Name:       Carol Stuart
Age:          Second Century
Location:  Ontario, Canada

Biography
I started working in this field in 1979. I have worked front-line, primarily in residential care in several provinces in Canada and found them all quite different. This taught me a lot about how the location and the system affects the work we do. After some time in front-line practice I took a position teaching in a college level program for First Nations child and youth care students. It was 1984, and having just had my first child it provided me with more “regular” hours than the residential shift work. I went back and forth for a while between teaching, training, and working in group care settings and then in 1991 when I went back to school to get my Ph.D. I started teaching at University of Victoria and since then have been teaching and researching from a Child and Youth Care base.

How I came to be in this field
I took a job as a waterfront counselor at Browndale’s summer camp. Browndale was an agency begun by the infamous John Brown, who left Warrendale and Thistletown in Toronto to start his own agency. He had some very interesting ideas about therapeutic communities, but ultimately he was jailed for defrauding the government in relation to how he used his operating expenses. We spent the first two months of summer camp carving the camp out of the woods, building the waterfront, and rescuing the docks every time they blew down the lake. Then these fascinating children arrived, en masse, from all over Ontario with their child care workers and they lived in tents on sites that were called by the address of the house they really lived in. Like 120 Grove St. I was hooked. I left University and stayed on in the fall to work – at 120 Grove St. Over the years I’ve moved in and out of different roles in group homes and community practice and I’ve taught young (and not so young) aspiring child and youth care practitioners in college and university in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Recently, in a consultation I was doing I met a young woman working at ….. 122 Grove St.

My favourite saying (this week)
"Take care". This makes a nice email signature which I could put on “auto” but I don’t, I type it every time. And as I type I imagine how I might place the emphasis to go with this particular message. Because there are dozens of way to place the emphasis when you read “Take care” and hundreds of ways to interpret it.

A few thoughts about child and youth care
You need several things to work in child and youth care:

• A high tolerance for adrenalin

• Genuine interest in people under the age of 18

• An affinity for the unusual
  

Last thing I read, watched, heard, which I would recommend to others
I’m not a big fan of television, but CBC has a new series called Being Erica which started in January 09 that I enjoy. If you ever wanted to go back to re-live an experience, thinking it would change your life if you only did it differently, you’ll find this an interesting show.

Favourite child and youth care experience
I have many favorite experiences in child and youth care and it’s hard to pull one out to describe. Favorite implies that it was fun and I truly enjoyed it. I generally enjoy most things that I do, particularly in Child and Youth Care. So I have to describe something that stands out. Today one experience that comes to mind was my “good-bye” party from my very first job as a Child and Youth Worker. It was the first time that I realized that, even though the children were still “in care” and I wondered what kind of an influence I had on them, there were indicators, in the way in which they said good-bye, that I was important to them and that some aspects of the relationship I had with each one of them would carry forward both in them and in me.

A few thoughts for those starting out
Figure out as best you can who YOU are and be yourself in everything you do. This is the essence of genuineness.

What you learn in school is not necessarily reality (an oft made statement about academics) – but if you believe it will work and you work at it long enough, you can make it your reality.

A recommended CYC reading link
http://www.cyc-net.org/quote2/quote-399.html

My favourite CYC-relevant link and why
http://www.youthincare.ca/  The Youth in Care Network is an example of youth advocating for youth and has grown from a small network to a nation-wide movement with many sub-networks.

A writing of my own
Stuart, C. (2008). Shaping the Rules: Child and youth care boundaries in the context of relationship. Bonsai! In G. Bellefuille & F. Ricks (Eds.) Standing on the Precipice: Inquiry into the Creative Potential of Child and Youth Care Practice. Edmonton, Alberta: MacEwan Press.

Influences on my work
The first group of children and youth that I worked with: Gerry, Patti, Peter, Kathy, Danny, Brad, and their families and the agency that I worked in. The students I’ve taught over the last 25 years. Camping, canoeing, karate, swimming. The forests and lakes in Northern Ontario, the mountains in Alberta, and the ocean in British Columbia. Tragedies, particularly those that happen to people I’m close to.

Anything else
A thank you to the people in the field who bring themselves to every conversation I have about Child and Youth Care and an acknowledgement to the diversity of Toronto, where I’ve been since 1999, and which challenges my assumptions in every single moment of my teaching.

Take care.