Child and Youth Care Practice: Advanced

The following global ideas guide the design and delivery of this course:

• Child and youth care practitioners work in and with a variety of systems. An understanding of various practice settings and the ability to collaborate with other systems is an essential aspect of CYC work.

• Stress and crisis are often major causal factors of increasing difficulties in the lives of children, youth and families. Effective response to stress and crisis by CYC practitioners can support children, youth and families to adapt to difficult circumstances, to seek additional support where necessary, and to discover effective means to cope and change.

• Children, youth and families and CYC practitioners have a diversity of: culture, religion, family structure, sexual orientation and socioeconomic conditions. Recognition of and response to diversity is central to effective working relationships between children, youth, families and workers.

• Assessment is essential to understanding and planning. Children, youth and families are collaborators in the assessment process

• The ability to participate in a collaborative planning process with the people with whom you are working is necessary.

• Competent CYC practitioners must be able to document their work. Documentation, while holding the practitioner accountable and contributing to continuity, also directly impacts the people with whom you are working.  Documentation, reports and course assignments must always respect confidentiality and be mindful of the potential audience.