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Being a Visiting Researcher at CI
Prof. John Pinkerton, CI Board Member and Professor of Child & Family Social Work, Queens University, Belfast |
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Before leaving Northern Ireland earlier this year to spend five months at the Children’s Institute (CI) as a visiting researcher, I had a stock response when asked why I was going: to contribute to the work of the CI management team; to be involved with the early stages of a project on residential care that is housed in the HIV/AIDS Programme; to establish contact with care staff and young people grappling with the challenge of moving out of residential care; and to explore what lessons the South African social work experience might have for post-conflict Northern Ireland.
Thanks to the support of CI staff and many others I was able to achieve all my aims. I worked closely with the management team in charting strategic direction for the next three years, contributed to detailed project design work on the Residential Care Project, helped tease out the action-research methodology informing the Caring Schools Project, met and interviewed staff involved in preparing and supporting care leavers, planned a special South African edition of the United Kingdom-based social work journal Practice, and developed a detailed proposal for a two-part, collaborative Belfast/Cape Town social work colloquium.
But now, back at home, rattling off that list is not what I find my self replying to when asked: “How was it?” What I actually find myself saying has been: “It scrambled my head a bit!” And then I try to give a flavour of the rich, complicated, confusing, satisfying, de-skilling, affirming, multi-layered similarities and differences to Northern Ireland that I experienced.
I talk of listening to the rich, smooth tones of a young participant in the Growing up in the time of AIDS Radio-Documentary Project whilst sitting on the floor of a garage surrounded by the expansive physical beauty of a landscape in which deep rural poverty is compounded by HIV/AIDS. I talk of my respect for CI staff in their active engagement with not only the intellectual challenge of their research projects and advocacy campaigns but also the emotional demands of engaging with the circumstances they research to advocate for change on behalf of children and families. I talk of my plans to stay connected with the work of the CI and express the hope that others too will find a way, even just by visiting the web site, to share in what the CI has to offer to those of us outside of South Africa.
It has been argued that there are three major approaches to international exchange: to identify and better understand the global processes that shape child welfare needs and services; to compare and learn from different national experiences in shared areas of concern; to be open to the varied and often unexpected ways that striving to understand another country’s experience can provide insight into your own. My time with the CI has shown me the importance of all three but especially the last – the enrichment that flows from dialogue based on mutual respect.
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