Logo
  • Home
  • Relevant Readings
  • Self Care
    • Self Care for Social Care Workers and Social Workers
    • Consulting
    • Education and Training
  • Empower Ireland Press
  • Pathways
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
Product was added to your cart

Control and Congruent Children’s Residential Services

March 6, 2016royalcounty

untitled

Control within residential care for adolescents is largely an illusion, and the higher up the management ladder one goes the more illusionary it becomes. Once we accept this and cease trying to achieve control through coercion or reward we become liberated to achieve what in fact we are seeking, a healthy environment where children’s needs are therapeutically met by staff whose wellbeing is valued and promoted. By giving away ‘control’ to both staff and young people through empowering and then motivating them, congruence is enhanced. People will, given the right resources within the right circumstances, most often choose to do the right thing and this is true of residential care services too.

Thus, by not seeking to control others we are less likely to need to exercise control and this is the great paradox of our current risk management and control hegemonies: by seeking to control the uncontrollable we actually diminish what we are seeking.

We must embrace risk within risk-tolerant relational approaches to care that promote the agency and internal locus of control of the staff and young people if we are to achieve positive outcomes for children in care. This is a true and vital form of congruence within care services. Control, like love, we must largely give away in order to regain, but then, both involve caring.

Tags: children's residential care; congruent; control; adolescence
Previous post Self-Care in Social Care Work: Vicarious Trauma, Vicarious Resilience, and Self-Compassion Next post A Social Care Worker’s Experience of Care “On the Edge”

Related Articles

The Stolen Child: Part 2

June 15, 2016royalcounty

Menu

  • Home
  • Relevant Readings
  • Self Care
    • Self Care for Social Care Workers and Social Workers
    • Consulting
    • Education and Training
  • Empower Ireland Press
  • Pathways
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Products

  • The Stolen Child – WB Yeats and Carl Jung – Relationship, Belonging and Compassion in Caring for Children in Care The Stolen Child - WB Yeats and Carl Jung – Relationship, Belonging and Compassion in Caring for Children in Care (Incl P+P within Ireland)

Recent Posts

  • Chapter Four – Residential Child Care in The Republic of Ireland
  • Chapters Eleven & Twelve
  • Chapter Three – Myths About Residential Child Care
  • Feel the Pain and Do It Anyway – Most recent journal article
  • Dr Thom Garfat reviews Social Care and Child Welfare in Ireland: Integrating Residential Care, Leaving Care and Aftercare
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
© 2016 Empower Ireland. All Rights Reserved