Society pedagogy
Policy makers and educators should look through a wide angle lens more often, De Winter believes. Then you see the context and therefore the interaction between a child and society. He calls this community pedagogy. “If you zoom out, you will see that there is a relationship between the increasing pressure to perform in a competitive society and the rise of labels such as dyslexia and high sensitivity. And between social exclusion or not feeling heard and problematic external behavior such as aggression or crime in boys. In girls it usually leads to internalizing behaviors such as depression, eating disorders or self-harm. Let’s not forget the impact of social media on identity issues in this list. Research also shows that there is a strong link between poverty and behaviour.’ This means that the success of children and young people is also a result of political choices, such as social security. According to De Winter, the increase in leafleting is also strongly linked to the funding system: a leaflet is an access ticket to care and support.
I used to get kicked out of school quite often. It was already clear to me at the time that difficult behavior was related to the environment. If your file says you have a behavior problem, the focus will always be on that. Now I am doing well and traveling around the country to tell my story. But the organization that invites me always has the initiative and the money. Although subsidies for youth projects should go directly to the youth.’ – Melchior Wammes, member of the OwnWisdom Advisory Council.
Skills
There are two important lines in community teaching, De Winter explains further: ‘We need to equip children to live together. This means that we have to teach them democratic and humanitarian skills, humanity and justice. The second is that society itself also has an important teaching function. If we continue to raise our children in a very individual way, we will create a generation that stands up to a large extent for its own interests.’
The engine is hopeful
Young people need hope and perspective. That is the heart of De Winter’s message. “Hope is the engine of your own development and your ability to contribute to society. If you don’t have that hope, why would you want to improve yourself? Professionals and parents should not suppress all the problems such as wars and the weather, but work together with young people to see how they can give them meaning.’ De Winter writes HOOP in capital letters, where the H stands for an action scene, or organization. Take bullying for example. As a school you can hire a group that distributes a method. But you can also let the children do their own research and find solutions together. It is best to stick to the steps that the children come up with on their own.’
Hope
The first O stands for breaking critical judgments, the second for living hope. “Many people are already diagnosed before they know what the problem is. But in a healthy democracy you question each other hard: why do you think what you think? And in a healthy education it is an obligation to confront the child: why are you doing what you are doing?’ It is difficult to live up to hope, De Winter admits, but he also points to positive examples such as Gretha Thunberg and Boyan Slat.
“I often feel like a fool when I keep saying that young people can think a lot for themselves. There is much more to it than just visible problem behavior. Thanks to Micha de Winter’s talk, I now have a theory at heart. I can now express it with reference to the source.’ – Katie Eppenhof, 2024 Social Worker of the Year
Focus on development
Finally, the P refers to strengthening the teaching base. “If you want to prevent the transition into youth care from ever increasing, basic social care needs to be strengthened. Families in difficult situations need different support. More commitment is needed from social professionals with a focus on development rather than problem solving.’ In that situation it is about the welfare of the youth and not about the care of the youth anymore.
“I completely agree with De Winter’s plea for more efforts by social professionals to strengthen the teaching base. For this we need leaders with confidence, who want to move budgets. That is the only way that really leads to change. 1 billion of the 108 billion that go to health care each year moved to welfare. Then you will see the effect very quickly.’ – Janny Bakker-Klein, director of Movisie
‘The focus on the children’s environment is so important. During the speech I saw many young people in front of me. But my problem with these kinds of stories is: when do we move from talk to action? We can keep going from event to event, but what benefit do we get from that?’ – Yassine Radi Hemdi, speaker
Special: Collaborative workshop on mental resilience in young people
During the Social Work Agenda there was a selection of five workshops. One of the most visited was working together on young people’s mental suffering, led by Jolanda Sonneveld from Dutch Social Work: ‘There are around 2,000 paid youth workers and 300 child workers in the Netherlands. Although there are approximately 44,000 youth care workers. So to strengthen healthy, preventive growth, we have very few people, and to solve problems we have many more.’
Given that there are more than ten times as many development-based talent builders as problem-solving, the question of how youth work and (special) youth care can reinforce each other is even more relevant. Sonneveld conducted PhD research on the deterrent value of youth work. “It seems that if young people participate in youth work for six months or more, protective factors become stronger. For example, they build a support network, gain relationship skills and sometimes do volunteer work. If difficult things arise later, they can handle it better.’
This is an interesting finding for youth care, as social participation and social support networks of young people are known to be difficult to build. Sonneveld describes a good example from Utrecht: ‘The local neighborhood teams, youth work and two specialist youth care providers looked at the increasingly long waiting lists. Are there young people with similar problems? Do they live near each other? Then we bring them together. These groups have been working in youth work for three years, in collaboration with youth care. And the pilot phase shows that more than half of the young people who were on the waiting list for individual help no longer need it.’
2024-10-25 08:11:00
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