It has been conference time, and child and youth care workers at all levels and in a variety of programmes have had the opportunity of laying before their colleagues the things they are doing in their agencies and the way they are thinking about the field as a whole.

For some, this exposure presents no challenge: those who are confident in their practice or who are producing results which speak for themselves are keen to share their approaches and insights. For others, this may be more scary: "What do I know?" "What will others think?" "How good, really, is this method or programme or idea?" One answer is that we judge methods and programmes by their results. Another answer is that we don’t really know until we consult with our colleagues and hear what they think — and in a sense that is what Conference offers us: the critical presence of colleagues.

But of course this does not only apply to conferences. Our daily practice ‘back home’ should equally be open to the scrutiny of colleagues. Each of us is accountable to our clients and their families, to the agency we work for, and to the profession we are part of. This means that we should be constantly seeking to match what we do with the expectations and rights of each of these constituencies. This may be harder than it seems.

For one thing, we do not all share a common training in our work. We learned from different teachers, we work from different philosophical starting points, and we have differing levels of experience in the field. Nevertheless, professional colleagues are our best points of reference when it comes to improving our practice: we watch others in order to learn from them; we are watched by them in turn and can be open to their guidance and their questions.

But there is more than this. Masud Hoghughi reminds us that we must each be able to account for what we do, no matter what position we hold on the ladder of seniority and authority. "Why are you doing that?" is a legitimate question which we should be willing to accept from any quarter — and be able to answer it. It should be expected of us that there have been considered developmental and therapeutic reasons for any of our decisions or actions in our practice. If we are child and youth care workers, we should be able to tolerate the question "Why are you doing that?" from any colleague.

And if we are principals or senior staff members, we should be able to welcome such a question from our juniors. Dr Maxwell Jones, a pioneer in the formulation of the idea of the therapeutic community, took this even further when he suggested to his fellow psychiatrists more than thirty years ago that "the doctor, in order to understand and use the forces within a social situation, must be willing upon occasion to become the subject, and have his performance scrutinised by his colleagues, and even by the patient when this seems appropriate". How much more focused and purposeful would be our care practice if none of us were allowed to get away with "Because I said so" or "Because that’s the way I do it". Those of us accustomed to receiving regular supervision know that more is expected of us than that, and indeed supervised workers recognise that their own personal and skills development is enhanced by a colleague asking "Why are you doing that?" If we are serious about the growth of our own effectiveness in child care work, it is a question we come to value rather than resent.

When we can tolerate this question ourselves, we are freed to ask it of others. "Why are you doing that?" becomes an admission that we also need to learn and understand more about the methods of our craft. Thus a learning environment is created where checks and balances are brought into the equation which must always have as its subject proficient child care work.

So at Conference, the spirit of any presentation is "This is what we have been planning and/or putting into practice — how are we doing?" A collegial atmosphere, where all share the goal of effective practice, and where theoretical challenge and constructive criticism are welcomed, can be a prototype or a reflection of the way we work back home. Thus we give expression to our accountability, not only to our clients and agencies, but also to our profession.

BG