Entry to Practice and Beyond: Aspiring to an Accessible Educational Continuum at Ryerson

Abstract

The School of Child and Youth Care at Ryerson University has, since its inception in 1989, responded to the developing educational aspirations of child and youth care practitioners. The historical roots of the program are examined along with the various modifications made in response to developments in the field. We describe our approach to the challenges of part-time programming and internet-based course delivery. Future goals for the program include laying the groundwork for masters level education at Ryerson, finding the right balance in the post-secondary sector to allow direct entry to as well as advanced standing in a fully developed 4-year B.A. program, and serving a central role in developing both CYC educators and practitioners. At each stage in the development of the Child and Youth Care (CYC) degree completion program at Ryerson, we have attempted to keep our colleagues informed of our activities. The earliest draft of the program was presented at the First International Conference in Vancouver (Hare & McKay, 1985) in which we outlined our proposed response to the growing demand in Ontario for degree-level education in the field. A decade after the first students were admitted in 1989, an article in Children and Youth Services Review (Hare, 1999) described research that assessed student perceptions of the program and aided us in the difficult task of budget-induced program restructuring. As we began to move more vigorously into internet-based program delivery, we again used an international conference, this time in Cleveland, to keep our colleagues up-to-date about what we were up to (Stuart & Hare, 2000). Now, as we move into the next phase of program development guided by the results of recent student surveys, a self-study, and a peer review (School of Child and Youth Care, 2000), we again take the opportunity in this article to share our thoughts and challenges with our colleagues.