Protective Wraps

Protective Wraps

Transcultural aid for families

Kitlyn Tjin A Djie

Irene Zwaan

Dedicated to Ellen Meijer (1944-2020)

© 2021 Royal Van Gorcum B.V., P.O. Box 43, 9400 AA Assen, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publisher.

NUR 752, 753

ISBN 978 90 232 5784 4

Publisher: Uitgeverij Koninklijke Van Gorcum, Assen, the Netherlands

Cover: Renata Zincone, London (UK)

Drawing cover: Robin Fiolet (4 years old)

Drawing Sankofa: George Schriemer

Lay-out: Richard Bos

Printing: Royal Van Gorcum, Raalte, the Netherlands

Foreword

In 2016 it’s once again time for a revised edition. I am glad that this book continues to be a great and lasting source of inspiration for anyone committed to working in the care sector in an honest and non-judgmental way.

The book is the result of a project of Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe (youth care agency in the province of Drenthe). All its employees have with great dedication been working on carrying out a special assignment, which in actual fact should not be ‘special’, but should be normal and continuous: providing truly accessible and well-functioning care for all parents and children in Drenthe, including those who are migrants or Dutch with migrant backgrounds.

As a project team, we knew that quite a lot had been written already about transcultural work. However, we wanted to augment the range of publications with one based on practice and focused on the core of transcultural work for care workers themselves.

In the context of the transcultural work project, Kitlyn Tjin A Djie has trained many workers, both within Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe and at our chain partners. The province of Drenthe has been of great support in putting the diversity policy issue high on the agenda.

During the training sessions, the tremendous amount of personal knowledge and experience of case managers, family guardians and care workers became apparent. In their unconscious form, personal experiences sometimes turn out to create barriers in contacts with others. Once brought to light, however, these personal life experiences of course also prove to be the very source for establishing real contact, on a human level and irrespective of belief, history or race.

How to tap into this source, that’s what this book is essentially about. This means that it is not a technical treatise on models and methods. It is about knowing and acknowledging your own history, and on that basis dispensing with preconceived ideas and seeking real dialogue with the other person. Even in stressful and hazardous situations.

At a time when imposing norms on ‘foreigners’ seems to occupy a fairly central position, this choice is as brave as it is necessary. To add to this, I believe that the core of intercultural work is in fact perfectly organically connected to the solution-oriented and systemic approach, to which we have been committed for years in youth care in Drenthe.

I would sincerely like to thank Irene Zwaan and Kitlyn Tjin A Djie for having written this book and in doing so having made the power of protective wraps accessible to professionals throughout the country. I would equally like to thank all our people who have contributed and who have made their stories available in order to share their experiences with their colleagues now and in the future.

Cees Wierda

Director Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe

This book was written as part of the more comprehensive transcultural relief project, in which attention was paid to improving the connection between professional care and existing (family) cultures.

Justification

This book reflects the views of Kitlyn Tjin A Djie on how to bring out the best in children, particularly migrant children, in youth care. Her philosophy is based on her own life story and her experiences. She supports her ideas with theoretical concepts from anthropology, intercultural communication and system therapy.

Kitlyn uses her own story and the stories of others to substantiate her ideas. In the anthropological and social sciences, the use of personal stories to underpin certain beliefs is also known as the narrative approach. The principle of the narrative approach is that in the stories of people and in the language they use to tell these stories, certain ideas relating to a theme are expressed. Stories illustrate the complexity and diversity of ideas and realities. The narrative method gives people a voice; it ascribes value to the story. It gives meaning to the knowledge of those concerned and places this knowledge in the light of a greater whole.¹ There are numerous ways of presenting and analyzing narratives. There are no real formal rules. You cannot be objective in using narratives in order to substantiate theories. What you can do is draw plausible conclusions if a number of stories point in the same direction. The stories in this book bridge the gap between theory and practice. Kitlyn’s own life story led to certain views. She looked for the theory to corroborate these. This theory is subsequently illustrated with stories from third parties.

This book presents the ideas and beliefs of Kitlyn Tjin A Djie. It does not always provide a platform for nuance. And because her views are so interwoven with her own story and experiences, she herself is also prominently present in the chapters.

No ready-made blueprint or prefab solutions are provided in this book. It is intended to offer a new perspective on reality, different from the one you have been accustomed to up till now. This might just raise more questions than it provides answers, but it will certainly make you think. And hopefully it will help you put those case studies where initially you could see no way out in a different perspective, enabling you to give a new direction to solutions.

Most of the stories in this book were told by Kitlyn and by employees of Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe. Aspects in the stories that might lead to recognizability such as names, place names, problems and country of origin of clients have in most cases been altered.

Introduction

This is a book about Kitlyn Tjin A Djie, transcultural system therapist. Kitlyn uses her own story, her family history, in order to show why intergenerational family thinking is so important in the provision of care. And how collective family systems function. Kitlyn’s story is about diversity, migration and moving back and forth between contexts and cultures. She herself is a migrant from Suriname (former Dutch colony) with Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Creole and German blood. She originates from Jewish, Catholic and Protestant traditions. Her father stemmed from a patriarchal system, her mother from a matriarchal one. To this day, her family lives all over the world. If there is one person who knows what she’s talking about on the subject of diversity, it’s Kitlyn. Kitlyn is married to a Dutchman. She has two adult sons and seven grandchildren. She knows better than anyone that it takes certain skills to keep the door open for dialogue with ‘the Other’². She calls attention to the consequences of migration. She offers tools for the care worker to contribute to the welfare of those who have lost their way as a result of a life phase transition such as migration. To achieve this, it is essential to switch between cultures, to look at things from different angles and to set aside sacred cows. In order to be able to do that, some knowledge about the other person is required, such as culture, family structure, traditions. But more than that, care workers must be aware of their own cultural stock-in-trade. They must be able to deploy a personally vulnerable part of themselves to allow for genuine contact with the client. Different strategies and methodologies can be of assistance in this respect. It is important to look for protective wraps for the client. ‘Protective Wraps’ is a term for providing protection by wrapping someone in familiar circumstances. Rituals, photographs, bringing back experiences from the past, creating situations to offer some safety and warmth in a difficult phase of someone’s life.

This is also a book about the province of Drenthe, with its very diverse social landscape. There are many rural areas and relatively few cities. There is a peat culture and a sand culture. There is the history with the Moluccans (inhabitants former Dutch colony), the train hijacking (see chapter 3). Drenthe has its own traditions, its ‘noaberschap’ (the unwritten rule to always help your neighbors), the villages with greens surrounded by farms, but also the dolmens, the war, the secrets, the poverty. In Drenthe, different dialects are associated with different cultures. Drenthe is beautiful, Drenthe is wide and complex. Drenthe offers an attractive environment that illustrates how an original Dutch culture can carry diversity within it, and how the different Dutch cultures can interact. It is also revealed how it relates to the consequences of immigration. In this book, Drenthe represents a small part of the Netherlands. Because each province has its own history and cultural characteristics.

Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe wants to be accessible to all young people. That is why in 2005 a diversity project was launched, in which Kitlyn partook. At the time, she trained all Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe employees in transcultural communication. As a result, they were better equipped to deal with clients who ‘speak a different language’ from that of the care worker. Her trainings were like a warm bath. Without tools or programs, she lures participants into a kind of extended personal conversation, during which everyone tells fascinating stories. As one of them put it: “Alignment with the family stories of the other participants is the best teacher. To be aware of your own cultural heritage makes you a good care worker.” Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe had positive experiences with Kitlyn’s philosophy and working method. That is why in 2006, Irene Zwaan and Kitlyn Tjin A Djie were asked to write this book, of which the first edition appeared in 2007.

In addition to Kitlyn’s stories and theories, the experiences and stories of the employees of Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe are recorded in this book. In Drenthe it is demonstrated that the intercultural dialogue not only applies to migrants. Wherever there are differences, wherever there is diversity in the broadest sense of the word, attention should be given to intercultural communication. This includes the communication between men and women, young and old, protestant and catholic, employer and employee, care worker and client; in short, this way of thinking is valuable in all forms of communication.

This book can be read as a novel, a storybook. In her work with migrants, Kitlyn started off with her own story, her intuition and experiences. She was convinced that in order to help children who end up in the care sector, white Dutch mindsets don’t work. Subsequently, she found the accompanying theory. This book, too, starts off with the story. The story of Kitlyn and the stories of Bureau Jeugdzorg Drenthe employees. Together, the stories paint a model. ‘Protective Wraps’ is a model in which different theoretical concepts provide tools for shaping the dialogue with the unknown stranger in an honest and human way.

Addition to the 4th revised edition

The Dutch version of Protective Wraps, transcultural aid for families was born in Drenthe, after which it took off and landed in various places throughout the country. There have been a number of developments, some of which are worth mentioning here.

An important impulse, for example, was that at the presentation of the book in Assen, capital of the province of Drenthe, several organizations joined forces to establish the platform Protective Wraps in Drenthe. This platform, consisting of organizations for education, care and welfare work, has made an important contribution to the distribution of Protective Wraps in the rest of the Netherlands.

Supported by a European grant, an implementation study was carried out at seven organizations in the western part of the country, with very positive results. As a foundation for this study, PIONN (management consultancy) has developed and defined a scientific substantiation for the working model of protective wraps, which can be found on the website.

The protective wraps model is taught as a social studies subject in higher professional education. Various organizations across the country are trained in working with protective wraps.

The province of Utrecht has deployed protective wraps at eight youth care institutions, with a view to lowering thresholds for migrant children and their families. Research conducted by Forum into the impact of the project showed that there was a high appreciation for protective wraps among the participants in the training courses. The cultural sensitivity of care workers turned out to have increased significantly.

Gradually, we started putting up a house around our work: Bureau Beschermjassen (Protective Wraps Agency). Through this agency we offer training courses: basic trainings for beginners as well as trainings for those who want to teach the model to others. Kitlyn also gives lectures, workshops and in-company trainings throughout the country, meant for everyone who wants to create scope for diversity at work.

From time to time we receive comments on the fact that the book is focused too much on migrants. In such cases we argue that there is very little literature to be found on the influence of migration on family continuity in we-oriented systems, and that this book fills the gap. We also receive many positive signals regarding the major role played in the book by the provincial context of Drenthe. After all, many care providers working in cities in the northwestern Netherlands themselves have roots in the provinces of Zeeland, Limburg, Groningen or Friesland.

The protective wraps model contains a number of theoretical as well as practical elements. Everyone, regardless of personal or professional background, can make use of it. Apart from care workers, the participants at the training sessions include police officers, theater makers, midwives, civil servants and university college teachers. It’s all about safety at the workplace, knowing your history, doing justice to yourself and establishing relationships with others based on your contact with yourself. No fixed methodology is entailed; everyone can set to work with it right away. At the same time, this occasionally makes it difficult to generate exposure. Databases for effective interventions, subsidizers and governments require SMART descriptions. The protective wraps model does not easily fit into such a demarcated frame. Which is precisely the strength of the model.

Addition to the 5th revised edition

The transition in youth care has led to all kinds of district teams and low-threshold facilities, where boundaries that previously existed between disciplines and organizations are less pronounced, and professionals reinforce each other instead of following separate tracks.

In 2015, Kitlyn was commissioned by the municipality of Amsterdam and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences to provide Protective Wraps training courses to all the Samen Doen teams (secondary care teams for the support of families with complex problems) in the city. As usual, there were eye-openers, in particular with regard to the influence on both the professional and the client of family, history and culture over several generations. And when the entire team looked at one particular case with the aid of a genogram and lifeline, they were pleasantly surprised to note their collective knowledge and the added value of looking at case histories in that way. It became clear, for example, that the root of the problem was not a no-good child, but a family with a history of loss and ruptures, causing one parent to suffer from depressions, the other taking refuge in alcohol and the elder brother developing a gambling addiction. All those individual problems have a joint source, which is anchored in history. So it pays for all of us together to look at the one case. The participants in the training virtually always returned home cheerfully: “From now on we will see things in a different light and ask different questions!”

On balance, almost ten years after the first edition, we can conclude that the protective wraps model increasingly fits in with the framework of today’s society, in which the government is focusing more and more on citizen participation and individual strength. However, the fact that an entire family history is involved remains a blind spot, both in case histories and in your conduct as a professional. This means that we will continue our mission with a great deal of passion and conviction, and that we have much pleasure in presenting this revised 5th edition to the world.

Reading Guide

Chapter 1: Kitlyn’s story

Kitlyn tells her life story. She talks about her experiences in Suriname, her migration, and the issues she comes across as a Surinamese in the Netherlands. Her personal and professional findings have resulted in ‘Protective Wraps’. The ingredients in this book can all be traced back to her story as told in this chapter.

Chapter 2: Protective Wraps

This chapter is about ‘Protective Wraps’. By means of the protective wraps model, people who are in an important life phase transition, as is the case with most of the clients in youth care, are embedded in the group or culture. Looking for anchors, pillars of support, rituals or equivalents from the past helps people to compose themselves and to resume their lives.

Chapter 3: Diverse Drenthe

This chapter is about the social, cultural and historic landscape of Drenthe. Experiences of care workers in Drenthe show the extent to which ‘Protective Wraps’ achieves alignment in the province. By zooming in on Drenthe, it is made visible how one small part of the Netherlands itself contains diversity and how ‘the Other’ is dealt with here. You also receive tools to help you unravel diversity in different contexts.

Chapter 4: The power of families

Families have a self-healing capacity. Because this frequently is a blind spot for care workers, attention is paid to how families function, making a distinction between family systems directed towards the individual, such as those in the Netherlands, and the more collectively oriented family systems of non-Western migrants.

Chapter 5: Impact of migration

Migration has a major impact on people from collective systems, partly because it affects the continuity of the functioning of the extended family. Herein lies a large part of the causes of problems in families. This chapter provides an insight into the consequences of migration, so that as a care worker you can take this into account.

Chapter 6: Intercultural competencies

This chapter provides an overview of the intercultural competencies required for an open dialogue with ‘the Other’. This involves knowledge of your own cultural baggage and that of the other person. You should be aware of your sacred cows in order to be able to keep switching perspectives. Empathy and compassion are basic requirements in intercultural communication. Finally, you should be aware of the fact that there are always blind spots in communication.

Chapter 7: Tools for intercultural dialogue

A number of tools are discussed that can be used in the contact between the care worker and the client. Subjects addressed are working with genograms, making a visual overview of the history and structure of an extended family. The lifeline helps to get an idea of important life phase transitions. Attention will be paid to TOPOI, an analysis model for communication. Working with contextual questions, life stories and testimonials will also be discussed.

Chapter 8: New perspective on the provision of care

‘Protective Wraps’ offers a new perspective on the care practice. This chapter examines how it relates to conventional views on the provision of care. It also describes how it fits in with existing methodologies such as Signs of Safety, the Solution Focused Approach and the Family Network Consultation. In addition, we will discuss how it relates to the beacons of New Style Welfare.

1 Does, M. van den en A. Arce (1998), ‘The value of narratives in rural development projects. A case from Equador’, Journal of agricultural education and extension, vol. 5, nr. 2, pp. 85-98.

2 Levinas, E (English 1969) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

1

Kitlyn’s story

Kitlyn Tjin A Djie understands the art of breathing life into theoretical concepts. She does this by examining her own life story like an anthropologist. In this way she invites others to discover their own story. To look at the history and structure of their own family. Because their own story provides them with tools in the dialogue with the Other.

“I like to start off stories at the beginning. Where my cradle once stood. Or where my name comes from. Getting rooted, as it were. My name Kitlyn comes from the Chinese word Kit-ling. Kit-ling in Chinese means ‘enough’. By the time I was born, my father reckoned that there were enough daughters. I was the fourth in a row of six girls. The fact that my father changed Kit-ling to Kitlyn leads me to point out that he is a second-generation migrant child. He has experienced the pain of loss of the first generation of migrants. But he has not personally experienced that loss. He wanted to give me a Western name. By calling me Kitlyn, he connected the West with the East, Lynn being an American name. Explaining this provides an opportunity to look behind the story. It makes me feel supported by my family. It is universal, everyone is part of a family, whether they like it or not. Talking about my family makes people find their way to their own family.

My father was Chinese, stemming from a patriarchal system. In 1866, his grandfather migrated from Themsemwui in Southeast China to Suriname. My paternal grandfather married a Vietnamese woman, born in French Guiana. She introduced the French élan. My mother is Surinamese, stemming from a matriarchal system. Her father was Portuguese-German. Her mother had a Creole father, who was a direct descendant of the enslaved. Her mother’s mother was from the indigenous Caribbean tribe.

Suriname

I grew up in a privileged environment. I lived in a district of Paramaribo of which everyone said: ‘I wished I could live there.’ In a beautiful house, the top part made of wood and the lower part made of stone. It was very striking, with trees leaning forward under the weight of orange flowers. It was a safe nest, a dream house. My father was a white-collar worker. Initially he worked as a station manager for a North American airline. Subsequently he worked for a Dutch company. Rock Hudson and other movie stars came by to visit us. During stopovers, they had to be entertained for the day, with a festive lunch prepared by my mother. Together with people from the district, my father built a swimming pool where only posh people came to swim. My mother’s closet was full of cocktail dresses and evening robes. I remember my parents as each other’s partners rather than as parents. Sometimes my father got home with my mother in his arms. The two of them were always interacting with each other. One of the girls from our neighborhood remembered how mad about each other my parents were, while her father was always cheating on her mother. ‘I wished I had a father like yours, a father who adored my mother!’ she said.

I was a headstrong child. My mother always says that I was the weirdest child she had. I had such a quick temper! I have pushed my sisters out of the window. I was crazy about my father. He was a big friend rather than a father. He told stories about Pete Puff, a little boy who would let out a big stinky puff when danger threatened. That’s how he chased away danger. But my mother was more reserved. She had to be strict, because my father wasn’t.

I remember very well that as a child I felt I had special gifts in communicating. At a very young age – and I knew I was different in that respect – I was able to have a conversation with my father about the domination of the Dutch in his company. About the fact that the Dutch always took precedence over the Surinamese. And how unfair he thought that was. I was about ten years old at the time. I was one of the few children who got along well with the maids, of whom we had a whole bunch. I loved listening to them. I was fascinated by their stories about shamans in the forest. These stories were not allowed to be told or heard in our house, because they were primitive. As a six-year-old girl, I was at the needlewoman’s feet, listening breathlessly to her stories from everyday life. She was a single mother with two children. And we also had an ironing lady, with whom I had frequent quarrels. My uniform always ended up being too stiff, because she used too much starch. This made me furious. Time and again I had told her: It shouldn’t be stiff! What the gardener said I could never understand. With him I found comfort after I’d had one of my fits of rage. At such times I would get so angry that I had to lie down on my bed to kick it off. I was literally kicking. And when I had exhausted myself, I went to the gardener to yell at him in Dutch, which he didn’t understand. But after I had finished screaming, he took my hand, comforted me, and shared his invariably peppery lunch with me. To this day, spicy food has a calming effect on me.

The oppressive atmosphere in Suriname was driving me crazy. I really very much looked forward to leaving. That environment in which you were constantly dictated how to move, how to act. Perhaps it had something to do with the midway position I occupied in the row of sisters. Three sisters were older than me, with a four years’ age difference between myself and the youngest of them. There was an age difference of almost three years between the other sisters. The eldest sister had her own friends, the second and third were like two peas in a pod, always together. And then there were those two little brats that were younger than me and never did what I wanted them to do. I didn’t belong anywhere. Not with the big ones and not with the little ones. My youngest sister only recently said: ‘Kit, you shouldn’t let your hair grow long. It makes you look much too sweet. You’re not, you’re a bitch, you should cut your hair.’ It’s funny how they keep you in your place.

Migration

We all went to study in the Netherlands. My mother was never allowed to attend teacher training college. She had to start work at fifteen. Due to the death of her father that year, poverty suddenly struck. Whereas she had wanted to become a teacher. My father had to stop studying medicine. As an undergraduate he could stay in Suriname, but to continue his studies he had to go to the Netherlands. His brother had already been in the Netherlands and had died there of tuberculosis. His eleven-year-old sister had been sent to the Netherlands by boat to receive treatment for rickets. She died on the way there. It was then that my grandfather said: ‘No one will be going to the Netherlands from now on, because you will die.’ As a consequence, my father was unable to complete his studies. That was the reason why my parents sent all their six daughters away. ‘Be what you want to be, grab your chances.’ In 1969 I left for the Netherlands. I stayed at the same house where my three elder sisters had stayed. Mr. and Mrs. Morren had had girls staying at their house from 1952 onwards. She was German, he a Dutchman, married in 1936. He was the municipal secretary in Amsterdam. I arrived in turbulent times. Mr. Morren frequently got home smelling of stink bombs. In those days, I often sat in Dam Square. I liked the feeling of nobody knowing me, of being able to revel in anonymity. To be in hiding in the years to come, that was my aim. I spent three years in that house: the fourth, fifth and sixth year of the HBS secondary school. It was a golden time. I started to enjoy learning again. I had never liked learning before. I had been living in fear under the nuns’ regime. Those nuns hit you left, right and center whenever the mood took them. But here school was great. The teachers smoked joints with you. But I never lost control, always knew my limits. I thought, without my parents here, who is there to save me? So I sat there in Dam Square being a good girl.

After secondary school, I enrolled at what is these days called Social Pedagogical Care training. I didn’t understand that training. I just couldn’t understand the fact that the Dutch look at children without taking their context, their family, into account. I went to look for an internship that I could understand. De Triangel, where they took in entire families. Very progressive. That’s where the foundation was laid for my current work with family systems. They went as far there as taking in three generations. There was a grandmother, a daughter, and a grandchild. All three of them drinking heavily. The two-year-old child poured the jenever from the teapot. And grandpa regularly paid a visit with his cane to beat everyone up. My colleague wanted to free the women from that man, and arranged for them to receive benefits. But I knew even then that these kinds of systems have been going on for centuries. It would only cause disruption to take action against that man. It would not solve the problem.

An important event around that time took place in southern Morocco. It was 1977, I was 24 years old. I got into a situation I did not recognize and in which I was unable to make clear to anyone what I needed. I was traveling with Hans, now my husband. We were in a jeep with a tour group and crashed into a military truck. The wife of a couple the same age as we were, was killed when the jeep turned over and she ended up underneath. The fact that the jeep turned over was my salvation. Initially the woman was still alive. Both of us were dragged into a van parked by the side of the road. She died on the way, a few hours later. For years I have been asking myself why it was me who had to stay alive. Seriously injured, I spent two weeks in hospital. I couldn’t explain anything, and I couldn’t understand what was happening. I was in much pain, but there were no medicines. I saw all kinds of men at my bed, dozens of them. They spoke Arabic, Berber, or French. Everything I needed or tried to explain failed to be understood. In their world, people who were dying were important. I only had a few broken bones. They lived in a reality totally different from mine. And the surgeon, always bare-chested and wearing an apron with blood dripping from it, was not a man whom I thought I wanted to listen to. No help was forthcoming from the Netherlands, because the owner of the jeep didn’t want anybody to know about the accident. Just before, he had been involved with a death in Greenland. So he never contacted the embassy. Only two weeks later I was picked up and transported back to the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, I started my own family. I married Hans and got two sons, Robin and Michel. The hair of Michel, the youngest, started to get curly around the age of twelve. His sleek black hair turned into a full head of curls. I was delighted: It was grandma’s hair, my mother’s mother! But my son was appalled: ‘I look like a Turk now instead of like a Dutch or Surinamese.’ And my mother was stunned: ‘He’s got the Creoles’ bad hair.’ For me his hair tied him to his roots, his Creole-Portuguese great-grandmother. He had never known her. When she died he was eight years old and had never been to Suriname. What followed was a difficult year for him and for us. Friends no longer wanted to be associated with him because he looked like a Turk. He started shaving his head, and when the curly hair came back he did it again. Later he took to wearing a cap 24 hours a day. After a year of worry, we decided to visit Suriname with him. Words almost fail to describe the change that took place in him within three minutes after arrival at the airport. Peace settled over him. He looked around him, and you could almost literally see him descend into his unknown roots. Back in the Netherlands, he could feel like someone from Amsterdam again, the tension was gone. Commuting between cultures had become part of his life.1

Family Drive

After De Triangel I started work on a Ministry of Justice project aimed at promoting integration in children’s homes. The teams didn’t want any black people because they didn’t look like them. While at that time, 1983, already as many as 40% of the children in that home had migrant backgrounds. I could literally see the desperation of black children there. And the disqualification of the group workers regarding the families. That made my sense of mission come to life. All who worked there were white, except for the mop lady. The mentors believed the children should decide for themselves what time they got home. They had to learn to make choices. Those children went crazy. Some of them went lying down in the middle of the highway. There was this gap between their own home and the children’s home. When parents or relatives came and brought food, they were turned away. It’s not visiting time, they were told. Due to my family drive we started to set up groups in which group leaders, parents and children exchanged ideas about upbringing and had meals together. It was revolutionary. The remedial educationalist I worked with totally agreed. We only disagreed on the way in which to approach migrant parents. I had no language for this, so I started looking for literature to go with what I observed, how systems work. In 1988 I was fired because I was too critical. For six years following this, I worked at a consultancy firm for young people and parents. I was given a special position and could never be fired. After a year I asked them to lift this provision because it drove me crazy. I’m not very positive about positive discrimination. Working for that consultancy firm, I learned to be attractive. We had to make sure that we were client-friendly, so that people would want to come back. I loved it. Every little talk, telephone call, handing out flyers. This is what youth care should be about, always giving your very best for the children, parents, and family. The coordinator brought me in with the idea that we should start interculturalizing and that 50% of the agency should become black. And that’s all been realized.

During that period, based on my experiences in the children’s home, I participated in methodology development for Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). I also did a lot of teaching and started using my family as material. I learned to be attractive to my students. I taught policemen, who put all the racism that existed throughout the Netherlands on my plate. I discovered that it is an extremely complicated field to be active in. That’s when I started to use the genogram, a kind of family drawing through which to demonstrate, on the basis of my own family, how migrant families ‘do things’. I followed the advanced course and wrote a thesis on placing children in their own family, the so-called family placements. I had a number of colleagues in mind for whom the thesis was intended. One of them was Jannie, a very big Dutch woman. She would say: ‘And then I set such a very easy target for this Surinamese mother and then she doesn’t even meet it!’ In other words, those people were in the first place supposed to meet her targets, really dreadful. I wrote a plea for putting the control of the family placements in the hands of the families themselves, not in our hands. When it comes to placements with foreign foster families, the social worker has a coordinating role. But when placing children with the family, we should take a different position. Up till then we had positioned ourselves as the ones who knew it all and were in control. So we kept losing families.