Fixing our Workforce Crisis
Posted March 17, 2022, By Mindi Wisman
In today’s post Youth Catalytics’ Training Director Cindy Carraway-Wilson argues that the workforce shortage and subsequent crisis in the child and youth care field can be ameliorated by the professionalization and certification of child and youth care practitioners.
The workforce shortage
The pandemic has shown just how indispensable child and youth care workers are. But guess what—there aren’t enough of us —not by a long shot. As Youth Catalytics’ Training Director, and current President of the Child and Youth Care Certification Board (CYCCB), I know we can make our field much stronger for our current practitioners and much more attractive to people exploring a possible career change to social services. And there are huge numbers of people out there looking for a change. Why? Because we are in the midst of ‘The Great Resignation’ as it’s been coined; the phenomenon we’re currently in with record numbers of American’s quitting their jobs. And this phenomenon has certainly hit the child and youth care field head-on and laid bare the need to re-imagine how we retain workers and ensure a pipeline of new recruits. So, how do we do that? I think one key way is to make the certification of child and youth care practitioners a top priority. It elevates the field, creates the client-centered system of care we ultimately seek, and importantly, will attract and win back the workforce.
Why certification?
So how can certification help fix our workforce crisis? Well for one thing, certification has always been the means to professionalizing and legitimizing any field, and child and youth care is no exception. Did you know that the CYCCB and the Association for Child and Youth Care Practice have been implementing a national competency-based certification process for both experienced and new practitioners for nearly 15 years? And that the number of people seeking and becoming certified has doubled in the last five years?
At the same time:
More community-based organizations have had their Child and Youth Care (CYC) practitioners certified
Institutions of Higher Education in the U.S. and Canada use the CYCCB competencies in their curricula
The U.S. Department of Labor now recognizes this certification for the programs they fund
The Council on Accreditation (COA) recognizes the CYCCB professional certifications in their standards
All of these developments lift up what those of us doing this work already know—that professional development is crucial to providing best practices and simultaneously enlisting a steady stream of new professionals—something the field truly needs. Recent research shows that youth treatment centers across the U.S. are suffering from severe staff shortages, that nearly one in four teachers said they were likely to leave their jobs by the end of the 2020–2021 school year, and that many experts in the field say the greatest crisis facing afterschool programs across the country is the shortage of workers.
By professionalizing child and youth care work, and certifying practitioners, we can build our workforce, expand our professional pipeline, and ultimately improve services for our clients. And the research suggests that the major components of certification (education, experience, successful completion of a portfolio and exam) are good indicators of favorable job performance, and that certified practitioners have a positive impact on the development of the young people and families they serve. As a certified practitioner myself, I know how truly fulfilling the work can be. And for organizations, having a readily accessible, trained, and certified workforce who commit to the job long-term ensures program stability. And let’s always remember that it’s the health and well-being of our young people that’s at stake, and the reason we do this work in the first place. So, if you haven’t already, now is the time to join the certification movement!
The field needs you!
Learn more about CYC certification or contact me, Cindy Carraway-Wilson, at cwilson@youthcatalytics.org