A Search for Synergy: The Child and Youth Care Educated Child Protection Worker

Abstract

The field of child protection has a longstanding familiarity with the field of Social Work. However, in British Columbia's Ministry for Children and Family Development the ranks of Child Protection Workers are swelling with professionals who have been educated in Child and Youth Care. Using the author's personal experience, this article outlines the differences between Social Work and Child and Youth Care perspectives and further explores two of the many roles MCFD workers can assume within the MCFD. The article then offers insight to which role is accommodating of CYC hallmarks and which is not. The discussion then concludes with an examination of how CYC workers in the MCFD can advocate for the CYC perspective and profession within a Social Work dominated environment.KEY WORDS: child welfare; child and youth care practice; MCFD; professional context; CYC orientation.Correspondence should be directed to Robert M. Bates,

Knowing, Doing and Being in Context: A Praxis-oriented Approach to Child and Youth Care

“…Later, a Code of Ethics was developed to signify the field's status as a formal profession (Mattingly 1995). Several authors have tried to define the essence of CYC work (Anglin 1992;Ferguson and Anglin 1985;VanderVen 1991), which has occasionally included attempts to distinguish the CYC profession from other related fields of practice like social work (Anglin 1999;Bates 2005) or counseling (Phelan 2005). Others have described a distinctly CYC approach to working with families (Garfat 2003;Ricks and Bellefeuille 2003).…”