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We believe that recent thinking about child and youth work as a professional discipline has not focussed sufficiently on the relationship between the discipline itself on the one hand, and its professional status on the other hand. Methodologically, the analysis has consisted largely of delineating a number of variables that are said to constitute indicators of professional status, and then searching for empirical evidence that confirms a positive correlation between such variables and the discipline of child and youth work. Indeed, Etzioni’s criteria for professionalism are almost invariably cited in this context. The outcome of such studies commonly involves the identification of a series of steps that need to be taken by child and youth workers in order for child and youth work to become and to be recognized as a professional discipline (Austin, 1981; Kelly, 1990; Mateff, 1997).

We do believe that these studies are extremely useful, and they have without a doubt helped child and youth work along the way to becoming a professional discipline. We argue, however, that such studies assume a common understanding of what the discipline is, and how its boundaries vis-à-vis other disciplines might be delineated. This is a highly, if not excessively, optimistic assumption.

We believe that considerable ambiguity exists about the parameters of child and youth work, both among child and youth workers and within the global community. The discipline of child and youth work has not been sufficiently differentiated from other related disciplines, and the role of the child and youth worker, particularly in the context of multi-disciplinary treatment teams, remains largely undefined. This, in turn, has a significant impact on the capacity of child and youth workers to represent the discipline and to form useful and well-defined professional relationships with practitioners of other disciplines.

Our discussion of child and youth work therefore starts with the discipline itself, and then gradually moves toward the issue of professional status.

The four elements of the professional discipline — epistemology, training, relationships/representation, and association — are integrally connected within a systemic dynamic, whereby epistemology provides the (knowledge) foundation of the discipline, training provides the tool through which the discipline is operationalized, relationship/representation represents the public manifestation of this operationalization, and association serves to regulate and monitor the systemic equilibrium.

The system as a whole is dynamic and progressive, inasmuch as the disciplinary epistemology continuously provides a need for further training, which serves to generate new elements within the relationships/representations, and thus requires continuous regulation and monitoring of the system’s equilibrium, carried out by the association. The discipline and its professional status thus continuously reinforce each other.

We believe that this representation of the issues pertaining to child and youth work as a professional discipline may help to renew this very important debate. Our hope is that this conceptualization of "professional discipline" may also lead to the identification of specific actions that can further the recognition locally and globally of the discipline of child and youth work.

With this in mind, we now turn to a more thorough analysis of the four elements within the systemic dynamic of child and youth work as a professional discipline.

PATRICK GAUGHAN and KIARAS GHARABAGHI
Gaughan, P. & Gharabaghi, K. (1999) The propects and dilemmas of child and youth work as a professional discipline. Journal of Child and Youth Care. Vol.13 No.1 pp 3-5