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Listen to thisAs we enter into a new year I have been reviewing course syllabi for an international paper I am working on following a workshop I facilitated at the recent 12th National Conference of the Canadian Association of Child and Youth Care Associations held in Newfoundland, Canada in October 2002. I won’t present the findings here just yet, but interim results are interesting. Dr Leon Fulcher likened my attempts to establish an international Child and Youth Care programme involving some fifty Educators and Instructors from Canada, the United States, Scotland, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland to “herding cats”! I don’t disagree, but I’m still enthused by the idea. After all, in dreams begin reality.
Anyway, as I looked through all the various course syllabi I have been sent from around the world, I was struck by how much we have in common as opposed to what we don’t share with colleagues and I was reminded of a paper I delivered at an annual social work convention in Ireland in 1996. The title of my paper was The Harmonization of Social Work and Social Care in Ireland (I know, I know – but I was younger and somewhat innocent in those days) I want to return to this some eight years later for a brief spell.
In a recent conversation with my Marketing Executive of the Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, Brody Cameron, he mentioned that it was stated to him by an Irish social worker that “Niall is anti social work”. Whilst I have definite opinions on social work as it is practiced in Ireland (and such opinions are a matter of public record if anyone cares to look) I want to set the record straight and put down a marker for the New Year. I am steadfastly pro Child and Youth Care, I value tremendously the work done by my colleagues in the field and I am committed to hiring graduates from our own programmes as key members of faculty. Should I apologise for this?
Back to my earlier attempts to achieve some harmony between social work and Child and Youth Care. The thesis of my 1996 paper was that social work and social care share could usefully share instruction in the third-level training colleges – at least for the formative stages of educative and training programmes. This would have a number of benefits:
Early in the student career, both disciplines/professions could experience core subject modules such as introductory sociology, introductory psychology, creative arts, applied social studies and field practica.
Faculties could employ both social work and Child and Youth Care Instructors in their areas of expertise.
Joint seminars on practice themes could take place with both social work Instructors and Child and Youth Care Instructors present discussing their particular approaches to a given situation such as a case conference.
Students, from both disciplines/professions might develop a more enlightened attitude and respect for each other and be more knowledgeable about the orientations and philosophies in Child and Youth Care and social work.
I smile when I hear students or workers say that I am anti social work/er which is not, at all, the case. What I have consistently argued over the years is that Child and Youth Care should look within for expertise and stop continually feeling the little sister of other disciplines and professions. I do not see this as “anti” social work or clinical psychology, rather I see it as pro Child and Youth Care. And why should I not respect a discipline I have been involved in since the early 1990's? Surely as a Head of Department in a third-level training college for Child and Youth Care students with some 400 students at Certificate, Diploma, Degree and Masters level there is a moral onus on me to promote my own students and their welfare. If those of us who have been described by Dr Thom Garfat as the “new/emerging leaders of the CYC field” do not stand at the top of mountains and proclaim what we do is valuable what is the point of preaching to students in the first instance? Students need to feel the energy from those of us fortunate enough to be in positions of leadership.
