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21 SEPTEMBER 2009
NO 1490
Suitability for practice
Child and youth care (CYC) managers and practitioners expect diploma and degree programs to launch “suitable” graduates into the CYC profession. Remarks at our Montreal workshop addressing student suitability indicate that employers are counting on educators to have a reliable means of understanding when a student might not be ready or suitable to work in the field. As CYC educators we are well versed in looking for the assets and capabilities students bring to the field. Perhaps our focus on evaluating strength and potential leaves us vulnerable to missing some of the “red flags” indicating that a student may be moving into the wrong profession.
In the last few years, our CYC faculty at the Fraser Valley University (FVU) has pondered the extent to which we are gatekeepers for the CYC profession, along with how to be responsible for assessing whether a student is ready to practice, or even suitable for the profession. As part of our movement to define, assess, and evaluate suitability, we developed a working session for the International CYC Conference in Montreal to present our work-in-progress and generate more wisdom about this issue. Our ultimate goal was to become more concrete about how to best understand and measure whether a student is suitable for practice in the field of Child and Youth Care...
Just because an individual qualifies for the CYC program, does not mean she or he is suitable or ready to work with children, youth, and families. More recently the university-college’s administration has asked individual departments to develop “weighted criteria” for student admission. As we develop these weighted criteria, we have begun to address suitability issues, but measuring incoming students with any criteria is still no means of ensuring they are suitable for the field.
In addressing suitability, we recognize student rights, educator responsibility, and ethical accountability to practicum sites and clients. We also recognize that these can be at odds in some circumstances. Our intent is to protect vulnerable Child and Youth Care clientele, be accountable to education outcomes based on the BC CYC education consortium core curriculum (2007), and be respectful and objective when determining that students who complete our program are prepared and suitable for work in the field.
As a faculty, we brought our concerns to the international conference for consideration and input through a workshop that addressed suitability through the lens of a case scenario. We asked participants to consider the case of Beth. Although Beth is a fictional character, she represents a composite of a few experiences we have had with students...
This article describes our presentation at the conference, along with our learning from the conference conversations. An introduction to our degree program, a case presentation and analysis, and the terms we contemplated prior to presenting in Montreal will provide a helpful context for this discussion. Following this, ideas with respect to measuring suitability and suggested next steps will be presented.
CINDY RAMMAGE, LES STAGG, CHRISTINE PUDER AND
MAPLE MELDER CROZIER
Rammage, C., Stagg, L.,
Puder, C. and Melder-Crozier, M. (2008). Assessing Student Suitability
for Child and Youth Care Practice. Relational Child and Youth Care
Practice, 21,3. pp. 30-36.
