Greetings fellow youth worker!
The ACYCP Board is striving to keep our members up-to-date with our organization's current projects and activities. In this issue we report on the success of the First World Conference, and bring you up to date on additional international outreach. We introduce you to our Martha Mattingly Scholarship Winner, and to two certified CYC workers who apply their skills at the Allegheny County Sanitation Department! and we invite you to some new upcoming conferences.
We introduce the first in a new series on Supervision in CYC Work by Frank Delano and begin the Reprise of Karen VanderVen's beloved column, "From The Soap Box" now entitled, "From The Soap Box...Again". She starts this series off with a BANG!
Suzie Henderson
Editor
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The First CYC World Conference!
|  St. Johns, Newfoundland: Lovely venue of the 2013 CYC World Conference. If you didn't attend, this is what you missed! |
| Our Contribution to The CYC World Conference |
ACYCP Leaders Make Significant Contributions To
The First Child And Youth Care World Conference
ACYCP members should be proud of ACYCP's contribution to the Child and Youth Care World Conference help in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, June 15-28th. Presentations included the following:
Frank Eckles and James Freeman: An Introduction to Professional Certification as Offered by the Child and Youth Care Certification Board.
Frank Delano: Navigating the Crossroads of Your Career and Practice: Tips for Owning your Supervision. James Freeman was a panel member.
James Freeman: From Conflict to Coping: Understanding the LSCI Conflict
Mark Kruger: Action, Presence, and Pictures
James Freeman: Multi-Sensory De-Escalation: Alternative to Restraint and Seclusion
Frank Delano (with Okpara Rice): The Island can be Lonely: Leading During Uncertain Times
Tone Reyes: An Introduction to Brain-Based Learning
Frank Eckles, Varda Mann-Feder (Canada) and Carol Kelly: Mattingly tribute at Opening Reception which culminated with awarded a Mattingly Scholarship.
ACYCP leaders were also involved in the Clan Meeting, Educator's Day, and CYC-NET governing board meeting. Included: Frank Eckles, James Freeman, and Andy Munoz. ACYCP members should be proud of our contribution to this first historic international conference.
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| Martha Mattingly: Tribute To Her Legacy |
Martha Mattingly's legacy was celebrated at the first Child and Youth Care World Conference at the Opening Reception on June 25th, Saint John's Newfoundland. The ACYCP Mattingly Scholarship Committee (Varda Mann-Feder, Frank Eckles, and Carol Kelly) presented a power point overview of Martha Mattingly's major contributions to the development of our profession.
The culmination of the Tribute to Martha was awarding of a $500 Mattingly Scholarship to Jacolyn Trites. Jacolyn is a child and youth counselor at Bridges program in Plymouth, Nova Scotia and also teaches as an Auxiliary faculty Nova Scotia Community College. She provided leadership as Vice President in the Nova Scotia Child Youth Care Workers Association and has published articles in professional journals. Based upon Martha Mattingly's dedication to supporting entering professionals with leadership potential and contributions to our profession, this scholarship was created to mark her retirement from the University of Pittsburgh.
We encourage you as an organization or individual to contribute to the Martha Mattingly Scholarship. Donators will be recognized and needed professionals will be supported in attending conference and related opportunities. On-line donations: www.cyccb.org/support. Letters acknowledging your tax exempt donation will be issued.
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Strengthening Supervisory Skills
Emphasizing Collaborative Supervision in CYC Work
By: Frank Delano
When a supervisor orients a new CYC worker to the work they will be doing they will hopefully be stressing the importance of the worker being self-reflective and to be making strong efforts to consistently "meet the child and family where they are at". Few would dispute that excellent practice entails the worker using their skills and knowledge to adapt to the needs of the child. To best assess those needs it entails a desire to "enter the child's world" and to carefully listen to the child in regard to what the child feels they need to grow. In this way it becomes a healthy, collaborative adult-child relationship.
The supervisor will likely also stress the importance of the CYC worker role-modeling the behaviors the worker wants the child to develop. Why, then, does it seem so many CYC Supervisors sometimes do not seem to focus on that when it comes to their own supervisory practices? In a recent workshop that I facilitated at the 2013 Child and Youth Care World Conference in St. John's, Newfoundland I was reminded of just how much the quality of supervision could increase if more supervisors tuned into the advice they give the workers they supervise and role modeled those collaborative behaviors in a more tuned in way. In the workshop CYC Workers at a variety of organizational levels were asked to answer the question "If I Could Supervise My Supervisor I Would..." as a way to have them reflect on what they felt their supervisor could do to make them a more effective worker and to enhance their professional growth. When given the opportunity (the answers were anonymous) the CYC workers involved did not use it to gripe or express unrealistic things. In reviewing the answers to that question I was struck by the self-reflection evident and the positive, forward moving flavor of the answers given. Some of the themes that came up were a desire to understand higher level agency decisions better, getting practical suggestions about where they could improve beyond just encouraging statements from their supervisor, for the supervisor to be "present" in supervision, getting more information so my decisions when working with kids are more-informed, and to work with me when to find answers when I am struggling, not just tell me what to do or encourage me.
The Conference workshop created a forum for workers to articulate how their supervisor could best help them grow and improve their work with children. A few years ago Jill Shah and I developed a suggested agenda model for supervisory sessions that might help CYC supervisors establish a regular forum to open the door for more collaborative work in supervision. We refer to the model as the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 model. It entails that in the regular supervisory sessions (and yes, they should be a non-negotiable foundation that every CYC worker deserves!) there would be a written agenda. 1/3 of that agenda is the responsibility of the supervisor, 1/3 would be the responsibility of the supervisee, and respecting the inherent hierarchy in the relationship, the remaining 1/3 remains at the discretion of the supervisor (This could be for hot items, administrative tasks, or when the worker is struggling adding more time to their agenda). We suggest the CYC worker be responsible to present their agenda to the supervisor at least one day in advance to give the supervisor time to prepare for the session. It also gives the supervisor a golden chance to role model the very behaviors they want CYC workers to use with children to build a stronger and more collaborative relationship!
Frank Delano, Piermont New York Fdelano24@aol.com
Readers can find more ideas about the agenda and balancing power in supervision from the following article:
Delano, F. and Shah, J. (2007), Professionally Packaging Your Power in the Supervisory Relationship, Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care, 5 (2), pp34-44.
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| Our Fearless ACYCP Leader! |
 In our last issue, we told you that our ACYCP President
Dr. Andrew Schneider-Munoz had been named Fellow at the American Association for Children's Residential Centers. The Fellows Award is one of the most prestigious competitions in the country. It is not given every year and goes to a leader who is a recognized expert in the care of vulnerable children.
Our fearless leader shows off his prestigious award in the photo above! We are proud of you, Andy! Thank you ever so much for your years of service to our field.
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International Engagement...Opportunities & Need
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ACYCP as an organization, inclusion of specific professional realms such as national certification, and individual expertise has much to contribute and much to learn from international involvement. International conferences, regional and national conferences, consultations, exchange programs, collaborative projects, and social medial provide a wide range of opportunities for global perspectives from which children, youth, staff, programs, and profession can benefit. Opportunities in the near future include the following.
 FICE CONGRESS 2013
Bern, Switzerland,
October 8th - 12th, 2013.
Professionals from many countries come to present, network, collaborate, and enjoy exploring. A highlight is involvement of youth in care from many countries.
Click here to Register for the conference.
In the future, FICE and CYC-NET are collaborating to offer a world gathering of our professionals and youth in 2016, Vienna, Austria. As plans are approved, ACYCP members will be informed of opportunities to present and to attend.
Dr. Carol S. Kelly, FICE-USA representative; CYC certification board; professor emeriti, CSUN; carol.kelly@csun.edu
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International Institute for Human Service Workforce Research and Development (IIHSWRD) (partnership between the Child and Youth Care Certification Board and Kent State University and guided by an international advisory board) recently completed a research report entitled "Examining the Value of National Youth Worker Certification." Focusing on youth workers out-of-school time settings, the study identified a number of benefits specially related to certification. These include:
- ensuring a common baseline of competence;
- increased motivation and a sense of accomplishment,
- enhanced mindfulness,
- a signal of one's commitment to professional youth work,
- being part of something bigger including an international field of practice;
- valuing the learning as an end in itself, and
- increased recognition as a professional - considering with awareness of the importance of advocating for certification within and outside the field.
These seven articulated benefits were sometimes tempered by an awareness by some of the respondents that certification may not be as highly valued by some supervisors, administrations or the general public. Thus, indication a need for continue advocacy for an effective professional development and credentialing.
The IIHSWRD is currently reviewing manuscripts for the Pro Humanitate Human Service Professional Development and Training Literary Award. This annual literary award focuses on the human services workforce area professional development and training; and is presented as a partnership of the National Staff Development and Training Association, the North American Resource Center for Child Welfare - Center for Child Welfare Policy (CCWP) and the IIHSWRD. Aware recipients will receive the Pro Humanitate Award medal and a cash prize of $1,000.
Dr. Dale Curry, Ph.D., LSW, CYC-P; Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, Kent State University; ACYCP Board member; IIHSWRD Director; (330) 672-2998 dcurry@kent.edu
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ACYCP will be forming an international working group; if you are interested please contact ACYCP President Andy Munoz at andrew.schneider-munoz@ncfie.org.
There are many opportunities to get connected across country and cultural borders. ACYCP Vice President John Kosmo is currently visiting youth centers and programs in Bolivia. Andy, John, Dale Curry, and Frank Eckles recently met with Creative Associates, the group in Washington, D.C. working on behalf of our government to support the development of new youth centers access Latin America. in addition to FICE and CYC-Net, this is one of the many discussions opening up about building a global youth work profession.
Dr. Andrew J. Schneider-Munoz, CYC-P, ACYCP President; Chief Advancement Officer & Senior Research Scientist, The National Center for Innovation and Excellence; Fellow, American Association for Children's Residential Centers; Consultant, Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative; Telephone: 321-752-4651 Ext. 5011 ; andrew.schneider-munoz@ncfie.org
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From The SoapBox...Again!
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 Now It's Really Time!
Child and Youth Work. Still not a profession! This provocative comment hopefully will incite you to read onward in this Soapbox. Why? Because child and youth work, by definition, focuses on one age segment of the population. No other profession does. Age ranges comprise specializations in social work, law, medicine, and others. In a life course approach to 'care work', the field would have a generic title without specifying a target population, and the age focus "children and youth" would be a specialty.
Almost 20 years ago I wrote a long article* proposing a new model of a profession that combined both structural aspects and the more personal aspects of caregiving to promote development and then showing the distinct commonalities between work done with both young and older people. The years have rolled by since I first wrote that article although I had been thinking about the idea for years, researched the concept internationally, and pulled my ideas together.
I said then that its "time had come". Now "it's really time". There are many reasons for saying this, but two of them are (1) the progress that child and youth work has made in its own development as a field on-its-way-to a profession, and (2) the fact that with people living longer and longer, there are more and more older and elderly people, and the need for a prepared workforce to serve them well is burgeoning. Child and youth work, despite its advancements in recent years, needs a broader constituency so that it will have a stronger voice that can influence policy, funding, professional preparation, and promote overall quality of practice.
Child and youth work, as a 'field' has now established many of the elements that make for an established profession - all crucial to set the stage and precedent for continued expansion so that the work can be done with both younger and older people. We have established credentials (e.g. certification), training and education programs, core curriculum, professional journals, and other attributes of professions. The direct care system for the elderly is not nearly as well established and hence the potential for meaningful relationships, nurturance, activities, environments - all the things we provide for children and youth to increase their quality of life and well-being - is compromised.
It has been increasing recognized that intergenerational relationships have great power in empowering both the young and old. In order to best encourage intergenerational relationships, we need to be knowledgeable about the age ranges of both participants. This is another reason for espousing a life course approach to our work.
The gauntlet has been flung. The need is profound. It's time to take initiative, take our strengths: our own caring, our dedicated hard and successful work in creating change and appreciation for the nature of the work and bring this unique, fundamental, wonderful field to people throughout the life course.
* VanderVen, K. (1993) Developmental Care Throughout the Life Span. Part I: The Concept. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 7(4). Journal of Child and Youth Care, University of Calgary Press
Karen VanderVen, Ph.D.,
Professor Emerita Department of Psychology in Education
University of Pittsburgh
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| 2014 National Wraparound Conference | |
 Brevard Family Partnership and the National Center for Innovation and Excellence are hosting a three day wraparound conference in Cocoa Beach, Florida, March 11-13, 2014.
The conference will offer three keynote addresses, an expert panel discussion, and 25 individual sessions for participants to select and learn from. This conference will empower individuals and partnerships, providing an inclusive and dynamic forum to foster peer networks, share information, and build skills while facilitating interactive dialogue and discussion.
Topics include:
Evidence-Based Practices and Innovations
Youth Leadership and Advocacy
Family Partners, Family Strengthening
Wraparound Tools, Techniques, and Advanced Practices
Systems of Care
Keynote Presentations:
John VanDenBerg, Ph.D., Consultant
Lessons of 25 Years of Wraparound: Why Does Wraparound Work?
Mary Jo Meyers, Wraparound Milwaukee
Balancing the Need for Child Safety with Trauma Informed Care
John Franz, Paper Boat Consulting
Partners on the Journey: What Finding Nemo can Teach Us About Forming Effective Child and Family Teams
Also, special presentations by: Dr. Andrew Schneider-Munoz, National Center for Innovation and Excellence Susan Dreyfus, President and CEO, Alliance for Children and Families Carol Emig, President, Child Trends.
The organizers have issued a call for papers and are seeking communities' knowledge, experience, and effective strategies in the establishment and management of wraparound and systems of care, with particular interest in the child welfare arena. The conference aims to deepen attendees' understanding of how child welfare and system of care agents can engage in and undergo system transformation through the implementation of wraparound values and principles of practice. Proposals are due September 30, 2013. To view the call for papers, please see: http://www.brevardfp.org/File/Call-for-Papers-2013-Final.pdf
Conference registration will open Fall of 2013. Discounted room rates are available, starting at $129/night. Be informed of the latest info as it becomes available by liking the National Wraparound Conference on Facebook.
For more information, contact:
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| White House Webinar: Policies Supporting Comprehensive Strategies for Youth | |
 A White House Live Webinar highlighting the Obama Administration Policies Supporting Comprehensive Strategies for Youth was presented July 17, 2013.
The Webinar was presented by:
American Institute of Research
Aspen Forum of Community Solutions
Campaign for Youth Children's Leadership Council and
National Collaboration for Youth.
On behalf of ACYCP, Stephanie Strodtman attended the Webinar and submitted the following notes in summary:
In an effort for federal programs to become engaged with state and local agencies, coordinate resources, and eliminate barriers, the Interagency Forum on Disconnected Youth (IFDY) was formed. This committee submitted an RFI which received 170 responses from agencies across the nation.
The following themes emerged:
- Need for improved access to quality data and better information sharing
- Interim Indicators and Shared Outcome Measures (including incentivizing a long-term approach to track better outcomes)
- Alignment of eligibility requirements, intake processes, performance measures, and data collection systems
- Need for multiple pathway approach addressing the full continuum prevention, intervention and re-engagement
- Barriers related to lack of housing stability, financial literacy, and mental health services
- Need to target sub-populations (i.e. foster care, justice involved, homeless, youth with disabilities, GLBTQ)
- Importance of long term connection with caring adult/mentor
- Full youth participation/partnership in the development
The overarching Strategic Goal of this initiative is to improve outcomes for youth and pave pathways to success.
Current IFDY activities include:
- Analyze barriers and alignment issues
- Engaging with state and location governments, foundations, services providers, youth and stakeholders
- Exploring opportunities to increase the focus on outcomes under current law
Additionally, a second workgroup, the Interagency Work Group on Youth Programs, was charged to develop a website that would help federal, state and local groups support youth. This resulted in the development of www.findyouthinfo.gov.
The next steps of these initiatives involve a two-phase roll out plan:
- lncrease awareness and understanding
- Deepen understanding and investment
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| ALCOSAN Scholastic Outreach |
If the youth need us in the stairwell of the gym or in the middle of the night in a park that's where we go as youth workers. It's highly innovative for ALCOSAN, the Allegheny County (PA) Sanitary Authority to be so committed to environmental health and to teach the youth what they need to know by having two of the very best certified youth workers on their team, Twila Simmons-Walker and Erica LaMar.
Twila and Erica have shared with us some information about their outreach programs. Thanks, Ladies.
 The ALCOSAN Scholastic Outreach Department was created to promote the efforts of the organization as well as bring about awareness of public health and environmental issues associated with contaminants entering our local waterways.
The department consists of the manager, administrative assistant, and three outreach specialists. Our work extends through 31 school districts largely locate in Allegheny County, but a few are located in Westmoreland and Washington Counties.
Each year we serve students and educators through our outreach efforts via presentations, interactive hands-on activities, tours, summer programs, and more. All of the activities and presentations we offer align with the PA State Academic Standards.
For school year 2012-13 we have served students via the following:
- 45 K-12 schools (science fairs, tabling events, hands-on activities, and presentations)
- 11 After School programs (hands-on activities and presentations)
- 5 Pittsburgh Public High Schools (STEM Career Exploration and Workforce Development Program (Pittsburgh Pipeline) met every other week after school from October - May
- 12 area schools visited ALCOSAN to take a plant tour
- 80 students in grades 4-8 representing approximately 20 school districts, participated in Summer Science - a week-long, environmental engineering-themed program from June 17 -July 12
We will host our annual Open House this year, which is held on the third Saturday of September. Our typical visiting audience totals approx. 2,000 for the day-long event. We usually serve about 350 students from within and outside of our 83 municipality service area for extra credit activities linked to the environment, science and math.
We also host fall and spring annual workshops for area educators and offer Act 48 hours for the PDE approved programs. Our last workshop featured a partnership with the National Aviary in which the teachers participated in an interactive and live Peregrine Falcon demonstration at the Aviary. They also took part in mini-sessions that highlighted the connection between water quality and various species of birds. www.alcosan.org
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We hope that you have enjoyed this issue of the ACYCP e-newsletter. Again, we welcome any and all feedback from our readers!
Sincerely,
The ACYCP Board
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New ACYCP T-shirts!!
| Place your order today!
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Are you proud to be a member and a child and youth care professional? Well, show it! We have a limited number of unique ACYCP T-shirts available.
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Youth Work Quote
| "I see the day when every really good youth worker in America is certified!---you can quote me on that---and you will be able to look back on your career and know-we did that, for kids and the country!"
--Andy Schneider-Munoz-- |
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Special Thanks
| ACYCP would like to extend
a Special Thanks to CYCCB for helping to make this newsletter possible.
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Feedback Welcome!
| ACYCP is excited to hear feedback from our readers!
If you have comments and/or ideas for additional content please feel free to contact the editor,
Suzie Henderson, at henderson.suzie@gmail.com
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