Toward the Unification of the Child Care Field as a Profession

Abstract

In this article, addressed to workers in the field of child life or hospital child care, the author addresses issues of professional development in the child and youth care field, supports a broadly inclusive definition of the field to include child life and other setting-specific subgroups, and discusses some of the issues involved. After many decades of marking time in its attitudes toward and programs for children outside their own families and formal school situations, our society has begun in recent years to show signs of a growing concern for the welfare of all children at all times. The vast expansion of day care programs for preschoolers, despite periodic set- backs, is perhaps the most dramatic example. New attention is also being given to such issues as child abuse, the rights of children, diver- sion from a juvenile justice system that seems to have become more harmful than helpful to those for whose benefit it was supposedly designed, and the quality of care provided to young people in home or institutional foster care. The establishment and growth of the Associa- tion for the Care of Children in Hospitals (ACCH) and other associations of personnel concerned with the care of children also attest to the emergence of this trend. While it is too early to conclude that we are seeing the beginning of a groundswell of social commitment to enhanc- ing the lives and development of children and adolescents, it seems clear that some progress has been made.