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

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Abstract

Engaging with youth and families in collaborative and respectful ways; taking practical actions to create the conditions for young people to experience meaning, worth and connection; supporting them to imagine hopeful futures for themselves; and bringing oneself fully to the therapeutic relationship are all hallmark characteristics of child and youth care (CYC) practice. Those who do this work and those who prepare practitioners for the field recognize the need for conceptual frameworks that can adequately represent the complexities of everyday CYC practice. By taking up the notion of praxis as knowing, doing and being in context, I hope to plant some fresh seeds to animate and extend current conceptualizations of everyday CYC practice.

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Notes

  1. The number of individuals who have made a significant contribution to the CYC field are too numerous to mention and inevitably this is an incomplete list. My apologies for the omissions.

  2. A more recently developed model expands on KSS by making explicit links between the CYC field, the post-secondary curriculum and client outcomes (Stuart and Carty 2006).

  3. Based on consultation with faculty and staff in the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, these domains have been extended to include community capacity building and social policy.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Dr. Roy Ferguson for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, STN CSC, P.O. Box 1700, V8W 2Y2, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Jennifer White

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Correspondence to Jennifer White.

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White, J. Knowing, Doing and Being in Context: A Praxis-oriented Approach to Child and Youth Care. Child Youth Care Forum 36, 225–244 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-007-9043-1

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