Aspects of Relational Practice

Jack Phelan and Thom Garfat  |  Editors

ISBN 978-1-7764578-5-4 (Paperback)  |  978-1-7764578-6-1 (e-book)

Published: February 2025

This book sets a framework for supporting new Child and Youth Care practitioners to be developmentally aware about the limits of what they should be trying to achieve with young people and families. It tempers the impatience and feelings of incompetence that haunt many practitioners in the first year of Child and Youth Care experience.

The information about threshold concepts will guide more experienced practitioners through the difficult path to accurate empathy and strength awareness, which in turn begins the transition into deep relational connections that are the key to the skill set of a mature practitioner. Supervisors will also benefit from awareness of the developmental roadmap to structure the scaffolding of strategies to build an expanded view of one’s professional self and intentions for the transitioning, treatment focused practitioner.

Mature practitioners can learn deeper relational frameworks and increase “self” development in relational practice. It will also assist mature practitioners to be effective mentors to less experienced colleagues.

Supervisors will find this book to be a valuable reference for creating developmentally useful plans for staff improvement, as well as a personally challenging read to evaluate their own practice.

Administrators will gain a stronger appreciation of what a relationally-based program is, as well as how to create this type of program for their agency.

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