Relationships Matter to me because they are the source of all good things – connection, belonging, care, identity, love… I don’t think Paul Simon meant it when he sang ‘I am a rock, I am an island’ …none of us can make it on our own.
A year past Christmas my partner received a Facebook message, asking if she had worked in a residential school way back in the mid 80’s. She recognised the name. In fact we both did, as I had done my final placement there too. The lad was15/16 at the time, in his final term before leaving (no Staying Put in those days). So here he was now, just approaching 40, reaching out and making connections over the years (no hiding place on Facebook – discuss…!). He was getting in touch to say that he had just become a dad for the first time. This joyous life event had prompted him to take stock of how things had turned out for him. Now married, a proud dad, a successful career working overseas in the oil and gas industry – a great ‘outcome’ for a care leaver you might say. As a teenager life could’ve turned out very differently…a very difficult family background, spent time in care, a tough lad with a view to becoming a gangster, the next Jimmy Boyle (before he turned to sculpture). With little or no home leave, my partner and I had taken him home to our flat for the weekend on a number of occasions over his final term. We didn’t really do anything special – he helped my dad cut the grass, we took the dog for a walk, went for a pizza, he watched my ‘tuneless and clueless’ rock band rehearse, as he recalled…as I said nothing special!
His Christmas message to us was that this seemingly everyday experience of letting him into share our world for a few weekends, allow our relationship to exist in the normal everyday ‘non-social work, non resi-school’ world had been critically important to him. He believed that the ordinary everyday kindness shown, the trust given in our home, and of treating him as just another bored 15 year old had been one of the key things that had given him hope for a different future. Of course, we thought we were doing something ‘quite nice’, and hoped it would keep him out of bother for the weekend in Glasgow or kicking up a fuss in the school. We didn’t, or couldn’t, know then, that it would have had a life-long impact. We were just two young youth care workers, reaching out and sharing our world for a short time. Imagine the paperwork and suspicions if you were to suggest that now? However, these are the very things, the ‘ordinary magic’ that Masten talks about that can, and do, make a difference. But you can only create these moments of opportunity if you allow your working relationships to be real relationships. Of course you don’t have to take young people home. But you need to be prepared to allow them into your world, to see you as a real person, to offer up the ‘genuine self’, even it is ‘tuneless and clueless’!
That’s why relationships matter to me. My partner and I got real payback, with interest, 20-odd years later. It was a wonderful, unexpected Christmas present. He meant to thank us, but he probably doesn’t know how much he enriched our lives.
Relationships make us who we are, we are the sum of the relationships we have had since the day we were born….for good and for bad. It’s our job to make sure the good wins every time.
Kenny McGhee
Throughcare & Aftercare Lead at the Center for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland