12 minute read
Interact - September 2020 (Special Edition)
Flow of Care Revisited
Michael Pollock
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Historically, the idea of the Flow of Care (FoC) stemmed from the vision of the single Source of wisdom, justice, righteousness, and love in the person of Jesus Christ, out of whom flowed the Great Commission and the Great Commandment as you can read in Dave Pollock’s original article. My father spoke and thought from an ordained pastor’s perspective and his vision included Peter’s letters to the Jewish diaspora. After the Judean War of AD 66 dispersed the early followers of Jesus, Peter was writing from Rome to those who had fled from Jerusalem to what is modern-day Turkey. This third-culture community was very much in the process of “relating their societies or parts thereof”(1) to people of multiple cultures. Peter calls on them to care for each other in a variety of ways, stressing the values of humility, generosity, unity, patience, fearlessness, peace, compassion, hospitality, and love (I Peter 3:8-14, 4:8, and 5:14, and II Peter 3:14-15).
Additions
To this conversation I would add that the term Flow of Care also has a strong root in what some people term the Great Compassion found in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 25:31-46). Jesus gets excruciatingly specific when he talks about what love for one another looks like: feeding the hungry, giving a drink to the thirsty, clothing those without, sheltering the homeless stranger, looking after the sick, and visiting the ones in prison. He promised when we do those things for the least of his brothers and sisters, we do them for Him. Jesus modeled whole person care; meeting spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, and social needs in the Kingdom among us until the perfection of the renewed world is manifest.
I remember walking in the woods with my father shortly before leaving for China in 2003. Many times, we had spoken of Christ’s words, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” However, this time the conversation was in the context of my father releasing his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren to cross the globe to where SARS was still active. My wife Kristen and I hoped to live out Christ-like care for teachers, students, and families in the international school context. As a good father, he wondered, “Who will care for you and for the grandkids?”
His concern was at the heart of the flow of care concept. Showing a father’s love, he encouraged us to serve others and to participate in the kind of community that seeks and values God’s care for us, self-care, and communal care. He encouraged us to be part of a community that addresses the needs of the most vulnerable equally with those with the most power and resources. It is imperative that the “least of these” includes the children of those who cross cultures in response to the call of Christ if we are to be consistent with news that is truly good.
A Target
A flow of care for third-culture kids, adults and families is less an exact model as it is a commitment to provide hands on, practical care for the whole person, throughout his whole life journey that demonstrates and points to the love of Christ. This is what Francis Schaeffer was referring to in his classic book, The Mark of the Christian. That is not to say that there are no models for this care, as several have been developed. Dave Pollock worked with Kelly and Michele O’Donnell to create a member care model that in its newest iteration describes seven spheres of member care. Master care is essentially God’s care for us; then, the model moves outward from Master Care to Self- and Mutual-Care, Sender Care, Special Care, Network Care, Sector Care, and Humanity Care(2) (see model on page 20).
In considering the scope of a flow of care, it is reasonable for various entities and persons to have an area of focus and expertise. However, we must remember that a flow of care is not only for other Christians. If Christians have an ethos of loving even our enemies, then it is consistent that we look out for the interests of every person. Consider the UN report that said in 2019 there were 272,000 people currently residing outside of their passport countries(3). In the spirit of my father’s question in 2003, who will care for these people and their children? With a broad scope in mind, a flow of care addresses whole person, whole life care for cross cultural and mobile populations.
When individuals and organizations provide intentional, practical and personalized care to themselves, their families and team members, what is created spills over into multiple venues and can be reinforced through networks. This effect can be observed with the original FoC concept in the mission’s community. It has worked its way into the State Department, international business HR departments, international schools, and care-groups for the military. When Ruth Van Reken and I were working on the third edition of the TCK book, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, we heard from all kinds of people who had adapted ideas for the TCK flow of care into various communities, including the hearing children of deaf parents.
Dave’s original flow of care(4) for third-culture families walked through the full transition process from recruitment to retirement. A sequence for thinking through the fundamental features of the FoC is included in Dave Pollock’s original article and works off of the Transition Model popularized and now revised in the TCK book, Growing Up Among Worlds 3rd Edition.As families and individuals adjust, they move through the stages of Involvement, Leaving, Transit, Entering, and Re- involvement. The core elements in the FoC include detailed attention to Recruitment, Screening, Preparation/Pre-departure, Departure, Arrival, Field Life, Pre-departure, Reentry (or entry for some TCKs), and Ongoing Support(5).
ICMK Manilla (International Conference on Missionary Kids) provided an initial, key focus on the flow of care. Up until Dave’s death in 2004, he promoted the outworking of these concepts and concrete approaches, including promoting ongoing conversations with experienced crosscultural workers and care providers in third-culture communities. So why are we still discussing what needs to be done?
Four Barriers
A seamless flow of care is not easy to achieve nor to maintain, but there are several trends which are working against current progress:
1.
A false sense that “all is well” and that all that needs doing has been done or is being done by “someone else.” Shifting expectations between those sent, the sending organization, churches and support organizations leave gaps that no one is filling.
2.
Ignorance of the evolving needs and challenges in the third-culture experience. With globalization, there can be a sense that transitions are “not a big deal” and that moving between cultures, countries and continents is fairly simple. Complicated politics and resulting conflicts, shifting centers of sending countries, and global issues like rising sea-levels and pandemics create new strains on resources, planning and contingencies. One of the changes in field life is an increase in the back and forth nature of international work, with families and individuals choosing to do more frequent travels between “home” and “work” cultures. To my knowledge, research has not caught up with the impact of this on children who experience increased mobility. There are many other examples of holes in our knowledge base.
3.
Care-fatigue that expresses itself in exhausted care personnel, reduced executive planning, and under budgeting. I recently heard a church leader lamenting the loss of commitment among missionaries, considering that some missionaries used to pack for the field in their coffins. That kind of one-way-planning may have been lauded in the past and might simplify a member care scenario (yes, that is tongue in cheek) but surely does not free us from the injunction to love one another. Supporting member care personnel and HR departments adequately is not a luxury; it is best practice and simply the right thing to do.
4.
The steep increase in churches as sending organizations along with the high turnover in mission member care departments means that there are often willing, caring people with little training and preparation for the task. Developing a vision and understanding of the elements of the flow of care task takes time, training, study, and experience which also involves the budgeting of time, personnel, and funds. The foresight of member care succession planning is also critical as good care will have a strong relational component and needs time to develop during a handover process.
Achilles Heel
In 2015, Cigna Life Insurance Company surveyed over 2,700 employees of Fortune 500 companies working in over 150 countries. The weakest point of the transition process was identified as pre-departure from international assignments and support in the reentry process. Barely half of the companies had a repatriation program and only 20% of the companies tracked their employees after they had returned to their passport countries(6).
While missionary-sending communities seem to do better with reentry/TCK entry on the basis of anecdotal evidence, many MKs/TCKs speak of a lack of support in transition or during separation from their families during college. There is often a huge support gap as these MKs/TCKs leave university or post high school training and move into adult life. I have also heard many crosscultural workers talk about a lack of support in reentry, debriefing, and re-involvement /retirement in their passport countries.
Hopeful Signs
There is a growing sense that this is a Kairos time in which new relationships are being forged between third-culture care providers locally, nationally and globally. Leaders of care-based organizations for cross-cultural workers are looking for new ways to partner and collaborate with one another to close the gaps and increase the quality of care in the third culture. Groups like Safe Passage Across Networks (SPAN) have developed best practices in international schools and are developing certifications for those who will be trained.
In September of 2019, a group of MK/TCK care providers gathered in Pennsylvania representing TCK care organizations across Europe, Asia, India, Korea, South America, the US, and Canada along with two organizations with workers from “everywhere to everywhere” on the planet. Our task was to consider forming a community of care providers who would work together on TCK care, advocacy, resources, and equipping. At the end of three days, the Global Third Culture Hub was birthed and continues to move forward together through the challenges and restrictions of Covid-19. Since September, the group added two more members representing crosscultural workers from China and West Africa.
Multiple conferences such as MKCS, MKES, SHARE, Global Member Care, EuroTCK, FIGT, and AERC gather cross-cultural workers, care providers, and TCKs to share experiences, expertise, and best practice. While Covid-19 currently challenges efforts to gather in person, the shift to online meeting may actually enhance ongoing communication and collaboration.
Kelly O’Donnell, Global Member Care Model Seven Spheres (2016)
Questions to Answer
As we consider how the flow of care must change and adapt in 2020 and beyond, I think care providers need to answer some important questions:
1.
How does the flow of care address larger societal issues such as abuse that has not been dealt with (particularly but not exclusively sexual abuse) as well as racial injustice and discrimination in third-culture communities?
2.
Whose voices are missing from the discussion table around the flow of care? What perspectives are needed for a truly global conversation and collaboration?
3.
How do we bring greater parity in care between those with greater experience and resources and those with less experience and fewer resources? Whose needs are “slipping between the cracks”?
4.
How might we better engage experienced crosscultural workers and TCKs themselves as the bridges “between worlds” in the third-culture, care community?
Kelly O’Donnell (Doing Member Care Well, 2002)
Conclusion
Jesus said the Kingdom is at hand, within and among you. That Kingdom is not political, militaristic or wealth dependent; it is based on love, the kind that makes a person willing to lay down his/her life for others. Peter, writing to a rag-tag group of essentially war-refugees, reminded them that they don’t belong to this world, that they are resident aliens in exile, and that they are to continue caring for each other—loving one another deeply. Like them, he reminds us that this is our powerful testimony to those who do not have an obedient faith in Christ.
The early church looked out for each other’s needs, spiritually, yes, but also mentally, emotionally, relationally, and materially. If we are going to be true students and followers of The Way, we must press on to do the same. Our current global pandemic crisis has increased the layers of stress and challenges facing cross-cultural, global workers and their families. It is also an opportunity for us to re-engage with the concept of the flow of care, cultivating new growth out of powerful roots that will produce nourishing fruit that will last.
Michael V. Pollock
Michael V. Pollock serves as the Executive Director of Interaction International Inc. He is an international educator, author, presenter, consultant, and coach. He founded Odyssey in China and Daraja in the U.S. which focus on young adult TCK care, equipping and advocacy. He is currently working with other TCK care leaders to establish a global third-culture resource, training, and advocacy hub. An ATCK himself (U.S. and Kenya), he worked in China for nine years as an international school principal and student development director. He has presented globally on cross-cultural education, parenting, and transition. Through coauthoring Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among Worlds (the third edition), Michael promotes a thriving life for people moving and living cross-culturally.
Have a look at the book Michael Pollock co-authored with Ruth Van Reken.
1. Dr. Ruth Useem’s description of the third culture: “we began to use the term ‘third culture’ as a generic term to cover the styles of life created, shared, and learned by persons who are in the process of relating their societies, or sections thereof, to each other. The term ‘Third Culture Kids’ or TCKs was coined to refer to the children who accompany their parents into another society.” TCK World (http://www.tckworld.com/)
2. O’Donnell, Kelly and Michèle Lewis [2016, December]. Multi- Sectoral Member Care: Engaging Our World as Global Integrators. Journal of Psychology and Theology, Volume 44, (No. 4), pp. 303–314.
3. UN website: Migration. https://www.un.org/en/sections/issuesdepth/migration/index.html#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20the%20number%20of,world%20population%20has%20also%20risen.
4. Pollock, David C. [1997, October]. Developing a Flow of Care. Interact, (Vol. 7/No 1).
5. Pollock, David C. [2002, September-October]. Developing a Flow of Care and Caregivers, Mission Frontiers, “From Surviving to Thriving.”
6. 2015 Global Mobility Trends Survey: Cigna Global Health Benefits® (CGHB) and the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) https://www.cigna.com/assets/docs/newsroom/886091-globalmobility-trends-study-brochure-final11215.pdf
