IASCE 3rd Annual Conference 2003

1
IASCE 3rd Annual Conference 2003

• Males in Social Care An Endangered Species? (I
  Know the Price of Nail Polish)
• Dr Niall McElwee,
• President,
• IASCE

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Presentation Based On

• (1) CYC-Net Paper 2001 (McElwee, 2001)
• (2) RMA funded regional study (McElwee, Jackson,
  McKenna-McElwee, 2001)
• (3) Dept of Education and Science national funded
  study (McElwee, McKenna-McElwee, Jackson,
  Cameron, - in Press)
• (4) Workshop to University of Victoria, BC,
  Canada August 2003.

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What is Social Care?

• Social Care is the professional provision of
  care, protection, support, welfare and advocacy
  for vulnerable or dependent clients, individually
  or in groups. This is achieved through the
  planning and evaluation of individualised and
  group programmes of care, which are based on
  needs, identified in consultation with the client
  and delivered through day-to-day shared life
  experiences. All interventions are based on
  established best practice and in-depth knowledge
  of life-span development (Joint Committee, 2003
  3).

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How Many Social Care Workers?

• 3,000 staff encompassed by our terms of
  reference of whom 55 were considered to be
  professionally qualified and 45 who were not
  professionally qualified (Joint Committee,
  2003).

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The Work is Complex!

• The role of the Social Care Practitioner is
  becoming increasingly complex with an emerging
  body of literature referring to the process of
  reflection as being central to constructivist
  learning (Graham and Megarry, 2002).

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Relationships are the Key

• Relationships are the essence of child and youth
  care practice, for it is within the context of
  meaningful relationships that young people may
  frame their experiences. In the context of a
  genuinely caring and mutual relationship, they
  might find new ways of (re)structuring their
  experience of the world and the encounters they
  have had and may have (McElwee, 2003)MEN!!!

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The Joint Committees Aspirations

•  
• 1.      Completion of an Individual Training
  Audit (ITA)
• 2.      Development of Individual Training
  Programme (ITP)
• 3.      Delivery of Individualised Training
  Programme

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An Overall Principle

• If we are to attract more men in to the field, we
  have to find a way to describe and advertise the
  experience of men in the field in a manner which
  is attractive to men. We need to be talking
  about what it means to be male in this field, and
  we need to be able to explain, in our
  advertisements, why we need men in the field. We
  need to create the conditions in our college
  programmes which will support men in being
  different.

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The Literature from the USA

• In child and youth care, as in other professions,
  in other words, men are more likely to stay and
  work hard when they feel a sense of ownership in
  their organizations and are adequately rewarded
  with pay, work incentives, and encouragement
  (Krueger, 2003, in press).

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The Emerging Literature

• It is a well established fact that there is an
  absence of males across the helping and caring
  professions in Ireland (see Wells, Ryan, McElwee,
  Boyce and Forkan, 2000 McElwee 2001 McElwee,
  Jackson ltcKenna-McElwee, 2001 McElwee,
  McKenna-McElwee Cameron, 2003).

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Our Newest Partners

• Institute of Technology Blanchardstown
• 3 males out of 55 school leaver students
• 10 males out of 28 mature students

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Our Newest Partners

• Limerick Institute of Technology
• 3 males out of 35 students

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My Philosophical Position

• Studies focusing on the experience of
  marginalized groups with regard to services usage
  and delivery suggest that both male and female
  caregivers are essential to ensure appropriate
  care.

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Asking Complex Questions

• We need to ask ourselves a fundamental question
  and that is, why are males not considering social
  care as a viable professional career option? This
  is crucially important given the constant
  discussions amongst students, practitioners and
  academics at all levels in this country around
  the emerging professionalisation of social care.

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A Male Practitioner Perspective

• Part of our job a large part was to keep the
  place under control - to maintain order and
  discipline. There were two staff on for every
  shift, one male and one female. The males role
  as protector/enforcer was clear (Garfat, 2003,
  in press).

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A Male Practitioner Perspective

• There was, I was to discover, a place for that
  other side of being male, the side that is
  sometimes described as sensitive, or feminine, as
  if somehow the characteristics associated with
  being this way were somehow the domain of women.
  But for many years, in many programs, this was
  the only accepted way to be a male in a program
  for adolescents, and for many years it was the
  role I accepted (Garfat, 2003, in press).

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What do the Service Users Say?

• A point that is consistently raised by youth is
  that of adult caregivers and the role models they
  provide. In short, there were too few positive
  males in their lives providing consistency and
  mutuality for them.

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Visiting Agencies (1992-2003)

• In our visitations to social care centres over
  the years, both McElwee and McKenna-McElwee have
  noted that a high proportion of young males in
  care report as experiencing adult males only as
  authority figures and ones usually perceived as
  hassling them.

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Our Pilot Study (Athlone IT, 2001)

• The sample of students involved in this research
  is predominantly female i.e. 95.9 with males
  comprising a very small 4.1. This confirms what
  has been felt by many of us working in social
  care (McElwee, Jackson, McKenna-McElwee, 2001)

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Males Missing in All Years

• A predominance of females across all years of
  study of Social Care in the Athlone Institute of
  Technology. Some 93 of the first year sample
  were female compared to 98 of the second year
  sample and the entire Diploma year sample. In
  the fourth year Degree sample 96 of respondents
  were female (McElwee, Jackson, McKenna-McEwee,
  2001).

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Stereotyping

• Reverse stereotyping was a norm as 67 of the
  female students felt social care was feminine
  in orientation. 13.2 of the female students
  articulated that males were not able for social
  care practice which, again, is worrying. In
  fact, 37.5 of the male students reported they
  (now) felt the same (McElwee, Jackson,
  McKenna-McElwee, 2001).

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Why be Concerned?

• The low numbers of males has serious implications
  for (a) future recruitment into the child care
  services in this country and (b) in terms of the
  absence of appropriately qualified males as
  front-line practitioners with children and youth
  who are marginalised and have experienced only
  negative male role models in their
  family/community structures prior to their care
  careers.

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From a Management Perspective

• There is also the issue of the various
  complexities of future recruitment into
  managerial positions as the Resident Managers
  Association will increasingly have to import male
  expertise holding related, but not social care,
  qualifications.

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A College Perspective

• From an Institute perspective, there are also
  stated implications for overall recruitment into
  faculty. There are no males studying for
  postgraduate degrees in social care in our
  Department with the result that men will find it
  increasingly difficult to obtain formal
  tutoring/lecturing posts in the future.

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The 2003 National Study (near completion)

• Focus groups held and analysed with students from
  Certificate to Degree level in 5 College sites
  across the country
• 350 Questionnaires across 5 Sites across the
  country
• Introductory chapters from North America
• Literature review

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A Female Perspective

• F1then your kinda saying that you want men in
  but you only want them 'cause their womanly. That
  doesn't make no sense altogether. You cant say
  you want men in social care because their like
  womenyou want men because they're men

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Preliminary Findings

• Over 35 themes have been extracted from the focus
  groups which are common to all the interview sites

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Preliminary Findings

• The vast majority of participants stated that
  they did not obtain enough information about
  social care prior to embarking on their studies.
• Both male and female participants agreed that the
  perception amongst the public was that social
  care is really female work and this is
  considered by both to be limiting.

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Preliminary Findings

• Very significant stereotyping of male
  practitioners exists.
• Inappropriate assumptions have been made
  about the type of work done in the field and the
  category of client/s with whom one might work

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Preliminary Findings

• Social care mostly enters the media in a negative
  connotation as with staffing problems in high
  support units.
• Males are fearful of having (sexual) allegations
  made against them by clients and feel that
  their agency will not support them

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A Way Forward?

• When the older voices first started in social
  care/child and youth care, the role of men was
  fairly clearly prescribed. Now, it seems, as
  programmes have changed, the role for males is
  less clear. Perhaps this is where we need to
  begin if we are to attract more good men to the
  field.

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What is Needed

• Young boys and girls need to have the experience
  of meeting men, and women, who are able to
  successfully inhabit their roles in ways other
  than the traditionally defined ones. They need
  to encounter men who are non-controlling,
  emotionally less distant, able to explore self,
  willing to engage in healthy emotional
  relationships and capable of facilitation rather
  than direction.

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Centre for Child and Youth Care Learning, AIT

• Amongst many other things
• Will act as a national focus point for males
  studying social care programmes in much the same
  way as dedicated mens groups