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Discussion raised again April 2002 ...
A question on the issue of "touch" once again. I was wondering how people felt about the residential treatment homes that have a no-touch policy - what about the children who are suffering from attachment disorder. How do we ensure that they are getting the quality of care from us that they never received while at home? How do we teach them to have a healthy caring relationship if touch is not an option for us as an intervention? If someone could write back to me and tell me how to do this that would be great.
Thanx
Kim
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There is no question that touching is a basic biological need. When infants are denied touching, they die - as they did by the thousands in the foundling homes of the 19th century. This is a condition known as "maramus" - from the Greek, meaning "wasting away". The need to be touched does not diminish with age. Having run a residential center for many years, I realize some of the difficulties involved but, one way or another, touching is essential to the ongoing growth and development of the residents. There are many ways to do it.
Gerry Fewster.
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Dear Kim,
Congratulations to you for asking such an astute question. I am holding that institutions which have a no-touch policy are CHILD ABUSING. They should be reported to the licensing authorities of their particular mental health district. Professionals within that particular community should raise their sincere objections to such lack of caring policies within their respective communities. As I have stated earlier, to touch children is neither bad nor good: touch is a process of human interaction. Good luck for your valid struggle. Please keep me informed of your courageously speaking up.
Sincerely yours,
Henry W. Maier, PhD., Professor Emeritus
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Hi Kim - this touching issue is one that is very delicate and somewhat controversial. Thom Garfat wrote an editorial in the Journal of Child and Youth Care, Vol 12 No 3, 1998. I would suggest you get the article and have all your staff read it as it is critical to establish environments where touching is okay and this is what the article addresses.
As Thom states, "We back away from youth and withhold the most basic human experience, the experience of being touched by another person." I hope and pray that people working with our youth stop this insanity of a "no touch policy" and rethink what their purpose of caring for troubled youth is really about. Certainly it is not about depriving them of this most basic and critical need ...
M Kingsmith
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I think we need to think about where the "no touching" policies came from. They were not introduced with any therapeutic intention. They were introduced to protect staff and agencies from allegations. My sense is that while we can't ignore the potential for allegations, the "no touch" policies throw the baby out with the bath water. You might want to look at Thom Garfat's article "On the Fear of Contact, the Need for Touch, and Creating Youth Care Contexts Where Touching is Okay". It is an interesting dilemma, trying to establish relationship while declaring someone untouchable!
Doug Estergaard
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I work in a residential treatment centre with a no-touch policy. The reason our no-touch rule is in place is the majority of our clientele are dealing with serious issues over sexually offending against others and /or being offended against themselves. As a treatment facility to keep our clientele and staff safe from allegations we have chosen this rule. Keep in mind that we are treatment and the client once they are done with our program will likely be moving on to a more normalized placement in which there are fewer boundaries and rules.
Even though the no touch rule is in place our staff still do handshakes, high fives, pats on the shoulder and hair tussles on a regular basis. We just draw the line when it comes to hugs and wrestling. As for attachment disorder, I have been researching this and so far have found the kids with attachment disorder have never been successfully treated in residential treatment programs as their are too many rotating staff and no primary caregiver to act in the father/mother role.
Rainbow Wilderness Adventures
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I have heard of this no-touch policy in many agencies, and I don't agree with it, but it's got to be worked around some how right? I was thinking: Typically, the reason why we touch others is to feel close to them. So, try to find ways in which you can teach these children/youth to meet their needs of being close to others without the use of touch. Some sort of a messaging program where the kids are taught how to compliment others effectively (eg. You are really nice BECAUSE ...) and everyone gets a message each day or every-other day and this will also raise their self esteem by giving and recieving non-verbal affection.
One thing I would like to add is that if you do have a no-touch policy, all staff MUST make sure, I feel, to NOT teach these kids that touch is bad, but explain to them the reasons for the no-touch policy and that it's NOT because of them. Lots of kids that we work with suffer from attachment and self-esteem problems, and for us as child care providers to tense up or scold whenever we are touched or accidentally touch, this will inadvertently teach these kids that touch is bad.
Hope this helps!
Charlene Mauger
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How can we be in relationship with a no touch policy?? What a sad world we live in that Youth Care Workers feel a need to protect themselves from possible allegations that they put in place such a policy?? I am assuming of course that this was the intent of the policy? I am a very nurturing and yes touchy youth care worker. After many years in the field I have learned to gauge when to touch and am careful to ask if it is o.k. if I am unsure. Again I am assuming that touch means a hug, an arm around or simply a touch on the hand or shoulder.Iam currently working with an 17 year old female who has been with us for over a year. I actually playfully chase her in an attempt to touch. This is a young woman who although protests, is also like a child whom has never been shown affection, and it is obvious to all that she enjoys such attention. I have also encountered many youth care workers for whom touch has not played a part in their familial relationships and describe their experiences as unfortunate. That is until they met me, ha,ha. It is my belief that those afraid to touch in a therapeutic way need to reconsider their choice of career.
Debbie Carver
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I finally had to make a response to the issue of touch in our work with children that illustrates both the importance of safe touch with children and youth and the lengths to which youth may go to have that need met. A number of years ago, when I still worked in residential care, a young teen was admitted to the program. She was a physically aggressive, a runner, a drug user and we suspected had been physically and or sexually abused. Our inititial time together was very chaotic, and stressful as we had to physically restrain this girl for her safety and the safety of others on a fairly regular basis, (almost daily). An interesting thing began to happen though as the relationship developed and the youth began to feel safe in the environment, both the frequency and duration of her acting out behaviours and the need for restraint decreased. We as a staff also discovered that as the relationship developed and she felt safer, her need for physical touch remained but the type of touch needed changed from full restraints to a gentle, reassuring touch on the shoulder from a staff person as she was greeted at the beginning of the shift.
One of the most powerful things we can teach children and youth is what safe touch is about.
Varley Weisman
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For some people their own body is sacred and out of respect for each person's body and spirit, I believe permission whether verbal or non-verbal should be given by the client to be touched first.
Tracy Robinson
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Greetings
The issue of touch is a very interesting topic. I work with young and older girls on a part-time basis. The contact between us is both verbal and physical. What is meant by the term physical is touch or a hug. At times we work with children that have never experienced physical contact. When a youth is having great difficulty and has stepped temporarily off the path, after each intervention session a hug is given to give reassurance. One major factor that needs to be considered. Young persons that have been placed due to sexual abuse, a hug can transmit a wrong message. We as persons require a touch at times or a hug just to reassure us that we are alive and well.
Kaz
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In my work guiding children, youth and adults to develop inclusive leadership skills for exploring diversity, the skill of "touch control" (knowing when and how to touch without being rough or otherwise making others feel uncomfortable or unsafe) is one of the top twenty skills covered.
Touch and other aspects of physical boundaries is also a huge diversity issue to explore. There are huge differences between cultures, families, ages, status, and other identity groups in the meaning of and rules about touch, body language, physical proximity, eye contact and all aspects of nonverbal communication. When children, youth and adults from diverse backgrounds are coming together in any setting it is important to establish clear expectations for body language and physical boundaries - including rules about touch - in that particular setting and also explore similarities and differences in the expectations and rules (i.e. cultural baggage) that each individual comes in with. Respect for each other's different body languages is as important as respect for each other's different verbal languages and other aspects of our backgrounds. Learning about touch is a huge set of skills and values. Children, youth, and adults who have been physically and sexually abused have - by the very definition of these two types of abuses - had their learnings about touch very badly disrupted and so re-teaching appropriate touch and appropriate interpretation of touch is a very important part of our responsibility in working with children and youth.
It is also super important to do a great deal of self exploration about what I use touch for and what I am communicating/teaching about human relationships when I touch another person or ask another person to touch me in any way.
Hopefully this particular discussion is leading each of us to reflect more deeply on our own touch communication, touch control, values about touch, boundaries, and baggage about touch that we are each carrying around with us as part of our diverse life experiences..
Linda Hill

http://www.cyc-net.org/threads/Notouchpolicy.html

Losing touch
With teachers and carers no longer allowed to offer comforting hugs - or even put on a plaster, their relationship with the children they look after is suffering, writes Josie Appleton
It's an everyday drama at primary schools up and down the country - but according to London teacher Kate Abley, a child wetting himself in the classroom is no longer a molehill, it's a mountain. "One male teacher refused to change children - he'd get other teachers to do it," says Abley. "Another teacher would call the child's mother to come in and deal with it." Those teachers who were prepared to change a child's wet pants were supposed to take another adult into the changing rooms, to keep an eye on them. "The whole thing was completely impractical."
There's a growing panic among childcare professionals about touching young children in their care which, says a group of academics at Manchester Metropolitan University's Institute of Education, is causing concern and uncertainty about what's OK and what's not when it comes to innocent physical contact with youngsters.
In research they are planning to publish later this year, academics Heather Piper, John Powell and Hannah Smith describe how some child carers are reluctant even to put a plaster on a child's scraped knee. Very young children have to treat their injuries themselves - with the nursery worker or teacher giving instructions on how to open the box, take out a plaster and stick it on. If a child's parent is nearby, he or she is summoned to deal with the injury.
Piper describes it as a crazy situation. "Many people are behaving in completely ludicrous ways. What is cast into doubt is the process of normal nurturing - the way adults are with children." Comforting a child when they're upset, putting a plaster on them, changing their wet pants - all these everyday ways in which adults care for young children are now seen as suspect.
"Children are used to being cared for by adults, being picked up and having somebody put their plasters on. If they go to places where adults don't touch them, this must be quite horrifying," says Piper - she cited the example from one playgroup in her research where there was "no touch that was caring at all".
When there's an emergency, childcare professionals are often struck dumb, unable to do the obvious thing. Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University and author of Paranoid Parenting, says that there has been a "de facto ban on physical contact between adults and children". He cites an example from a school in Bristol where a seven-year-old boy got his head stuck in the railings and endured an 80-minute wait until he was freed. "Not one of them attempted to pull him out, or even put an arm around him to reassure him," says Furedi. Peter Wild, a former PE teacher and now head of behaviour support for Birmingham LEA, says teachers today couldn't do what would have once been instinctive. "On one school trip 20 years ago a small boy got his willy caught in his zip when he went to the toilet. I went in and freed it. Now there would be a fuss, and the boy would have to go to casualty."
Teachers hold back from offering children support or comfort, says Wild. He says he was once asked by a female primary school teacher whether it was OK to cuddle a child. "A few years ago you couldn't imagine a teacher asking that," he says. Another infant teacher told Piper that "under no circumstances must you hug a child or put them on your knee". The result is a fraught relationship, with nursery workers extricating themselves if a child tries to hug them, and teachers afraid to put their arm around a distressed child's shoulder. And it isn't only younger children who miss out: Toby Marshall, a teacher from east London, says this frostiness particularly affects teachers' relationships with more difficult teenagers. "Students who are disaffected often need you to reassure them - to collude with them, to break down some of the professional distance," he says. "Sadly, I tell my colleagues you just have to be guarded."
Teachers who work with deaf and blind children need to touch in order to communicate - yet Piper reports that one special-needs teacher was accused of abuse when an onlooker misunderstood her actions. Touch can help improve a child's technique in music or sport - Nicolas Chisholm, head of the Yehudi Menuhin School, says it used to be common practice for violin teachers to feel a pupil's arm to check they were relaxed, while singing teachers would feel a child's rib cage to study their breathing pattern. Today violin teachers would warn a child before they touched their arm - and singing teachers ask children to put their own hands on their chest.
What's clear is that teachers are taking a hands-off approach: they're sacrificing their judgment and common sense about how best to relate to children. And they're abdicating their responsibility as carers - to fix scraped knees, or help children go to the toilet - as well as blocking up normal, spontaneous interaction. But no-touch policies come with official backing, apparently for teachers' own protection. In 1998, the Local Government Association warned against teachers rubbing sun cream into children's skin. A spokeswoman for the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers supported the move, saying: "We advise members to be extremely cautious about things like that because of false allegations which can lead to immediate suspension and dismissal."
Teachers are acutely aware that a single accusation could ruin their career. "It doesn't matter if you are exonerated," says Wild. "You are tainted." He now advises teachers to assume what he calls the "defensible position", which involves asking themselves: if somebody was out to get me, and they could see what I am doing now, what would they make of it?
Far from being a rational strategy for combating child abuse, though, this policy reinforces a generalised sense of mistrust, with adults looking suspiciously at other adults' - and their own - interactions with children. In general, says Furedi, there's a broad suspicion about adult intentions towards children. "In recent years, stranger danger has been redefined as adult danger," he says. Adults view themselves as potential abusers, in need of round-the-clock surveillance. According to Professor Alison Jones, a world expert on this issue, who teaches at the University of Auckland, teachers see themselves not just as dangerous for the child but the child as dangerous for them. This is hardly conducive to a positive sense of vocation - and it's perhaps not surprising that young men are turning away from primary school teaching in their droves.
An apparent paradox is that no-touch policies have coincided with an explosion in the numbers of "touch professionals". Massage in schools and nurseries, for example, is now widely encouraged: some schools send their "difficult" children for massage sessions in an attempt to calm them down, and other schools are bringing in massage for whole classes. In Sweden - a country that has a no-touch policy on a par with Britain's - more than 70% of daycare centres use infant massage.
So, stroking a child's back to comfort her is dodgy, while stroking her back as part of a trained massage routine is fine. What's happening here, argues Piper and her colleagues, is the "professionalism of touch", serving to remove it from the world of the "natural" and insert it into the world of the "technical". While everyday informal touch between adults and children is viewed as suspicious, touching is recast as an area of professional expertise, and consigned to special massage sessions.
Piper and her colleagues have started a 12-month research project and are talking to parents, teachers and children about the issue and trying to work out a better way forward. One suggested solution would be clear guidelines which lay down the line on acceptable touch. There's a danger, though, that this would just reinforce suspicion - once professionals start adopting codes they're really admitting their natural instincts can't be trusted. And imagine what the guidelines would look like: touch only below the elbow, and only if the child is severely distressed.
In New Zealand, meanwhile, Jones reports some schools are promoting themselves as "hugging schools", while teachers are making a determined move to touch and hug youngsters. But that seems forced, making touch into a principle rather than just doing what seems right.
Perhaps the best way ahead would be the simplest: individual teachers trying to just act normally around kids. But on a grander scale, maybe what's needed is this: for adults to learn to trust one another again.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/feb/09/schools.uk