Community Context of Child and Youth Care Practice

• NCJ Number: 228868
• Journal: Child & Youth Services Volume: 30 Issue: 3/4 Dated: December 2008 Pages: 257-277
• Author(s): Kiaras Gharabaghi
• Date Published: December 2008
• Length: 21 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: For related articles in this issue, see NCJ-228864-67 and NCJ-228869-71.

Annotation

This article examines the role of the community in the context of child and youth care practice as well as associated professional issues that can arise for practitioners.

Abstract

The central argument of this article is that practitioners both use and contribute to the communities in which they work; therefore, an active engagement with communities will require the practitioner to be aware of the implications of their presence with respect to culture, power, and community conventions. There are a range of scenarios in which child and youth care workers might become involved with the community and its resources, including when seeking services for clients, when responding to community-based complaints about a specific client or client group, and when participating in a community capacity-building process. The outcomes of the various scenarios that might arise in worker interactions with the community depend on the worker's knowledge of the community, i.e., its cultural norms, diversity, the range of resources for children and youth, community perceptions of children and youth with problem behaviors, as well as how child and youth care practitioners are viewed by the community. In recognizing that the features and resources of a community can help or hurt the positive development of its children and youth, practitioners must also engage the community in capacity-building for the benefit of its children and youth. This means involving the community in the development of early intervention services, crisis supports, and ongoing and intensive support for the chronic needs of children and youth. There are three access points to communities that are readily available to practitioners: the peer groups of children, youth, and their families; neighbors; and police and security personnel. This article discusses how each of these three access points can become important resources for a positive community context in which children and youth can develop. 18 references