Community level interventions in child and youth care practice
Date
2011-12-02
Authors
Derksen, Teri
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Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study is to describe how child and youth care practitioners experience their engagement in community level interventions. Five child and youth care practitioners, who identified themselves as engaging in community level interventions in their work, were interviewed and data were analysed using a combined narrative and thematic approach. Eight themes emerged from the data that describe participants’ experience with community, community change and community level interventions. Results show how community level interventions have a tendency to target the micro, meso and occasionally exo, rather than macro, levels of communities. Thus, multi-level interventions are recommended as a way to shift child and youth care practice from an emphasis on interventions with individuals, towards greater emphasis on interventions that are aimed at the multiple levels of the child and youth’s ecological system. The study identifies implications for post-secondary curriculum, professional practice, agency mandates and job descriptions.
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Keywords
child and youth care, community, community level interventions, multi-level interventions, ecological systems, ecological perspective, ecological theory