There is growing interest in the professionalization of the youth work field in Australia and the United States. In this article I draw on relevant literature from the sociology of professions to explore the appeal of professionalization for youth work. The interest in professionalism is examined along with the strategies youth work practitioners…

Professional identity is an ongoing topic of discussion in the youth work literature. This paper looks at one of the key elements of the definition of youth work: the relationships that youth workers establish with young people. It presents research findings which suggest that youth workers have multidimensional relationships with young people…

While the need for holistic health and social service responses is increasingly being articulated in Australia, the discussion is not always matched by improvements in service delivery. This project looked at one service setting where youth workers were encouraged to take a holistic approach to their clients' often-complex needs. Interviews with…

Kimberly Howard and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn examine home visiting, an increasingly popular method for delivering services for families, as a strategy for preventing child abuse and neglect. They focus on early interventions because infants are at greater risk for child abuse and neglect than are older children. In their article, Howard and Brooks-Gunn…

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate active support (AS) training and to investigate changes to perceived engagement in domestic tasks, opportunities for choice, frequency of challenging behaviour, and level of support needs. Method: Participants were 12 adults with ID aged 27-57 years (M = 37 years) residing in three group homes, and…