What is Needed to Move Forward


One of the barriers to the professionalization of Child and Youth Care from the cultural/societal perspective is that the field of Child and Youth care is not understood by the public. The first step in moving towards professionalism is to educate the public as to what it is that Child and Youth Care workers actually do. We are not day care workers, we are not strictly social workers; we have our own set of morals and values that apply to how we work with children, youth, and families, and relationship-building is key to that work.

Child and Youth Care workers need recognition from the government bodies that fund our services, as care providers that are integral to the healthy growth of children and youth in our society. We are not "the lady next door" and the training and certification needs to be valued as vital to providing quality care for our children and youth.

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Anglin, Denholm, Ferguson, & Pence (Perspectives in Professional Child and Youth Care) 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).

The field of professional Child and Youth care needs to focus on educating the public; we need to let society know what we do and why it is valuable. This is important because to be recognized as professionals, standards need to be in place. These standards should  be set, not  by the availability or lack of funding, but rather by the professionals who do the work. When the free market society we live in determines that Child and Youth Care work is valuable work, the government will be free to allocate funding to this field.






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.