Many researches along with position paper and policy declarations like the UN charter on children's rights (1989) and UN declaration on the rights of people with disabilities (2009), have been published in the last thirty years. This knowledge and change of orientation presents new challenges for educators and welfare social agents aiming to include people who are living in the margins of society and are excluded from its main stream. However, the distribution of tasks – who is responsible and capable of doing what? – is still vague and often creates misunderstandings and difficulties among practitioners in the field work. This complexity is reflected also in the training programs for professionals in different countries.
In many countries, the profession – social pedagogy; social education; child and youth care, to name only a few, is defined according to the target population. One tendency, prevailing in many European countries, is to look at all excluded populations as the target population of these professionals. A different orientation, practiced at least in Israel, and some other countries, is to focus the scope of these professionals' activities mainly on children and young people being excluded or at risk of becoming excluded.
While stating large populations of excluded people we usually mean: children and youth at risk situations, school drop outs, delinquent youth, homeless and drug addicts. However, also categories like migrants (youth and adults as well), physically and mentally handicapped (without any age distinction). Elderly people as well are considered to be part of the target population of social educators and child and youth care workers in those countries.
The focus of this presentation is the reflection how such policy decisions are influencing and shaping the training of professional workers. Those who adopt the first attitude should ask themselves what kind of professional education programs might fit for preparing workers towards such a large variety of individuals and communities who are experiencing challenges. Is there a sufficient common denominator that could enable curriculum developers to elaborate effective training programs? Such programs that at the end are expected to supply societies with competent field workers who are able to cope effectively with such complex challenges.
In Israel, which is a relatively young country, investing a relatively high amount of resources in child and youth development, the second conceptualization of the field is prevailing. Therefore, Child and youth care workers should be trained towards being capable of empowering and initiating inclusive processes adapted to children and youth. Until recently, the distinction was between children (0-12) and youth (12-18). Since the beginnings of the third Millennium, a new category of "young adults" (18-25), are emerging as a new group-age that is also in need of specialized services. The new phenomena of "emerging adulthood" creates a new category of young people who are in great need of specialized services in order to ensure their inclusion in main stream of society. Being consistent, our training programs are meant to educate professionals whose competences are geared at working with different age groups of young people. This doesn't mean other populations of excluded and marginalized people should be left alone without adapted services by other professionals, trained to supply their specific needs. However, we believe that focusing the training programs on children and young people, making it the core of the child and youth care profession, is extremely important also as a message of society towards her young people. This will hopefully be reflected in creating well designed and coherent training programs that should prepare competent child and youth care workers towards meeting the needs of their future youth clientele.
