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ISSN 0840-982X

VOLUME 19 NUMBER 2

• Table of contents
• Editorial: Go there - Thom Garfat

Editorial: Go There 3
Thom Garfat

The expatriate child and youth care practitioner: Child development across cultures 5
Jacqueline McAdam-Crisp

The following article builds upon my knowledge as a child and youth care practitioner and my experiences with young children in Ethiopia. The relational aspects in the context of my young family and the larger social environment are expanded upon as a means of introduction. Following this, disjuncture the development of children in the Western context or Minority World and those in the Majority world are explored. Three theoretical perspectives, the Developmental Niche, Social Cultural Theory and the Ecological perspective are introduced as a means of helping the practitioner understand child development across cultures.

Now we are six 15
Liz Laidlaw

Your Special Day 17
Garth Goodwin

The curriculum of self-care for students  in professional career programs 19
Patricia Kostouros

This article focuses on program delivery and curriculum for teaching self- care concepts to students in human service programs. Several concepts related to self-care are presented and discussed; these include stress, burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma. Ways to deliver this information are also included. An argument is made that educators are ethically responsible to pursue this curriculum and help maintain healthy professionalism in the field of Child and Youth Care.

Book Review: Family Practice 23
Jack Phelan

Reflections on the meaning of a support letter 24
Tara Ney

Exploring Dilemma One: Getting paid for doing what you love 27
Carol Stuart

The power of relationship: The theoretical foundation of child-centered play therapy 31
Aleksandra Przybylo

Foster children need to learn how to read 34
James S. Vacca

The research shows that learning how to read is a major problem that foster children face when they attend school. This problem has the most significant affect on their overall academic success in school. For foster children, learning how to read is also critical to a successful transition to a new school setting when they are forced to move to a new foster home. Children in foster care are faced with reading instruction that is often interrupted by frequent moves to different communities and schools, living in different foster homes with new families where reading is not a priority, a lack of parent support with the school, and few opportu- nities for consistent peer groups for interaction and socialization. Foster children, moreover, generally lack positive relationships with school administrators, support staff, teachers and classmates. Since reading is an important part of overall achievement in school, this study examines the plight of the foster care child in leaning to read and it asks the question “Why do foster care children have difficulty in learning to read?” Further, this study examines the reading performance of children in foster care and describes what the research believes can be done to solve these problems and improve the chances for the foster child’s academic success. It asks and answers the question “What can school and welfare agencies do to help improve the reading achievement of foster care children?”

A mind full of music 41
Carol Matthews

Domestic violence and children: The Effects, the systems  and proposed child and youth care professional intervention from an ecological perspective 43
Christine Gaitens

This review seeks to establish how domestic violence affects children (secondary victims) sometimes requiring treatment through a therapeutic program and possible identification as a form of child abuse. Furthermore, the presence of domestic violence requires a response from the individual, community, and society that reflects the serious harm that can be caused. A framework to identify the most effective roles of child and youth care professionals for working with these families based on an ecological perspective is proposed and implications for further education and research are considered.

Standards, ethics, and professional Child & Youth Care associations 54
Heather Modlin

The Journey 57
Charlene Snell

Music and Youth Care: A parallel relationship 59
Mike Richey and Frank den Haan

Making memories 62
Jerome Beker

Out of sync 63
Sylviane Desjardins and A. Freeman

The nature of expertise 66
Mark Smith

Push, pull, dance 68
Thom Garfat
 

Go there

I don’t often tell people where to go these days – although according to the stories my mother used to tell, I was actually quite skilled at it as an adolescent. “You were always telling people where to go” she would say. But this isn’t one of those ‘go there’ times. This is a different ‘go there’. We talk a lot in our field about ‘being there’ and even ‘getting there’ – those two phrases have become a part of who we are and how we work. But it seems to me that if we want to be there or to get there, we need to be willing to go there.

I was talking with a friend the other day about how one becomes a more reflective practitioner – especially as it relates to reflection while in the act of doing (see, Garfat, 2005). We were discussing the difficulty of attending to self while at the same time attending to other and the interaction. Not an easy task, until you get used to it and even then it requires focus; connecting this moment to others, the interaction to self, experience to thought. If one gets too concentrated, ironically, one can loose focus. But reflective practice is just what we need in our field. Part of the reason we have failed to develop as we might, or to move forward when we are stuck, is, I would argue, related to the fact that we are not commonly reflective practitioners. If you don’t know enough about reflective practice I would encourage you to go there, learn about it, become a different, more reflective, practitioner. I was also, for different reasons, reading some of Jack Phelan’s writings on the worker as ‘experience arranger’ (Phelan, 2003).

It is interesting to think of ourselves as arrangers rather than “do-ers to”. It invites us to a different way of thinking about who we are and our purpose in being in interactions with others; why we do what we do, and how we do it. Many of us never think about this – we simply go to work and ‘do it’. And once we have done it, we go home. But what is your purpose in being there? Why do we, as a society, choose to put youth and CYC together? It is important, and worth thinking about. If you have never been there, done that kind of thinking, then I recommend you go there, reflect on you and your practice. I was taking a training recently in which the facilitator asked us to try something I have never done before. It seemed a little bit risky to me, especially given the group I was with and obviously my hesitancy showed.

She noticed and came to speak quietly with me. “You seem hesitant,” she said. “I am,” I replied. “I understand the instructions and the purpose of the exercise, but I am not sure I want to go there.” We talked for a little while about my hesitancy and what that might be about. After a bit I felt more relaxed and decided I might give it a try. “Well,” she said, “you could always go there and if you don’t like it you could just come back.” She made a lot of sense, so I did. By now you might be wondering where I am going and when I am going to get there – hang on, here it comes. I was reading the brochure for the International Child and Youth Care Conference, scheduled to be held here in Montreal in October ( http://www.icycc2006.com ) and it really was a fine read. Given that this is a journal read mostly by North Americans, may I suggest that you go there, to the site and to the conference itself.

Read through the on-line program and I think you will find it attractive. And then go to your agency and tell them you want to go there – but in doing so, don’t just talk about the fine venue (although it is hard to beat Montreal), or the great people you are likely to meet (although that’s true too). Talk to them about how you want to go there in the sense I was talking about earlier. Because if you look at the offerings you will find plenty of opportunities to help yourself go there, to new places in your practice. And what could be better than that! While you are on the net, by the way, you might want to visit the CYC-Net ( www.cyc-net.org ) site, and under ‘The Profession’, review the other conferences that are offered – the other opportunities for you to go there, locally and internationally. And let’s make ‘go there’ a part of our vocabulary. After all, if we go there, it may be easier to be there, and help young people and their families get there.

Thom

Garfat, T. (2005). Men: reflection in action. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice. 18(2), 79- 80.
Phelan, J. (2003). An attempt to be articulate about Child and Youth Care Work. CYC-Online. Available at http://www.cyc-net.org// cyc-online/cycol-1103-phelan.html