Listen to this
Celebrating Child and Youth Care Moments
This issue of CYC-Online marks its 25th anniversary. This first foray into the miracle of electronic media and publishing was a transformative moment for access to relevant professional ideas and publications in our field. It meant that students and practitioners could instantly access materials from all over the world and become part of the global child and youth care community. Thanks and kudos to Thom Garfat and the late Brian Gannon, visionaries and innovators both.
Last year, 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the first university-level School of Child and Youth Care in Canada at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Over its history, the School developed a Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD program, establishing the full academic educational ladder for child and youth care professionals.
2023 also marked the 75th anniversary of FICE-International (the Federation of International Educative Communities), an international organization dedicated to promoting quality residential care for children and youth as well as all forms of alternative care for young people. It was formed in the aftermath of World War 2 when countries were struggling to address the needs of war orphaned and traumatized young people across Europe. Regrettably, this mission is once again front and centre in various parts of the world.
Next year, 2025, will mark the 100th anniversary of the first book on residential child care published in North America. To be precise, while the book was published initially in German in Europe in 1925, it was published 90 years ago in English, as Wayward Youth, by August Aichhorn (1935, Viking). It has become a classic text, and today’s readers and practitioners may be surprised to find many contemporary ideas and principles of quality child and youth care presented in this book (e.g., meeting the interests of the child, sensitivity to trauma, responding to children’s pain; the importance of meaning making; the therapeutic milieu, developing friendly relationships). Many of the fundamental needs of children have not hanged over the centuries, and many of the ways of effectively addressing these needs have endured over many decades.
Defining Child and Youth Care Elements
We can, and do, offer definitions of child and youth care at many levels of generality or specificity.
We can do it in a word,
a sentence,
a paragraph,
an article,
a book,
a person’s life, or career …
Defining child and youth care in one word; a leading candidate is perhaps “relationship.” (“CYC is all about relationship.”)
In one sentence:
“It’s how we share our self in care interactions in the life-space of young people and families to create transformative developmental and therapeutic experiences.” (Anglin, 2015)
In one paragraph:
Professional Child and Youth Care Practice focuses on infants, children, and adolescents, including those with special needs, within the context of the family, the community, and the life span. The developmental ecological perspective emphasizes the interaction between persons and their physical and social environments, including cultural and political settings. Professional practitioners promote the optimal development of children, youth, and their families in a variety of settings … (North American CYC Competencies, 2012)
In one article; for example:
On being a child and youth care worker - Leanne Rose
Central Themes in Child and Youth Care - Mark Krueger
The Profession of Child and Youth Care - Jack Phelan
Child and Youth Care: A Unique Profession - James Anglin
In one book; for example:
Foundations of Child and Youth Care - Carol Stuart
With children and youth - Kiaras Gharabaghi, Hans Skott-Myhre and Mark Krueger (Eds.)
Child and Youth Care: Critical Perspectives on Pedagogy, Practice and Policy - Alan Pence and Jennifer White (Eds.)
The Socialpedagogue in Europe – Living with others as a profession - Courtioux, Jones, Kalcher, Steinhauser, Tuggener and Waaldijk.
And in the next section, how CYC can be defined in one life and career will be illustrated through the lives and work of ten CYC leaders who passed away over the past 25 years.
Celebrating Child and Youth Care People
Countless women and men have dedicated themselves to learning how to care for and support young people and their families living in situations of conflict, pain and distress, and some have also communicated aspects of their learning in publications, training sessions and conference presentations.
Each of us will have had mentors. role models and heroes who have inspired us to do the work we do, and to become better workers and people.
Ultimately, one’s career as a child and youth care worker will provide one’s most important definition of CYC. Each of us becomes a defining exemplar of CYC for others, as well as for ourselves.
This special issue of CYC-Net Online is celebrating 25 years of publishing the ideas, experiences and insights of hundreds of dedicated child and youth care practitioners, across a wide variety of roles and pathways within the profession.
In reflecting on this quarter century, I found myself thinking about those who I came to know and admire in this vital field of child and youth care who have passed away over this period. They are no longer with us in person, but they remain with many of us in our memories, and with all of us through their writings and other legacies that live on.
I have chosen ten to remember and celebrate here. All of them are North Americans, with two notable exceptions. This speaks to my own location in the global world of CYC. Those of you on other continents will have persons you remember in your own regions.
Some of you will have been fortunate to have met and even become friends with some of these people, but all of us can become acquainted with them through the various legacies they have left behind. These may include their imprints on CYC organizations, their personal writings, or the testimonies of others who have been inspired by them.
I will profile each one briefly in the order of their passing, and I will include some references to a few of the specific contributions they have made. In most cases, their individual contributions to the CYC field could fill an entire article, so the references included offer merely a small sample of their prolific work.
It has been a pleasure and a great privilege to have crossed paths with each of these outstanding exemplars of our profession. I want to acknowledge with appreciation the input of Varda Mann Feder and Martin Stabrey on several of these profiles.
Barbara
Kahan
(1920-2000)
Barbara was one of the fiercest child advocates you could ever meet. Several colleagues of hers, including me, have admitted to being somewhat anxious and intimidated in her presence, given her tendency to grill one about what one was doing to actually make a difference in children’s lives. She was the one who said to me: “If a setting is not good enough for your children, it is not good enough for anyone’s children.” I have never forgotten that, and it is the standard I have come to advocate for all of us in this field.
Barbara began her career as a factory inspector, from 1943 to 1948, then, became a children's officer in Dudley, UK, from 1948 to 1950. She then moved to Oxfordshire, where she remained until the children's department was absorbed into the department of social services in 1970. Over her career, Barbara filled many important roles in the UK, as the Director of the Oxfordshire County Child Welfare Services, President of the National Children’s Bureau from 1985-1994, and as a consultant on a variety of important inquiries and commissions. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1989.
After a visit to the University of Victoria, BC, an innovator in distance learning, she returned to the UK and began a distance learning program for front-line childcare workers which eventually was delivered through the Open University.
She was a strong believer in the potential of every child, no matter their background or presenting problems, and she believed that those providing services needed to listen closely to what young people in care had to say. In 1979 she published Growing Up in Care (Blackwell, Oxford) that presented the voices of 10 people who had grown up in care.
In 1994, the University of Victoria presented her with an honorary doctorate (LLD) in recognition of her lifetime of service and advocacy on behalf of young people in the UK and internationally.
Henry Maier
(1919-2005)
Henry’s name is almost synonymous with child and youth care in North America. Few who have studied in a child and youth care educational program would not have read at least some of his work. He published many articles, chapters and two influential books: Three Theories of Child Development (1978, Harper and Row) and Developmental Group Care of Children and Youth (1987, Haworth). As indicated by the book titles, Henry was a strong advocate for understanding the developmental life of young people. Further, he was adamant that child and youth care workers needed to learn how to effectively engage with young people in their life-space.
He is famous for emphasizing the “minutiae” of care, the small moments of interaction in everyday life that could make a significant difference in the lives and development of children. I recall Henry once doing a 30-second role play of a worker greeting a child, and then spending an hour and a half unpacking every minute aspect (physical, verbal, emotional, visceral, visual, tactile, psychological and developmental) with a group of CYC supervisors and students. It was perhaps the most impressive Master Class I have ever attended.
Henry considered himself an “interactionist”, rather than a researcher. He won the “Teacher of the Year” award at the University of Washington, and always attracted overflow crowds at child and youth care conferences across North America. On a visit to the University of Victoria, he held a group of diverse faculty members, from law, chemistry, biology, psychology, art, business and other disciplines, spell-bound with his innovative approaches to engaging students.
Henry never ceased to learn and to integrate the research and insights of people such as Erikson, Bowlby, Bandura and Ainsworth over his career. His influence on workers and the field in North America and beyond has been immense and enduring.
Jerome (Jerry) Beker
(1937-2011)
Since high school, Jerry Beker always edited newsletters or journals. In 1971, he founded the first, and for many years, the flagship North American CYC journal, the Child Care Quarterly (now the Child and Youth Care Forum). In his first editorial, Jerry referred to it as “a new journal for an emerging profession.”
Jerry helped many fledgling writers in the field by meticulously editing their work to be suitable for professional publication. Over the years, many academics owed their successful attainment of tenure to Jerry’s editing talents. Jerry attended almost every CYC conference in Canada and the US, and he always came with a long list of people he wanted to talk to, and issues he wanted to discuss, usually in pursuit of an article for the journal. In addition to gathering articles from researchers and practitioners around the world, Jerry was a prolific writer himself. He was particularly passionate about how child and youth care could take its proper place amongst the helping professions, and that this work be recognized for its vital role in the various child and family service systems.
His book Knowledge Utilization in Residential Child and Youth Care Practice, co-edited with Zvi Eisikovits (1991, Child Welfare League of America) was a particularly ambitious and significant contribution to the literature, bringing together contributions from a wide range of leading CYC figures.
Jerry never threw away a piece of paper. As I recall, his home had over 20 filing cabinets stuffed with letters, draft manuscripts, articles, book chapters, and reports – usually with more than one copy, just in case he wanted to pass one on. Walking between the stacks of books in his home office was risking being buried in an avalanche. But his heart was equally jam packed with love and affection for his family, friends, colleagues and the CYC profession.
Martha Mattingly
(1937-2013)
Martha Mattingly was a Professor in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. A licensed psychologist, Martha was known for her efforts directed at the professionalism of child-and youth care workers. She was a staunch advocate for excellence in practice, as well as a rigorous theorist and researcher. Martha was the primary author of two landmarks documents that advanced CYC as a profession: the North American Competencies (which formed the basis for CYC accreditation in the US), and the first formal Code of Ethics.
Her research and writing focused on child-care practice, including professional ethics as well as job stress and burnout among workers. She co-directed an influential National Institute of Mental Health project addressing the sequencing of child-care educational programs that had a significant impact on the evolution of post-secondary curricula in CYC across North America. (See Principles and Guidelines for Child Care Personnel Preparation Programs, Child Care Quarterly, 1982, 11(3).
She was a woman of great integrity with a strong intellect and devotion to the development of the CYC profession. Martha was internationally known as a pioneer in the articulation of educational outcomes, job competencies and professional ethics. She developed a Code of Ethics that became part of the North American Standards of Practice for Child and Youth Care, was adopted by FICE-International, and has served to guide practitioners globally. (See: Resources - Statements section on FICE-International website at https://www.ficeinter.net/). Martha’s work was foundational to the integration of ethics codes virtually everywhere that CYC is practiced and reflects her dedication to “doing ethics” as an active part of ongoing practice.
Martha was recognized in 1993 with the Child Care Association of Pennsylvania’s Frances Vandivier Award for support and education of child, youth and family workers, in 1994 with the Inter Association Child Care Conference’s Outstanding Child and Youth Care Award for outstanding service and dedication to the profession of child and youth work, and in 2000 with the Association for Child and Youth Care Practice (ACYCP) Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contribution to the profession of child and youth care work. Martha was known for her down to earth and outspoken, communication style, and her ever-present and dry sense of humour.
Mark Krueger
(Died
2014)
Mark always walked with a noticeable spring in his step, appropriate for someone who understood CYC practice as a form of dance. He had a generous smile, and was an inveterate team player, inspiring workers wherever he went and whenever they had the good fortune to be part of one of his workshops or training sessions. He was the founding Director of the influential University of Wisconsin Child Care learning Centre, and over his career was active in various US child and youth care associations and organizations.
In addition to writing key texts such as Intervention Techniques for Child Care Workers (1980, Tall Publishing.), Mark wrote novels about the daily life and work in child and youth care programs (Floating, 1987: CWLA; In Motion, 1990: CWLA; Nexus, 1995: CWLA). When I asked Mark to sign my copy of In Motion, I told him I dreamed of writing a novel. He inscribed my copy with “I hope you write your novel.” It took me until this year, but inspired in part by Mark, I now have a 60,000-word draft.
Mark loved to play hoops in Karen VanderVen’s driveway, or whenever Karen showed up at a conference with a basketball. As an aside, Karen is an inveterate “bag lady”, always hauling around at conferences two or three very large bags full of materials (and usually a basketball), like a mail delivery person at Christmas time. I vividly recall sitting in a two-star hotel room in London, England, with Mark and Karen during a conference in the 1980s, eating cold Kentucky Fried Chicken (yes, in London!). The warmth and fervour of the conversation and camaraderie, late into the evening, more than compensated for the mediocre surroundings and barely edible food. Mark always sparked a great conversation, and contributed wisdom born of attentive experience with young people as well as compassion for their pain and struggles.
Brian was a true champion for children, ALL children, when in South Africa during apartheid the distinctions black, white, and brown meant segregated spaces, programs, services and neighbourhoods, and a divergent scale of funding. On my first visit to South Africa, I was told that Brian was even castigated in the South African parliament for daring to arrange a game of soccer between white boys and coloured boys. The state President, B.J. Vorster, stood up in parliament during the week after and stated “This Mr. Gannon is nothing but a political upstart. He should be careful.” This was a pretty chilling warning given the ease with which the regime simply made people disappear, never to be seen again.
Brian founded the National Association of Child Care Workers in 1975, bringing together a number of regional groups of CYC workers. From the beginning, the membership crossed all racial lines. This meant that early meetings had to be held in international hotels, one of the few spaces where such a mix could gather without fear of disruption.
But beyond his courage and integrity as a person, Brian had a clear understanding that good child and youth care work made a significant difference in the lives of young people and their families. He was tireless in his support for agencies, workers and the NACCW. According to those who worked alongside him, he was an inspiring and effective teacher, able to respond with generosity and humility to students and novice practitioners, guiding them to find the nuggets of truth and understanding within them. He modeled the skills and attitudes of effective practice, and he opened the eyes of those around him to the potentials embedded in CYC work.
Many of us in North America first met Brian at the inaugural International Child Care Conference in Vancouver in 1985. Brian opened our eyes to the truly global nature of our profession, and he returned to South Africa determined to strengthen ties between CYC in South Africa and North America. As a result of his leadership, and the work of many of his committed colleagues, the NACCW has grown into a global example of how this profession can contribute not only to the future of children, but also to the future of a nation.
Brian was a prolific and superb writer, and he contributed many articles and perspective pieces to the NACCW newsletter and other journals and books over the years. CYC-Net Press has published 3 volumes of Practice Hints, and CYC-Online has published many articles by Brian over the years; all make valuable reading.
Carol began her teaching career in 1969 at California State University, Northridge, in the College of Human Development. Carol provided leadership in developing and implementing the interdisciplinary program in child development, which later became the Department of Child and Adolescent Development. She has been honored for her teaching and mentorship of students including receiving the Outstanding Teaching Award from the University in 1995.
Carol was one of the original founders of the National Organization for Child Care Worker Associations (NOCCWA), which was the first national CYC association in the United States, and the precursor of ACYCP, the Association for Child and Youth Care Practice. She was deeply committed to professionalization, certification and accreditation as foundational elements of professionalization, and advocated early on for scholarships and awards to recognize emerging leaders in the field. In 1991, she wrote Professionalizing Child and Youth Care: An Overview, in Perspectives in Professional Child and Youth Care (Anglin, Denholm, Ferguson and Pence (Eds), Haworth).
As was often noted, Carol was small in stature but mighty of spirit. She had an infectious laugh and an even more infectious passion for promoting generativity in CYC.
Tony Maciocia
(1955-2022)
Tony was a strong advocate for the profession of child and youth care, and for years he served on the board of the US Association of Child and Youth Care Practice (ACYCP), acting as a human bridge between the ACYCP and the field of Canadian child and youth care.
In 1990-1991, I had the pleasure to serve on the organizing committee for the very successful International CYC Conference in Montreal which Tony chaired. It was one of the first of a series of CYC conferences that Tony gave leadership to. With almost no money up front, some creative pre-sale of conference registrations enabled the conference to come together, with faith that “if you create it, they will come”, and fortunately they did. Tony had a knack for creating successful events that were truly memorable for all who attended.
For many years he was the President and backbone of the Quebec Association of Educators (QAE), the English-speaking association of child and youth care workers which he founded. In collaboration with Champlain College in Saint Lambert where he was a valued CYC instructor, he assisted in organizing training events and educational opportunities for students and practitioners. He obtained an undergraduate degree in psychology and education from Concordia, and a Master’s in Child and Youth Care Leadership from Nova Southeastern in Florida.
His daytime job was Coordinator in the Division of Residential Treatment Services for Adolescents at Batshaw Youth and Family Centres in Montreal. He was loved by his staff and was particularly known for the generous mentoring and support he provided. In recognition of his many contributions to the field of child and youth care in North America, in 2004 he was presented with the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Association for Child and Youth Care Practice.
Tony was a dedicated, creative and hard-working practitioner who took on many leadership and facilitator roles in order to promote the learning and development of students and workers, and to advance the profession across North America.
John was once considered one of the most challenging adolescents in Cleveland, Ohio. He tells his story and draws lessons from it for the fields of child welfare and child and youth care in his must-read book In Whose Best Interest? One Child’s Odyssey, a Nation’s Responsibility (1996, Continental Press). The book was written in collaboration with two of the child and youth care workers who worked and lived alongside him as he learned to develop the self-regulation and skills he needed to gain some mastery over his life.
On a drive from the Black Hills Seminars to the Crazy Horse Monument in South Dakota, he once told me that after being in juvenile corrections facilities, he did not know how to smile. To smile was to risk a beating. He literally had to be coached into regaining the ability and confidence to smile.
A well-known therapist, Dr. Carl Whitaker, once said: “A delinquent is a Cadillac with its steering gear out of whack.” Once John learned from workers like Larry Brendtro, Martin Mitchell and Christi Lindsley Tobin how to control his V-12 engine, he moved into academia achieving a PhD in Social Work from Western Michigan State University, and then becoming an important faculty member in the School of Social Work at Michigan State University. One of his key missions was to convince child welfare agencies to recruit care-experienced persons to serve as Board members, thus ensuring their lived wisdom gained from living in care would inform agency thinking, policies and decision-making.
In 2018, he and Howard Bath co-authored Three Pillars of Transforming Care: Trauma and Resilience in the Other 23 Hours (University of Winnipeg). To my mind, John and Howard offer in this timely text a superbly succinct yet comprehensive summary of relevant literature combined with many specific strategies for concrete practice.
Roy Ferguson
(1942-2023)
Roy and I both joined the faculty of the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, in 1979; he as the Director and I as a part-time sessional instructor. Being brand new to academia, I looked to Roy for mentorship and guidance in learning the ropes of teaching, research, publishing and surviving the often-baffling complexities of university life.
Roy came from a children’s hospital in Calgary, and brought with him a deep understanding of children with a variety of special needs as well as an appreciation of child and youth care as encompassing the full range of ages from birth to adulthood. Under his leadership, the School broadened its original focus on residential care to also embrace early childhood learning and care.
At Roy’s generous invitation, I joined him in writing an article - The Profession of Child and Youth Care: A Vision for the Future (1985, Child Care Quarterly). This collaboration allowed me to think through and articulate my understanding of the uniqueness and importance of CYC as a profession and served as a base for much of my future work and writing.
Roy was actively involved in the Conference-Research Sequence on Child Care Education sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Program in Child Development and Child Care. This process led to the development of what became known as “the Pittsburgh Guidelines” that served as a touchstone for the new university child and youth care programs in Canada and in other parts of the world. (See profile of Martha Mattingly, above.)
Roy was also a co-author of Professional Child and Youth Care: The Canadian Perspective (1987, UBC) and Perspectives in Professional Child and Youth Care (1990, Haworth), in addition to many articles and book chapters on various topics. His clear and rigorous thinking influenced everyone who collaborated with him, and it was always a pleasure to be in his company.
Conclusion
Child and youth care is a field that has consistently and effectively addressed the needs of young people over centuries, and yet as our pioneers pass on, we are in danger of forgetting the milestones, achievements and inspirational leaders across our proud history.
It is evident today, perhaps more than ever, why the profession of child and youth care needs to continue its mission of working in the life-space of children, adolescents and families who are experiencing various forms of conflict. trauma, pain and distress.
