A Last Resort Profession – Resisting the Trend. A presentation by Kiaras Gharabaghi

This week is a recording of the closing key note talk from the 2016 Canadian National Child and Youth Care conference, which took place in Halifax. In May of this year there was a report released called Because Young People Matter: Report of the Residential Services Review Panel. It is well worth reading, you can find a link to it here. Kiaras Gharabaghi is one of the three authors and in this talk he shares some of his learning and reflections from the report. The presentation is one hour long. Here is the description of his closing keynote:

“How is it that once the evidence has failed, the treatment is a bust, and the systems scratch their heads we look to CYCs to take over? Over the past ten years, professional structures, policy moves and institutional responses to young people facing adversity have prioritized rhetorical movements over relational practices. From family-based care to evidence-based treatment approaches, anything but child and youth care practice has de facto carried the day, until the system’s failures become sufficiently apparent that there is only one move left; the move of last resort – the move into places where child and youth care practitioners are asked to work miracles, but expected to accomplish little. The time to resist this trend is now. Gharabaghi argues that unless we elevate our approaches to stand as alternatives to the current rhetorical front runners, our profession will become known as the profession of last resort. Much is at stake.”