Professional Issues for Child and Youth Care Practitioners in School Based Settings

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Introduction

Many questions inquiring on the education system of the youth and children care come by, but one major query is whether the professions are in a poison to meet the education demands today. Beside effectiveness, the credibility of professionals in a school setting is the key factors contributing to child and youth development within the current educational debate.

This paper addresses the major professional issues in the discipline of child and youth care practices especially in Canada but in comparison to other countries worldwide.

The Professional Ethics for Canadian Child and Youth Care

According to Ungar (2009), the major professional issues in the discipline of child and youth, care practices include the programs models that are in use within the learning setting, the preparation procedures concerning educator’s role, functions and instructive researches. There is also need to consider the profile and the image of the professionals.

Involvement of the Child and Youth Care Practitioners

The child and youth care practitioners mainly the teachers and workers are involved widely in a variety of ways within the education sector. The Canadian educational system has a variety of program models, functions and roles required for accountability, referral, and initiation of the system. (Garfat, 2004) The approaches these professionals use in combating the issues related to the youth and children is unique and in some cases require therapeutically related approaches.

Considering the Canadian school-based system of child and youth care, myriad school governance programs may be in use to solve individual historically related cases. (Garfat, 2004) The school administrative framework supports a variety of therapeutically and educationally specialized departments with emphasis on structural educational environments for problem solving processes.

The involvement of the professionals indicates that today’s experience is eminent, with great demand on special centres catering for troubled youth or children with special needs. The program also involves other part-time special workshops to address these special needs.

Challenges facing development of child and youth care

There are many challenges regarding the care, but the implication befalls the professionals in the educations sector and they way they address them. The impacts of the challenges are both short-term and long-term and thus the eminent need to address them soonest before any future predicaments.

In line with Bodilly, (2005) the advantage of solving the school related cases is their close references especially the youth related issues. One major problem at a certain institute may already have solutions at another. This makes the professionals or communities to be in a position of borrowing a leaf for better and tested solutions.

First is the challenge of professional roles, functions and preparations. The children and youth based care centre professionals are committed, innovative and proactive. Relating to the Child Care Association (CCA) (2004) and MaCable, (2006) the amount of payment they receive is mostly little and not any close comparison to the amount of tasks they undertake.

The main task of a professional in the Canadian child and youth education centres involves promotion of behaviour and personality growth to ease tension or difficulties in coping with the environment. The child’s problems are due to the common social, emotional and physical confrontations. (Fulcher and Ainsworth, 2006)

The profession requires one to be in a poison of implementing non-academic training in the aim of informal skills development. The child or teenager also need special skills to enable them be in a position to integrate at the family level.

Secondly, there is a huge challenge concerning the program representations within the school setting. The programs involving the youth and childcare practitioners must assist learners to cope with the transitional and social problems. These are young people attracted by the street life and this means that if the education programs are less attractive over other options, then the system may fail to succeed. According to Leach, (2009) today proper school based program models lack proper financing by the government. There is also the need for the community groups to establish and lobby for funding for the institutions especially those concerns with special education.

The issue of programming also arises whereby the educator or child and youth care educators requires collecting of data and providing it for analysis with the aim of program effectiveness. The challenge entails the procedure to use for effective monitoring of the student’s progress and the standards governing the various perspectives for better understanding of growth and change. Today the various programs in use over monitoring have different emphasis. (Bailey, 2004)

Lastly, some systems such as the Canadian educational settings provide very little or no assistance for the government to provide official recognition as an integral part of the ‘training and educational in child and youth care’ management system. The basic perspective remains to be that the “child and youth care is supplementary to the instructional component”. (Bailey, 2004)The main aim of all other related services is to support educational service delivery.

Other recognizable challenges entail the “increasing emergence of seriously disruptive in-school behaviours by youths who openly use weapons, are verbally and physically aggressive, and conduct extortion, prostitution, and drug businesses during the school day”. (Bailey, 2004) He emphasizes that removal of a student from the school setting because of misconduct solves the problem for that particular time, but fails to address the issue permanently thus causing a long term impact to the community.

Today the is a considerable change on the type of programs in use in the education system especially regarding the setting, financial supports, populace and professional harmony. Most of the programs that exist fit the description of insignificant institutions. (Ungar, 2009)

Issues with respect to boundaries, values and ethics

According to Leach, (2009) when the behavioural needs of a child facade some good enhancements in the early ages, the child’s ability to acquire the educational skills is highly enhanced. The early learning prepares the child or the youth to meet any future challenges.

The professions have to ensure they instil proper theoretical and conception skills. The benefit of a thorough early life pragmatic understanding of concepts makes the young person strong enough to face the future systems that influence their career growth and family lives.

There is eminent need for the practitioners in this field to move beyond the stipulated boundaries of government educational ministries for the support of all round growth. This is a separate and special supportive role beyond educational or professional level, which calls for extra abilities.

Issues with respect to the training and pre-service qualification

Research and analysis of various job descriptions and requirements especially in the Canadian setups indicates lack of performance on all the listed functions among the educationalists. (McCable, 2006) The education professionals seem to concentrate on just part of the requirements.

The professional teacher must be in a position to provide wide range of functions with respect to the school, individual students, related groups, families and communities.

General school related functions include the ability to enhance working within a classroom setup with the aim of enhancing behavioural change. Professionals ought to be in a position of moulding social skills of individual students within a class setting. They should also assist fellow teachers in recommending individuals, families or even conferences.

The teacher is supposed to collect information regarding the school or class environmental setup as well as the students’ population. They need to be in a position of promoting coordination and consultation among the teams. Lastly is the issue of participating in school-related meetings. (Bailey, 2004)

The minimum requirement for employment of professionals at the school setting entails the three-year diploma course. The requirements are however becoming stronger due to competition and need for better services. Today the ideal candidate for the teaching profession would be a “bachelor’s degree in Child and Youth Care, psychology or education”. (Leach, 2009)

The Masters Degree and supervised practice is more preferred. The additional skills required for these professionals entail life saving skills to cater for the children and youth concerning “recreational activities, counselling, and assessment skills in areas concerning drug abuse, pregnancy, suicide, career education and learning difficulties.” (Bailey, 2004)

The educators also need to have special positive views over the learning settings and have the sustainability of other professionals especially in the same field with the aim of promoting the learning process.

Professional relationships required for CYC professionals

There is eminent need for group relationships and intervention functions, which include preparing and assessing students. Professionals dealing with teenagers and children need to work as a group for better work force. These are delicate people in a serious stage of development and thus combined efforts are required. It is easy to identify, prepare, intervene and evaluate students for short and long-term group counselling to ensure proper developed social skills.

The grouping of the professional can be across the social-work boundaries or even over the country confines. The initiated groups are also involved in recreational activities as well as social and cultural developmental activities. As a way is responding to the special needs of children, special programs are also required.

Professional communication

Communication entails the personal interactions involving students and educators. According to Leach’s writing, (2009) today the demand for competence on the line of duty is very high. This requires the use of social opportunities to build rapport with the aim of gaining educationally. Professions ought to schedule others in their routines for positive criticism as well as the third party professional opinion over a work related challenge.

Well-developed communication styles and skills are crucial for professionals. This entails both the written and verbally presented work. Proper communication is important in the school setting and its enhancement it achievable through planned schedules such as meetings and discussion groups or programs.

Conclusion

The work of an educationalist remains flaunted with daily new and unique demands. This is a call for implementation of international standards to combat the challenges. There is an eminent demand for teamwork to enhance proper grades. Professional in the education sector musts keep to date with current affairs. They should also be in a position to provide proper summaries or articles of innovation in the sector or upgrades of the existing systems to new systems in close relation to their expertise and experiences.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) reports, approximately 10% of all children are handicapped. Furthermore, the estimates show that at least five percent (5%) of these children in regular school have some special education needs. This is about one in every 1,000 children. This means that in the views of this research, all stakeholders should be involved in assisting the learners to achieve their education in less straining conditions.

Recommendation

This research paper recommends further research with respect to strategies that enhance commitment and involvement. Special total commitment and emotional, physical, spiritual or economical support by the educators and stakeholders for the child and youth care setting especially the needy is important for growth. The voice and presence of everyone can make a big difference in the education sector.

References

Bailey, C.T. (2004). “The 2004 National Survey of Child Development Associates (CDAs)”. The Council for Professional Recognition.

Bodilly, S. and Beckett, M. (2005). “Making out-of-school time matter: Evidence for An action agenda. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Child Care Services Association. (2005). “Child Care Wage$ Project Selected.

Results: Fiscal Year 2004-05”. Chapel Hill, NC: Author. Child Care Services Association. Web.

Fulcher, L.C. and Ainsworth, F. (2006). “Group care practice with children and young People”, Routledge publishers.

Garfat, T. (2004). “Child and youth care approach to working with families”. Child & Youth services, v. 25, no.1-2. Routledge publishers.

Leach, P. (2009), “Child Care Today: Getting It Right for Everyone”. Alfred A. Knopf Publishers.

McCable, L.A. & Cochran, M. (2006). “The New York States School Age Credential Evaluation: Preliminary Findings”. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Cornell Early Childhood Program, Department of Human Development.

Ungar, M. (2009). “Handbook for working with children and youth: pathways to Resilience across cultures and contexts”. Hawker Brownlow Education publishers.

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