Care Visions embarks on pioneering Social Pedagogy initiative
13th Dec 2010
Care Visions embarks on pioneering social pedagogy initiative at Orca House
Opened in 1998 Orca house is Care Visions’ longest established residential child care service. Over the years the Orca house team have developed an environment that encourages healthy relationships and respectful boundaries with regards their young people. So, when we had the opportunity to take on our own pedagogue, Peers Wuschner, Orca House was the ideal place to pilot the initiative. Peer, from Hamburg, is a graduate art therapist and pedagogue with a broad range of experience. He’s worked with adolescents for 16 years promoting learning and development and contributed to therapeutic practices, facilitation of training, lectures, writing and using creative media to develop social aptitudes. Peer has a particular interest in the challenges, and opportunities, that adolescence presents for young people, their carers, teachers and other professionals.
Social Pedagogyis an approach to childcare and education used successfully in many parts of mainland Europe. It promotes personal responsibility through the holistic development of children and education in the broadest sense; practical (hands), logical (head), emotional (heart). Social pedagogy aims to empower young people’s decision making abilities through considered and educated risk taking. It essentially provides them with the education, social skills, care and positive relationships they need to become an active and responsible member of the community.
Employing a pedagogue in a managerial role is unique to the UK thereby enhancing Care Visions’ reputation as an innovative provider of residential childcare with a commitment to continuous improvement. We aim to explore the impact of the pedagogical approaches on the quality of the service as experienced by the young people whilst investigating the compatibility of the approach within the Scottish legal, regulatory and cultural context.
Having spent a few weeks at Orca House Peer’s holistic pedagogical perspective is already emerging in his observations and practice; he is determined to work with the young people in relation to their social and emotional network, their internal and external world and not in the isolation within a fixed environment. Three of the staff has also begun a nine day accredited introductory course to social pedagogy and they are already practicing techniques and conceptual approaches in real time work situations. An evaluation is being conducted by SIRCC across the 12 month pilot period to capture these findings so that the information can be used to design and improve future services.
