EDITORIAL

Aging In and Aging Out: Some Thoughts on Caring and Generational Change

In the space of less than a month not long ago, I had three of the kinds of profound personal experiences that serve to shape and re- shape our lives, even our professional lives, especially in as intensely "personal" a field as ours. Near the end of February, I became a grand- parent for the first time. A few days later, I turned 60. 60? That's enough in itself to concentrate the mind, even though I don't feel 60- -or what I always thought 60 would feel like. One of the nice things about this age bracket, and I have noticed it increasingly in myself in recent years, is the tendency to feel freer to say what one really feels and thinks without being so careful to sound "respectable," yet striving to avoid being personally hurtful to anyone. I th ink the field benefits from such frankness; I wish I had done more of it sooner.

Jus t three weeks later, we celebrated my dad's 90th birthday! As I have noted here once or twice before over the years, he has been a valued colleague, as he remains, and it is a great gift to have had the benefit of his wisdom and counsel and love for now over 60 years. Much of what I have done has been rooted in his thinking. Newborn and 90 both tend to focus one's at tention on the caring that has oc- curred and its extension to a new generation; for those of us for whom caring is our profession, such thinking has professional ramifications as well.

Jus t a few weeks earlier, we in the United States welcomed a new president and a new administration, bringing a sense that our gov- e rnment is caring about and acting on behalf of people--part icularly people like us and those with whom we work-- for the first t ime in many years. Whether one endorses specific policy directions or not, this represents a new spirit, one that has been largely missing since early in my career. As a result, our work has been harder than it needed to be for the last quar ter century or so, and we mourn the opportunities tha t have been lost as a result. We can now feel the stirrings of new hope, although there remains a long way to go.

Child & Youth Care Forum, 22(3), June 1993 �9 1993 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 175

176 Child and Youth Care Forum

The meaning of caring was also brought home to me during my recent attendance with a group of distinguished colleagues at a semi- nar on residential care in Israel, designed to explore possible implica- tions of Israeli programs for our own. One of the remarkable features of what we saw was the depth of caring, from the time youngsters arrived until well after they left, that was evident in every program we visited. Newcomers were greeted in ways that said "Where have you been? We have been waiting for you!" Those who left knew that they were welcome to come back to visit or to stay, or for help that ranged from guidance and advice to help with college tuition or job placement, "making" a wedding for them on grounds, or cosigning their initial mortgage loan. Bureaucratic barriers were somehow set aside to make such nurturing, empowering interventions possible.

We hear a great deal these days about the problems attendant on "aging out" of the foster care system, when young people are "cut loose" (cast adrift?) to make it on their own. "Independent living skills" programs have been established to facilitate this "transition to adulthood." But, as Herb Barnes observes, our own children do not "age out" of parental care and concern, at least not suddenly, simply because they have reached a predetermined age. The nurturing and the help--tangible and symbolic--typically continue long after the age of 18, frequently even after they have become parents them- selves.

All this serves as a reminder that the needs of young people in substitute care do not end when the money does, and our programs must reflect that if we can realistically hope for them to be successful. The notion of permanency planning has frequently been viewed as contradictory to group care; rather, it should be seen as supportive of a broadened concept of group care as responsible for nurturing on a permanent basis in lieu of natural families where that is necessary. Our level of commitment--symbolic and real--to the young people in our care needs to be personal and ongoing, not simply bureaucratic and time-limited, if we are to succeed.

J . B .