Barriers to Successful Attainment  of Professional Status
From a Cultural/Societal Perspective


In the book titled Perspectives in Professional Child and Youth Care, Anglin, Denholm, Ferguson, & Pence describe four barriers to the success of Child and Youth Care from a cultural/societal perspective:
  1. "Child care is often not recognized as a profession by other professionals or by the general public,
  2. Even when childcare is recognized as a profession, it is the least influential of social services professions,
  3. Childcare is misunderstood; the profession has not been able to convey an accurate description of its services and role to the general public, to other professionals, or to government leaders, and
  4. Child care has not been able to influence child welfare policies and programs or the development of the child care profession in society at large" (1990).

Most of the changes that have been made in recent years have been related to practice methods and the development of professional organizations, which are internal developments. The barriers mentioned above are externally located, and the only way to address these barriers is for CYC workers to turn their attention to the greater community and present an accurate description of their work in order to convince the public that this is important work in children services. It is important for the CYC profession to make this case because child care competes with other professions for support and resources and unless it can overcome these barriers it is not likely to get the support it requires.

Anglin et al, describe how the success of the field of Child and Youth care is dependent on its portrayal by the media. "The way child care work is portrayed in the media will influence how well the profession will be understood and the degree of public support it will have. These, in turn, will have serious implications for how successfully child care can influence government decision makers and, hence, for the future prospects of the profession" (1990).

http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Ee4ZUgiWyTgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA199&dq=child+and+youth+care+supports+for+professional+status&ots=U9jrnfo_8K&sig=f2tW-5K61Ku9fjj9TxxCgpIw9yw%23v=onepage&q&f=false#v=onepage&q&f=false






This website was created in 2011 by Jean Braun and Kristy Jackson
 students in the Child and Youth Care (CYC) stream of the Human Services Diploma program 
as a project for the "Professionalism in Child and Youth Care" course 
at Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC, Canada.