With Children and Youth: Emerging Theories and Practices in Child and Youth Care Work

With Children and Youth provides a snapshot of emerging theories and perspectives in the field of child and youth care across North America. Well-known scholars and researchers present new and innovative critical perspectives, written in a provocative manner and reflecting outside-the-box thinking.

The book examines from scholarly and practical viewpoints the purpose of child and youth care practice, relational practice, post-modern approaches to thinking about theory and practice, and new and innovative thinking about the professionalization and accreditation of the discipline itself. Some chapters merge thinking about child and youth care with esoteric and literary prose; others use humour and satire as a way to represent both foundational and entirely new directions in the field.

With Children and Youth provides no set conclusions or findings about the field; instead, it guides the reader to spaces of controversy, contention, and opportunities for innovation and change. Child and youth care practice and theory, it is argued, is based fundamentally on engagement across generations, cultures, and social positions, and this book exemplifies precisely that.