Jerome Beker

Beyond Professionalism: The Child and Youth Care Worker as Craftsman

In an effort to move the professionalization dialogue in child and youth care toward greater concern with the quality of client service and toward move conceptually-based consideration of the content of the work, the authors propose that the field be viewed as a craft. An initial approximation of such a conceptualization as it might look through the eyes of most current workers is followed by a discussion of possible implications for progress in significant areas of concern in the field.

Developmental group care of children and youth : concepts and practice

Contents Foreword Preface Introduction: Group Care Utilizing a Developmental Perspective Children and Youth Grow and Develop in Group Care Essential Components in Care and Treatment Environments for Children How Children and Adolescents Conceive Their World Beyond the Group Care Setting The Core of Care: Essential Ingredients for the Development of Children at Home and Away From Home To Be Attached and Free Learning to Live and Living to Learn in Residential Treatment Influence Techniques The Space We Create Controls Us Child Care Within an Organizational Context: The Inherent Strain The Child Care Worker Teaching and Training as a Facet of Supervision of Child Care Staff Emerging Issues in Child and Youth Care Education: A Platform for Planning References Index

Emerging issues in child and youth care education: A platform for planning

The authors explore key ingredients in the preparation of child and youth care workers with a focus on the conceptual and practical interconnectedness required if the workers are to be enabled to work professionally and effectively.

The occupational experience of residential child and youth care workers : caring and its discontents

Contents Introduction: A Guiding Approach * The Setting and the Role * Situations * Who Hurts? * Who Is Hurt? * What Hurts? * The Residential Care Setting as a Negotiated Order * Care, Content, and Commitment * Reference Notes Included

The Educateur Returns to America: Approaching the Development of Professional Child and Youth Care Cross-Culturally Through ILEX

Following a brief discussion of the historical roots of the educateur as a child and youth care work professional and a description of the ILEX program, the article compares American and European approaches to group care as experienced by visiting educateurs. Included are the philosophical frame of reference, the role of the worker, techniques, pedagogical action, and agency structure and orientation. The impact of the program on the European participants and its implications for practice in group care settings in the United States are discussed.

The Emergence of Clinical Youthwork as a Profession: Implications for the Youthwork Field

This article examines the broad field of youthwork in the context of the established criteria of a profession and proposes a view of the traditional child and youth care emphasis on troubled and troubling populations as a subcategory, “Clinical Youthwork,” within the youthwork domain. In addition to broadening both constituencies, this would embed child and youth care professionally in the normalizing framework of the existing youthwork field.

Toward the Unification of the Child Care Field as a Profession

In this article, addressed to workers in the field of child life or hospital child care, the author addresses issues of professional development in the child and youth care field, supports a broadly inclusive definition of the field to include child life and other setting-specific subgroups, and discusses some of the issues involved.

Professional frontiers in Child Care: Unfinished business and new priorities

Recent developments in the professionalization of the residential child care field are reviewed with particular emphasis on beginning steps in certification, which is viewed as having shown itself to be a particularly important and productive factor in the professionalization process. The need for a stronger national voice and the case for a broader coalition of youthwork professionals encompassing, among others, those in the traditional leisure-time, youth-serving agencies are explored.

Editorial: A New Journal for an Emerging Profession

This editorial initiated the first issue of this journal (1971) and outlined a vision for the field and for the new publication at that time.

Economic considerations in supporting preventive services for troubled youth: The case of adolescents on the farm

The economic costs of problems afflicting youth are reflected in lowered production and in expenditures required for treatment and social control. These factors have not been adequately understood, nor have their implications for the cost effectiveness of intervention programs been elaborated. This paper reviews previous work on the cost and value of farm youth as a model and proposes research questions and approaches to illuminate the costs of youth problems and their programmatic and policy implications.