On Choosing a Vocation in Child Care

Exploring the Vocation of Residential Childcare

Residential childcare with emotionally disturbed children is not for the fainthearted. It takes a trained professional, willing to wait patiently on results, to achieve success with these children. In addition to inquiring about employment, we encourage you to ask questions about our training program. From time to time, we offer introductory classes designed to allow a person to become certified, and explore the profession, without necessarily becoming employed.

We have a goal at Hill Country Youth Ranch to enlarge the pool of professional childcare workers in Texas. Thus, our training program seeks to provide vehicles for persons to be introduced to the profession through several user-friendly avenues. First, anyone interested in knowing about residential childcare can order from our catalog of videos and books (we recommend our Training Manual or a one-hour video like "Macaroni at Midnight" as an inspiring and informative introduction to the field). Second, a person can attend one of our certification academies which are offered periodically.

Below we have printed the introductory page of the Childcare Training Manual, compiled by Gary Priour, HCYR Founder and Executive Director. The Manual is available for purchase at Order Online.

Introduction to Childcare at Hill Country Youth Ranch

If you are coming to work with abused, troubled, and special needs children, you are coming to a unique opportunity. There is no end-all "ABC's of Childcare" textbook, and every child you meet in this field will apprentice you afresh. You have certainly chosen a field in which there is still mystery and challenge, and plenty of chance to make a meaningful contribution. But you must enter with caution. The way is strewn with the hurt and the burned out, and many a good-hearted adult is among them. The average length of service for child care workers is under 1 year.

We have found that the best time to prepare you for this work is in the very beginning. A gift for trial and error learning, and a big strong heart, may sometimes be enough to carry you through, but you won't last without training and knowledge. Too much is at stake for the children as well as for you. Thus we are asking you to suspend your own opinions about what makes good childcare, and, at least at first, stay still and listen, acquiring skills and accepting the training as gospel.

In time, we will want you to share all of your talents, insights and ideas with us. But for now, we will ask you to listen, absorb and learn. For the first two to four weeks, during a pre-service apprenticeship customized to fit your previous training and experience, that's about all you will do. You will spend most of your time reading, listening and participating in training. You will not be left unsupervised with children until your customized pre-service training is completed.

It is essential to your success that you understand the following three-step process for becoming a professional childcare worker. Please read the next paragraphs carefully.

As we see it, there are three stages for you to pass through as you become part of the community of childcare. Let us call them absorbing, partnering, and supervising. The first stage, absorbing, lasts a full 120 days, and includes the apprenticeship and internship levels of child care work. Suggestions from you for systemic or programmatic change will not yet be welcome. During this stage, the flow of information is primarily from us to you, and we ask you to be intentionally slow to form judgments about the training methods or the child care program itself. They are just complicated enough that you cannot possibly get an accurate picture from reading this, from talking to other staff, or even from observing everything around you during your first months. You might correctly identify the shape of an event, but you cannot possibly know if that event is an aberration or part of a recurring cycle. And, it will take time for you to absorb enough of the program so that you can act in accord with its most fundamental principles, which have been established and refined over two decades of work and experience.

The second stage, partnering, starts with certification as Childcare Worker I and lasts from the fifth month at HCYR until the end of the third year. During this extended period, you will be a partner in running the program, be seen as competent to care for the children, and be asked to help others, both children and staff, as they come to live with us. The flow of energy is between you and other members of the HCYR family, and the key word is helping -- helping the program to happen, helping kids and staff to succeed, helping wherever you are shown a need.

The third stage, beginning with certification as Master Childcare Worker, is conferred after three years and completion of the Childcare Worker III curriculum. This stage is called supervising. Supervisors may choose between two tracks in this stage, one leading to further advancement in direct care, the other to management training and a chance to influence systems as a whole. In either track, the flow of energy in the third stage is from the individual to the system.

All three stages are going on all the time in all of us, but this division into stages according to tenure will be helpful in guiding you to play your part successfully. Those who follow it are generally much happier with their experience here and, in the long run, have a more profound influence on the whole and make a longer-lasting contribution in the industry. Unavoidably, it takes time to learn, then master, the enduring principles on the deep inside of this vocation.

If you are interested in learning more about Hill Country Youth Ranch, a residential treatment center for abused, troubled and orphaned children, go to the HCYR Home Page for more web information or contact us at our address in Ingram, Texas.