Lessons emerging from a prison school...

Transcription

1 Lessons emerging from a prison school... The value of metaphors Chris Kuiper Rotterdam University; University of Applied Sciences, Centre of Excellence Innovations in Care, Horizon Institute for Youth care and Education for youngsters with severe behavioural problems.

2 European Year of Volunteering 2011 Main objectives 1. To create an enabling and facilitating environment for volunteering in the EU; 2. To empower volunteer organisations and improve the quality of volunteering; 3. To reward and recognise volunteering activities; and 4. To raise awareness of the value and importance of volunteering.

3 Aim of this lecture To raise awareness of the value, complexity and importance of the concept of voluntary I will focus on occupational therapy and lessons learnt in two areas: Health and Social Care (Talked about project) Children and Young People (Prison school)

4 Concepts Occupational therapy is the art and science of enabling engagement in everyday living, through occupation; of enabling people to perform the occupations that foster health and wellbeing; and of enabling a just and inclusive society so that people may participate to their potential in the daily occupations of life. (Townsend & Polatajko, 2007)

5 Occupational justice occurs when participation in occupations is barred, confined, restricted, segregated, prohibited, underdeveloped, disrupted, alienated, marginalized, exploited, excluded, or otherwise restricted, (Kronenberg & Pollard, 2005, p. 66).

6 Voluntary Voluntariness is a legal and philosophical concept referring to a choice being made of a person's free will, as opposed to being made as the result of coercion.

7 On metaphors Metaphors as words, sentences and stories, carry meaning or significance from one place to another, such as from environment to consciousness, or from person to other.

8 Paul Ricour The Rule of Metaphor

9 Philippe Pinel Philippe Pinel as a metaphore as a methaphore

10 In duallity: Pinel was concerned with a balance between control by authority and individual liberty. He believed in "the art of subjugating and taming the insane" and the effectiveness of "a type of apparatus of fear, of firm and consistent opposition to their dominating and stubbornly held ideas", but that it must be proportional and motivated only by a desire to keep order and to bring people back to themselves.

11 Foucault named Pinel the moving spirit behind the development from physical to mental oppression

12 Foucault examines the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane, notably at the hands of Philippe Pinel who he suggests started the conceptualization of madness as 'mental illness'. He claims that these new treatments were in fact no less controlling than previous methods.

13 The Talked about project A research aimed at wanting to know what gets voiced from one person to another, and from the bottom to the top, of the organization in social or healthcare.

14 goal To feed the stories of practice back to management, whereby volunteer/practitioner hardiness: commitment and sense-making, ability to take control of circumstances, and fulfilment in work, was to be examined. The research was meant to bring (more) direct or honest voice of lived-situation(s) to light (Boje, 2011).

15 method Stories of practice collected by undergraduate (fourth year) OT-students The students spent three months, half-time, doing fieldwork. Transcripts of work and organization were written-up verbatim, on the basis of in situ interviews and observation. These texts were then fed-back to front-line workers and volunteers for their control. The material, with the permission of the researched, was then triangulated with their colleagues and superiors; and via the authors, with relevant literature.

16 The-BRY story

17 We had expected the as if of front-line workers and volunteers to be hardy. But our explanatory metaphor did not prevail; in fact, it collapsed.

18 Kompas college In Horizon we develop and run educational programs and provide care to benefit our clients and their families.

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20 Living and educational group Incarcerated adolescents often live in supervised living groups that should provide a structured, educational and rehabilitative environment. Living group climate and its consequences for rehabilitation in youth correctional facilities, however, are still underresearched (Marshall & Burton, 2010).

21 Group-climate To avoid harm, forensic youth services face the difficult task of combining therapeutic and educational flexibility with structure. Four climate dimensions support, growth, atmosphere, and repression, probably reflect the difficult task of group workers to combine flexibility with control. (Van de Helm, 2011)

22 Education and care in an integrated programm The integral concept of education and care may be an example for as well the content as the structure of education in occupational therapy

23 The value of methaphors Lessons for OT-education The Pinel methaphor is not only a metaphor of humanization and voluntariness, but a metaphor of control and discipline as well, shouldn t we educate both sides of this coin? The hardy OT is not that common, should we celebrate this metaphor or direct our education to a more ambiguous image?

24 Lessons for OT-education Knowing we work in schools Stating that a prison school might be an injust environment Did you ever question whether you imprison your students? Could they be: 1.Occupational deprivated 2.Occupational alienated 3.Occupational marginalized 4.Occupational imbalanced

25 Lessons for OT-education Stating that a incarcerated adolescents often live in supervised living groups Knowing our students work in educational groups Knowing you face balancing educational flexibility with structure Did you ever question whether you could benefit from research from forensic youth services?

26 Lessons for OT-education Stating the enabling bridges freedom of will and freedom of action. Knowing that 2011 is the European year of volunteers Shouldn t we elaborate on concepts as free will, occupational choice and the opposite repression, barriers and control in our profession and education?

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