EDITORIAL

We are all of us attracted to certain activities — or even work —  in our lives. For many years I have been attracted to child and youth care work, and the child and youth care way of being with people. Within this field I find opportunities that fit with what I believe and opportunities to engage in certain life activities which I find satisfying.

Somebody asked me to identify 10 reasons why think child and youth care is different than other forms of helping, and I find my answer in the opportunities which are offered by this field, like:

• The opportunity to share with people the experiences of their life as those experiences are occurring.
  
• The opportunity to be with youth and families at those moments when their needs are present and are being expressed through their actions.
  
• The opportunity for us to be with individuals in the way in which that particular individual needs for us to be with her or him, at different points in their life.
  
• The opportunity for individuals to have an experience of themselves which is different than their previous experiences of themselves.
  
• The opportunity to help family members be together in relationship by being with them in their relationships.
  
• The opportunity to notice and attend to the exceptions to the problem or the negative story, as those exceptions are occurring.
  
• The opportunity to help people try new things or new ways of doing things, in the context where the real doing occurs.
  
• The opportunity for young people and families to learn how to live life differently, as their life is occurring.
  
• The opportunity to be with people as they struggle to succeed and find new ways of being in relationship — or even just in the world.
  
• The opportunity help through participating in the real world of people.
  

Thom
June 2000

Your writing ... CYC-ONLINE, our monthly magazine, was conceived as a less formal and more immediate opportunity for you — whether a student, a line worker, an administrator or trainer — to put your ideas into words for the information and interest of your colleagues. Ultimately it will be good for more of us to submit material to the scholarly journals in our field [see Journals on this web site] but for beginners and those not yet ready for the rigours of a refereed journal, you are encouraged to send us an article, letter, review, brief extract or even a poem or a joke for publication. Look back over the seventeen issues of CYC-ONLINE already published and see the wide variety of writing which our readers — numbering many hundreds around the world — have enjoyed month by month. Your writing will be an encouragement to others and appreciated by all of us. You are most welcome to ask for advice in preparing something for publication. The address for sending contributions is cyconline@cyc-net.org Thom and Brian Editors