A. (2004). An ordinary person’s guide to empire. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. van der Kolk, B.A., McFarlane, A., van der Hart, O. (1996). “A general approach to treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder.” In Traumatic Stress (van der Kolk, et al, eds). Guilford Press: NY, Wohl, B. (2000). The power of group work with youth: Creating activists of the future. Social Work with Groups, 22:4, 3-14. |
|
Phone: (516) 626-1971 • Fax: (516) 626-8043 |