Professionalism in Child and Youth Care
Barriers to Successful Attainment of Professional Status
From within the Child and Youth Care Field
"Child and Youth Care practitioners continue to adopt an independent professional stance toward their practice but are working in organizations that are required to respond to the demands for evidence based practice" (Stuart, 2009).
One of the biggest barriers to attaining professional status for Child and Youth Care work, as outlined by Carol Stuart in Foundations of Child and Youth Care (2009), is the free market economy we live and work in. What follows is a direct quote from Stuart's book which explains why this free market economy is a barrier to professionalism in Child and Youth Care.
"While the principle of a free market is supposed to increase consumer control and quality of service (through competition), what actually happens is increased government control due to contracting. The agency is not free to develop its services because the funder is the government, accountable to the public. Governments request accountability through demands to implement evidence-based practices. The agency, at the same time, looks for ways to reduce its cost, and therefore resists hiring highly qualified practitioners, who can think independently and professionally. Currently, governments expect that organizations will demonstrate through scientific procedures evidence that the interventions will work with the clients referred. This is not a climate in which the field can develop competent, self-directed professionals qualified to make independent judgements. Child and Youth Care practitioners continue to adopt an independent professional stance toward their practice but are working in organizations that are required to respond to the demands. Evidence-based practice and treatment develop in an environment where government expects evidence of effectiveness and efficiency. Some authors claim that evidence-based practice is not possible because success requires the co-operation of the client, which (paradoxically) requires individual response on the part of the practitioner to the client encouraging the client to interact and co-produce the result (Peters, 2008). This co-production approach requires professional Child and Youth Care practitioners with a collaborative approach to practice" (Stuart, 2009).
Another barrier listed by F. Barnes in Extending child and youth care to serve the life span: a look at concepts and practice, is the rivalry that exists between those who have training and those who do not. Barnes writes that, "with this approach has come the realization that child care staff usually lack the professional know-how and status for the responsibilities they carry. People coming into the field have extremely limited or no training. Rivalry between professional and nonprofessional workers is still strong. American efforts to remedy the situation are inadequate and lack a uniform approach. Most of the training is carried out through local in-service training programs or short-term extramural courses, seminars, or workshops, which usually deal mainly with a specific local emergency. Experiments in employing child care workers with professional training in some related discipline have had mixed results" (2004).
Third, a barrier to professional Child and Youth Care work from within the Child and Youth Care field can be the very professionalism itself, and how it looks. In Professional Boundaries in Child and Youth Care Work (2007), Nancy Marshall addresses the issues surrounding professional boundaries and how they impact relationship-building with the children and youth. In a study conducted by Weisman in 2006, "young people expressed various attributes that they looked for in a child and youth worker. These included 'someone who genuinely cared... loved the kids... talked 'with' rather than 'to' me... felt warm... felt loved... a friend... feelings of comfort', and so on" (as cited by Marshall, 2007). Marshall says that it is unfortunate that some agencies get "so concerned with this 'safe connection' that the love and nurturing in the work is lost" (2007). Marshall goes on to say, "although there is a definite need for boundaries and limits, it is equally important we not lose sight of the fundamental love and nurturing needed to build therapeutic relationships."
Extending Child and Youth Care to Serve the Life Span: A New Look at Concepts and Practice
| emerging_issues_in_cyc_education.pdf |
| professional_boundaries_in_cycw.pdf |
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.
