Rhythms of Care: The Future of Child and Youth Care in a Developing World

Tuhinul Khalil
Head of Programmes, Knowledge and Development, Muntada Aid

Worldwide, residential child and youth care practices are experiencing challenging times. The grand narrative of shameful histories and poor outcomes portrayed by Western voices are so powerful that it can be hard for the World not to internalise such truths. Alas, these voices, more often than not belong to those in Western social work establishments, university academics, and those who representing NGO interests.

Involvement in the Residential Child and Youth Care in a Developing World series (http://press.cyc-net.org/) – a comparative cross-cultural research effort with 113 contributors from 86 countries – has highlighted the extent to which care has received limited attention in the literature. At the same time, working directly with Rohingya refugees and their children in what is currently the world’s largest refugee camp, gives urgency to the call for more careful consideration of how residential child and youth care is still an urgent priority in the Majority World outside the West. Through involvement with a global faith-based NGO ‘caring’ for millions of children and young people worldwide – refugees of war, poverty, disease, abuse, famine, rural-urban migration or natural disaster; rarely does the Global North speak from a ‘position of experience or grounded understanding’ of what care and protection for children in these places is required. Yet Majority World voices are rarely troubled by doubt or convinced of their own rectitude.

In this presentation, I will reflect on what I have learnt from the ‘Rituals, Routines and Relational Practices of care’ gleaned from Majority World involvements and experiences, and where the future of residential child and youth care services might lead, if powerful ‘colonial’ voices remain unchallenged.