The child care profession: A vision for the future

The authors, recognizing the historical development of the child care profession, examine current societal trends and offer some constructive directions for consideration by the profession to counterbalance a prevailing mood of retrenchment and despair. A model of cyclical change is presented, specific adaptations that consider the essential elements of the child care profession are suggested, and the adoption of a social ecology perspective is proposed.     

The role of research in the development of the child care profession

This article suggests that there is a strong relationship between the type of research carried out in the child care field and the developmental stages of becoming a profession. The type of research most likely to add knowledge and status to the child care field is that which examines the texture and detail of child care settings.This paper was prepared for a national meeting of the Conference-Research Sequence in Child Care Education supported by Grant No. 5T24 MH 15869-02 from the National Institute of Mental Health, University of Pittsburgh, November 6–9, 1980.     

Towards an enabling history for the child day care profession in Canada

Canadian early childhood educators and child care professionals must seek to understand in what ways they perpetuate facets of their own professional malaise. From rationalizations that make of poverty wages a virtue, to an underassessment of the skills and knowledge required to create developmentally appropriate and individually sensitive learning environments, the field must squarely face those restrictions it has placed on itself if it is to move forward on behalf of children and families. This article addresses one facet of that self-imposed, restrictive environment — the perpetuation of a history that is neither ennobling nor enabling and presents the proposition that an alternative is available.     

The “Therapeutic parent”: A model for the child and youth care profession

A model of child and youth care called the “therapeutic parent” was developed through a series of four job analysis workshops. After an introduction to the model and a discussion of job analysis, the methods and results of the four workshops are presented. The therapeutic parent model attempts to answer four basic questions about child and youth care professionals as “therapeutic parents”: 1. Who must you be? 2. Who must you not be? 3. What must you know? 4. What must you do? The model has several implications for child and youth care as a profession. First, the model provides a theoretical and empirical foundation for what child and youth care professionals should or must be, not be, know, and do; thus, the model may help provide a more coherent sense of identity to the field and its practitioners. Second, two content valid and legally-defensible selection procedures have now been developed, which could lead to more standardized selection and certification of child and youth care practitioners. Third, the model provides a comprehensive audit of education and training needs, which could pave the way for a more coherent, intensive, and inclusive curriculum.     

Child care's family tree: Toward a history of the child and youth care profession in North America

The profession of child and youth care possesses many singular histories addressing its constituent branches, but there have been virtually no efforts to create an historical context for the broadly defined field itself. This essay ventures such an encompassing historical perspective, fixing the origins of the profession in a nineteenth century consensual conception of children and youth in need of care. Given that common root in a social paradigm of caregiving, interactive processes that have produced the family tree of child care and forces that may impact on its future are considered.