In the context of supporting families in the Focus Group, I will define tenacity as the determination that we practitioners (and organisations) have to persist when most others, apparently at least, have given up building trusting and sustainable relationships with very hurt people.
I propose that tenacity, both within an individual and a team, is a function of energy.
The energy that we have stems from firstly our interest in the job (i.e. that we are the right box – very important – so we are excited by the prospect of working in this area) and also our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual good health.
Tenacity also results from having both a belief in myself and the person who is looking for help.
One of the reasons why young people lose interest in school is they perceive that significant adults (teachers, parents etc.) give up on them. I contend that too much attention (which a lot of young people in distress experience in school and home) is actually experienced by children as giving up on them because it results in them feeling that they are not trusted.
In this regard it is important to remember that they have not matured enough to consciously take responsibility for the part that they play in teachers not wanting them in their class or their parents being very angry with them.
Loss of interest happens because even with the best will in the world teachers do not have the time, training, skill level, etc. (but particularly the time – the majority of teachers are well-trained and very skilled) to deal with the difficult problems that the young people have that might manifest in sometimes very disruptive, destructive and impossible-to-manage behaviour.
The young people then get accustomed to Gardaí (and other boundary setting agencies e.g. special schools, probation etc.) being the only people who have an interest in them on a consistent basis. Very often, in their teens or soon after, they become parents themselves and naturally, continue to engage, unconsciously, in behaviours that will maintain this contact, however undesirable it is to them at a conscious level.
If, however, we are perceived to be significant and nurturing in their lives, and we have the time, space, energy, and know-how to persist (i.e. the tenacity) to respond to their needs (including their need to be trusted) they will gravitate towards such nurture. Not only that, the modelling of different behaviours will eventually have substantial influence.
In the previous Chapter I proposed that an understanding of anthropology (where we came from) is beneficial in our work in child protection. As we noted in that Chapter an important relationship-building practice of our distant ancestors was reciprocity. (That is, give-and-take).
Let us consider reciprocity from an energy point of view.
In a normal give-take relationship, the giver uses energy when giving, but a lot of this energy is recouped by the taker expressing gratitude, or doing something in return. If the give-take relationship is asymmetric [1], i.e. there is no reciprocity manifested by gratitude, and if this continues indefinitely, burnout on the part of the giver is a normal and very understandable result.
This is not an uncommon experience when supporting very distressed people.
Indeed, many practitioners will report that far from being grateful, people in distress may continually complain. It is also challenging for us practitioners, accustomed as we are to continually expect progress to proceed at a certain pace to continue to maintain connection with people who we never perceive as changing for the better.
On a positive note, I have many examples of change being so slow that while it is imperceptible to the practitioner who works with a person constantly, it is noticed by others who might meet the person after a long absence, say, many months or even a year or over.
Generally speaking, the Pillars with their focus on outcomes struggle to accept such long term work as productive – but I will state very clearly here that it is our responsibility as practitioners to ensure that we find ways firstly of being creative in our methods of engagement and connection, and then (just as importantly) capturing progress so that it can be evaluated and measured.
(This will be dealt with in a post in the Chapter on Research and Evaluation in Section Five).
[1]. We have already described symmetry, and we will describe how important symmetry is in relationships in the next Section.