This monumental, combined effort of more than 19 experts in the field is designed to serve as a much-needed resource of effective, research-based practice. It focuses on the utilization of knowledge as an interactive process between the field and the residential group care practitioner. Its 15 chapters and numerous case studies and examples amply illustrate this dynamic process in many of the critical domains of residential child and youth care practice, with useful implications for nonresidential settings as well.
From open and straightforward accounts of residential care workers, The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers shows you how care is handled, not how it should be handled. This book introduces you to a social reality, a sometimes very difficult and challenging social reality, as it is viewed by its participants. If you want to know more about what is actually going on in residential care and the discontent that workers frequently experience, this is the book that lays out the facts, the problems, and the nature of residential youth centers. The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers broaches the problem of tension between workers and residents and hopes that bringing the problem out into the open will be a first step toward a solution. You learn that the very arrangement of residential care automatically sets up antagonism between the sole group care worker and his/her wards; residents tend to resist the inherently coercive efforts of the worker who tries to bring them through processes of change and socialization. The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers will make you think about: residential care and conflicts group interaction career satisfaction and dissatisfaction interpretive sociology of education and its methodology social control Interviews with Israeli residential care workers are presented to help you understand the circumstances under which residential care providers experience discontent, or job dissatisfaction. You learn which workers are most likely to feel discontented and how staff members cope with the stress and discontent they experience. Youth care workers, policymakers, child-care staff recruiters, supervisors, and trainers will find this book sheds much light on the problem of discontent and the need to make child and youth care facilities more humane for residents and staff alike. It will also help social work educators and researchers in sociology, social work, and the social psychology of education get in touch with what goes on inside the walls of residential care centers.
This book provides an overview of the core professional issues in the field of child and youth care practice. The author explores themes ranging from relationships and the exploration of Self to career building and field-specific approaches to management. The book is written from a pragmatic perspective, and serves both to advance current thinking in the field about professional issues as well as to provide the student of child and youth care practice and practitioners with practical and accessible approaches to developing a strong and sustainable professional identity. All of the themes in this book are explored within a context of ethical decision-making and practice approaches informed by a commitment to children’s rights and empowerment. Throughout the discussions, concepts and themes are considered in relation to four specific lenses: the power lens, the diversity lens, the language lens and the transitioning from theory to practice lens. These lenses serve to ensure that the reader adopts a critical understanding of the professional issues in the field and is able to develop his or her own professional identity while mitigating the power and identity issues necessarily associated with being a practitioner in a helping profession. This book was published as a special issue of Child and Youth Services.
Find out how group care for children has changed in the last 20 years Group Care Practice with Children and Young People Revisited focuses on the core issues that shape the quality of care that’s provided in institutional and residential care settings, as well as day care services that rely on the group process. Leading authorities on residential group care practice from around the world examine practice concepts centered on three broad themes: working directly with children; working indirectly to support children and their families; and organizational influences on practice. This unique book offers valuable insights for dealing with the daily challenges of working with young people in responsive group care. Group Care Practice with Children and Young People Revisited builds on contemporary themes that were explored by the editors more than 20 years ago in Group Care for Children: Concept and Issues, and Group Care Practice with Children, both out of print. Contributors to this updated collection put a fresh spin on the original material, as well as cross-cultural analysis from both sides of the Atlantic, Australia and New Zealand, Malaysia, China, and the United Arab Emirates. They revisit the key issues identified in the earlier books and provide personal and professional reflections on what has happened to their practice themes since the early 1980s. Special attention is paid to how social policy imperatives—normalization, de-institutionalization, mainstreaming, least restrictive environment, minimal intervention, and diversion—have reshaped the field, group care methods and skills needed for direct and indirect care, and group care as an occupational. Group Care Practice with Children and Young People Revisited examines (and re-examines): the relationships between group care practice and education how group care programs can become hostile to families primary care in secondary settings the importance of shared language in a group care center group development how group composition can influence the overall functioning of the group managing occupational stresses in group care practice patterns of career development in child and youth care economic influences that impact group care challenges facing the future of group care services for children and much more Group Care Practice with Children and Young People Revisited is a must-read for youth case workers, child and youth care educators, and anyone working in child welfare, including youth justice managers, administrators, and policymakers.
Use this newly developed family-oriented approach to be a better youth worker! In A Child and Youth Care Approach to Working with Families, practitioners and trainers in a new child methodology show you how to expand your youth program to involve family work using the Child and Youth Care Approach. This book provides a new way of looking at work with families in which the helpers are involved in the daily life of the families they are supporting. This book will be valuable to practitioners and instructors of the Child and Youth Care Approach as well as to youth workers, foster parents, and social workers who want to develop their own knowledge and skills in working with families. A Child and Youth Care Approach to Working with Families is designed to help youth care workers engage in a working relationship with young people and families that can facilitate change and allow families to live together more effectively with less stress. This book emphasizes that the family be involved in the care and treatment of young people. The authors reveal methods for connecting with each family by reflecting their rules, roles, culture, rhythm, timing, and style. This book will help you: develop your proficiency with the Child and Youth Care Approach to working with families shift from working in residential-only programs to in-home family prevention create as many moments of connection as possible among family members learn what boundaries need to be maintained to gain credibility with families provide effective supervision for staff working with families create activity-oriented family-focused work to develop family relationships and more! The authors of A Child and Youth Care Approach to Working with Families offer unique insight into the successes and failures of those who have moved into this area of helping troubled youths and adolescents. Special features of this book include specific learning exercises and short stories and case scenarios for you to practice alone or with your colleagues, as well as tables and figures. This book will introduce students, practitioners, and programs directors fully to this latest development in the field and help them engage more effectively with families. All royalties from this book will go to support CYC-Net (www.cyc-net.org).
The Anthropology of Child and Youth Care Work presents and illustrates an anthropological model of child and youth care work and explores the associated benefits of such an approach. Author Rivka A. Eisikovits’model enhances workers’on-the-job effectiveness with clients and co-workers and improves intra- and inter-organizational communication with other human service providers. This book prepares child and youth care providers, educators, researchers, administrators, consultants, supervisors, and organizers to become change-sensitive, process-oriented observers, analysts, and co-designers of the systems within which they function and those with which they interact, such as families, communities, and referral agencies. The model presented in The Anthropology of Child and Youth Care Work offers readers an organic continuum between everyday work experience and conceptual practice, organizing such haphazard events into a systemized body of knowledge. Although providing specific skills, it is more than a technology--it is a humanistic worldview from which a humanistic practice philosophy can be derived. Specific points of this philosophy that child and youth care professionals learn about include: the cultural learning theory ethnographic inquiry and description staff-client relations the sick-role trap microcultural events in residential settings the relationship between treatment and education subsystems a heuristic approach to service delivery family cultural ethnography for cultural sensitization Eisikovits’anthropologic perspective broadens the horizons of child and youth care work and equips practitioners to transcend narrowly drawn organizational boundaries. By presenting caregivers as cultural translators between their clients and various decision-making forums, The Anthropology of Child and Youth Care Work prepares them to face the challenges of a dynamic emergent profession and helps them perform successfully in a rapidly changing social context that requires constant assessment of needs and evaluation of performance.
Comprehensive Handbook of Social Work and Social Welfare, Volume 3: The Profession of Social Work features contributions from leading international researchers and practitioners and presents the most comprehensive, in-depth source of information on the field of social work and social welfare.
A solid, theory-to-practice guide to contemporary mezzo and macro social work Written by a renowned team of scholars, Social Work Practice with Groups, Communities, and Organizations focuses on the contemporary theory and practice of social work. Each chapter delves deeply into the key theoretical considerations surrounding a particular practice area, exploring the clinical implications of each. Spanning the full range of both mezzo and macro practice areas, the authors thoroughly look at the assessment of and interventions with group, community, organizational, and institutional settings. The most authoritative book in this field, Social Work Practice with Groups, Communities, and Organizations features: A focus on evidence-based approaches to assessment and intervention for each practice area discussed Comprehensive coverage of the most important new and emerging practice technologies in mezzo and macro social work Current and emerging demographic, social, political, and economic trends affecting mezzo and macro practice An array of pedagogical aids, including Key Terms, Review Questions for Critical Thinking, and Online Resources Content closely aligned with social work accreditation standards (EPAS) Providing a solid review of the entire scope of contemporary mezzo and macro social work practice, Social Work Practice with Groups, Communities, and Organizations is both an indispensable educational text for students and a valuable working resource for practitioners who work with groups, communities, and organizations of all sizes.
In Residential Treatment of Adolescents, Pazaratz discusses how practitioners can remain emotionally available for the needs of their residents without feeling overwhelmed. Readers will be apprised of ways to deal judiciously with residents who try to circumvent, con, play workers off each other, and even attempt to seduce or manipulate the worker. Each chapter instructs readers to observe their clients and comprehend how they relate to the total environment, in order to determine what the resident is feeling and how he or she makes use of personal resources. This contextual understanding helps to answer questions such as: What are the youngster’s goals? What factors obstruct the change process? What are the youngster’s defenses and against what? How does the youngster use the milieu (staff and peers) and the community as resources? How can the youngster get significant others to react differently to him or her? Ultimately, Pazaratz demonstrates that effective treatment staff do not create dependent youth, make treatment oppressive, or enact a role based upon giving consequences. Instead, the reader will learn to integrate diverse intervention strategies into the resident’s normal cycle of daily life and how to interact within a team structure.
