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30 APRIL 2008

NO 1291

Lifespan Care

Those of us who have been around a while may remember when care workers were only those who worked directly with children and adolescents, and then, only in residential settings. Our boundary definition was as strong as our interest in upgrading their status and securing professional and public recognition of their significance. Perhaps, in those days, we needed a restricted focus that would consolidate our interest as beleaguered victims of other, powerful professions and give us the strength we required to advance this field.

As the years have gone by, two incredible things have happened. The first is that suddenly we realize that these restricted boundaries have gradually eroded, so we accept now that someone who supervises or directs a program is a care worker; that someone who works with normal children is a care worker; that someone who works in a home, a school, a hospital, a daycare centre is a care worker; that someone who works with families is a care worker; and, increasingly, that someone who works with older adults is a care worker!

The second is that more and more of us – who once would have never considered that care work was done in any other way than it was when we began so long ago – have expanded our notion of the clients, settings, functions, and forms of care. Today, we are concerned with children and youth, families and extended families, direct care workers, supervisors, administrators, researchers, academicians and advocates.

Perhaps this extended vision has been possible with our own gradual aging – with increasing experience, cognitive maturity – and, truth to tell, a sense of our personal longevity. We can now see and feel that our fundamental service, which is care, is needed not only by children but by people of all ages. With our own "aging," too, our awareness that there are still difficulties and challenges in developing our field to its fullest, has increased.

I forthrightly and immodestly contend that these difficulties can be addressed and the challenges met by considering that our enterprise is care – and that an expanded concept of caregiving can become a full-fledged, essential profession by considering its clientele to be persons throughout the life span.

KAREN VANDERVEN

VanderVen, K. (1992). Introduction. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 7, 4. p.vii

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