March/April 2009

Contents

• Editorial - Merle Allsopp
• South African Council For Social Service Professions (SACSSP) Made A Pronouncement On The Status Of Child And Youth Care - Registration Processes
• Response by the Professional Board for Child and Youth Care Work to the SACSSP’s “Pronouncement on the Status of Child and Youth Care Registration Processes”
• Research papers caring to innovate - Leon Fulcher
• 5 Seconds to Belonging - Thom Garfat
• Interview With... - Lucky Jacobs
• Capacity building for NGO’s
• Protecting and Promoting Children’s Rights in the Courts - Anne Skelton
• Activities For Kids
• Children’s Experiences In A Residential Child Care Institution - Dr Crystal Watson
• Dear Doctor - Dr Michelle Meiring
• What is a Child and Youth Care Worker? - Jackie Winfield

Editorial : Judge for yourself

By Merle Allsopp

This issue of Child and Youth Care Work carries three particularly important articles. The first is a ‘Pronouncement on the Status of Child and Youth Care Registration Processes’ issued to the media by the South African Council for Social Service Professions, and re-printed here. The second is the official response to this pronouncement by the Professional Board for Child and Youth Care. Members may be wondering why it is that they have heard so little from the PBCYC over the years – and now clearly when there is something of a crisis on the go, here is the PBCYC speaking.

It must be remembered that the Social Services Professions Act 110 0f 1978 governs the way in which the Council and the professional boards are allowed to operate. This Act allows for the professional boards to communicate only through the Council. So over its five years in operation, the PBCYC has only been able to speak to its constituency if Council has agreed to this. In this instance however, Council has gone to the public with a statement which reflects on the functioning of the PBCYC, and the body is therefore in a position to put its side of the case, and so we juxtapose the two views on the first two pages of this issue, normally reserved for a lead practice issue. (I am sure NACCW 17th Biennial Conference keynote speaker will not object to being shifted into second place for so important a reason!)
The third article to which I draw your attention just happens to be two interviews with Mvuyo Manyungwana and Sheila Judge for yourself

Mothobi, both managers of state residential child and youth care centers – who have recently graduated with their four year degrees. This article is symbolically important. It is for the Mvuyos and the Sheilas, the Himlas and the dozens of other child and youth care workers who have committed to the profession enough to go to the trouble of doing their diplomas and degrees – in the belief that this effort would not, in a democratic country like ours, be left unacknowledged when the time came for regulation. It is for this group of pioneers that the article ‘Response by the Professional Board for Child and Youth Care Work to the SACSSP’s Pronouncement on the Status of Child and Youth Care Registration Processes’ shows that the PBCYC has battled. The Council’s decision to regulate only auxiliary child and youth care workers effectively means that Mvuyo and Sheila will not be able to do their jobs, as they will be registered with the SACSSP as auxiliary workers – whose scope of practice does not include the sophisticated work that they and others will in fact be doing at the very moment of their registration!

Council’s pronouncement does seem to map out a clear way forward for the regulation of professional child and youth care workers. Perhaps the reasonableness of this set of suggestions should be considered in the light of the fact that the PBCYC has been trying to get regulations in place for child and youth care workers for five long years already. Judge for yourself…and watch this space…