G U E S T E D I T O R I A L

. . . to S e e O u r s e l v e s as O t h e r s S e e U s

What are the observations of a Dutch professional youth care worker on completing a year in the field in the United States as an ILEX participant? I can speak only for myself, but I can begin to understand the differences between American and European practice only in the context of broader differences in the perception of life. In philosophical terms, most Europeans start from an existential outlook on the world in which we live, an outlook that does not seem to be widely shared on this side of the Atlantic. Thus, in spite of marked country by country differences in language and culture, there seems to be a shared, generic, cross-national understanding of youth care practice, rooted in this perspective, in Europe.

As a result, a professional and scientific discipline that deals with understanding and working with youth, known as social pedagogy, has emerged. This field does not exist, as such, in the United States, although bits and pieces can be found here, organized in different ways and in other contexts. Social pedagogy is deeply rooted in an existential understanding of young people and their world. More sim- ply, I describe it as being in touch with youth.

Within this perspective, the process (rather than specific activities) is viewed as the most important part of the program. Therefore, we put a lot of emphasis on daily life as the primary therapeutic setting. More concisely, the process is the program!

To bring this orientation into practice requires workers with spe- cific education in youthwork, who are able to use the experiences of daily life in the most beneficial way for their clients. This requires utilizing a holistic point of view, rather than dividing young people into parts in trying to help them. In the United States, on the other

E d i t o r ' s note: Upon completing his one-year visit to the United States from The Nether lands as a par t ic ipant in the In ternat ional Learning Exchange in Professional Youthwork (ILEX), dur ing which he worked and observed in a variety of American group care and other youthwork set t ings and met with a broad range of U. S. youth- workers, youth care worker Bar t Hendriks offers the following observations to his American colleagues. Responses or other comments from interested readers for possible publication would be welcome. J~B.

Child & Youth Care Forum, 22(1), February 1993 �9 1993 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 3

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hand, I have observed youth being assigned to different people for different needs: The recreational therapist for recreation; the social worker for counseling; and the like. From a holistic perspective, it is absurd to emphasize the "troubled" side of youth in this way. To en- hance normalcy and to teach young people to live a "normal" life, European youthwork professionals tend to think that their work should focus on young people's lives and development in ways that are as normal as possible.

Thus, the youth is seen as a person who is in the process of unfold- ing, rather than as "sick" or "bad," and as needing opportunities to enhance this developmental process with significant adults (including youthworkers) and peers on a daily basis. We also have specialists in the fields of psychiatry, recreation, social work, and the like, but we use them mostly as consultants. In certain cases, where special needs require it, they work directly with selected youth, but the emphasis is on learning in the context of daily living. "Troubled" youth are seen as people who are less likely to need "treatment" than to need help in learning to cope with life and society.

As a result, the task of a youthworker is broad and requires many skills. The worker is the manager of the 24-hour living situation, with all its varied aspects. In order to accomplish this, he or she needs to be able to provide counseling, recreation, crisis intervention, obser- vation, analysis, group work, financial management skills, etc., as well as the ability to help young people in chaotic circumstances to organize and manage their lives. To become such a youthworker, one needs to have had appropriate life experiences as well as sophis- ticated specialized training.

Youthworker education in Europe encompasses a broad package in order to develop competent workers with this kind of breadth. This preparation, which ranges from three to four years in the various countries, includes such basic content areas as child development, the law, recreation including the arts, psychology, psychiatry, etc. But the most important part of the program typically consists of several short-term and one full-year internships, with intensive individual and group supervision throughout. Youthwork students are also re- quired to write a thesis dealing with a relevant issue about the world of youth. The student is evaluated on what he or she has learned as a person and as a worker, and on the likelihood that he or she will be able to implement this effectively in a professional role in the future.

This reflects the belief that, although learning all the aforemen- tioned skills is a necessary foundation for effective youthwork prac- tice, it is the person and his or her relationships with the young peo- ple and peers that are most important. Therefore, the main focus is on the worker and how the worker uses himself or herself self-con-

Bart H e n d r i k s 5

sciously as a tool in working with youth and with colleagues, and the training puts great emphasis on the development of the student's self- awareness. It may be a truism that one must know oneself in order to help others who rely on his or her services, but it seems less common here to find youthwork training programs that actually reflect that conviction. Incidentally, these fundamental elements of European ed- ucation for youthworkers are similar to those required in Europe for the preparation of social workers, except for different specialization and internship requirements.

When a student graduates as a youthworker, he or she is consid- ered to be a full professional in the field. An agency that hires such a worker can anticipate having a competent employee who has basic knowledge of the expectations of the job and is well aware of his or her strengths and limitations or weaknesses.

Thus, although supervised hands-on experience is the best way to learn about youthwork, effective professional practice also requires the kind of conscious conceptual development that can be provided through formal education. But the process of creating effective youth- work education in the United States is not simply a matter of copying the courses offered in such programs in Europe; rather, it requires a closer integration of the experiential element as reflected both in youthwork practice and in the essence of the worker's own "being," values, and the like. Thus, it depends also on the cultural context or world-view within which we approach young people.

This has much to do with role modeling, but it goes deeper than that as well. If we truly value youth and seek to promote healthy development, we will behave differently as youthworkers in all kinds of subtle ways that cannot easily be taught. In short, if we are serious about youth, youthwork, and youthwork education, we need to begin by looking at ourselves!

Bart Hendriks