Integrating an Existential Perspective in Youth Care: A Care Ethical Argument

Abstract

The biographies of youngsters placed in youth care are burdened with deeply impacting and often traumatizing experiences of abuse, neglect and violence. These experiences raise existential questions that play a pivotal role in the development of these youngsters. In this paper, our purpose is to make clear that good, effective youth care integrates paying attention to these existential aspects. First, we elaborate on the debate on the effectiveness of youth care. Our goal here is to draw attention to the importance and relevance of this dimension of youth care, and embed it in a care ethical point of view. Second, we give a more elaborate account of this existential dimension of youth care, from both the perspectives of the care receiver and the caregiver. We discuss the relation to identity formation of young people, to various forms of sense making and to the symbolic character of the existential dimension of care which is visible in play. Third, we point out several aspects of professional competence that seem crucial to integrate the existential dimension in youth care practice.

Keywords:

• Youth Care
• Identity
• Existential Questions
• Ethics of Care
• Effectiveness
• Professionalism

Notes

1. For example, three journals recently dedicated a thematic issue to the rapid development of the ethics of care: Ethics and social welfare—Care ethics; new theories and applications, part I (2010; 4: 109–216) and part II (2011; 5: 107–224); Health care analysis—Ethics of care and responsibility (2011; 19: 1–97); Nursing ethics—An ethics of care: normative challenges (2011; 18: 147–271). Since 2011 there is also a book series (published by Peeters Publishers, Leuven) devoted to ethics of care.

2. Permission was obtained from the foster parents to include data in this article from the case-study conducted in their foster family home.