The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers. Caring and Its Discontents. - book review

Adolescence, Spring, 2002

ARIELI. Mordecai. The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers. Caring and Its Discontents. New York: The Haworth Press. 1997. 125pp. $69.95 (h), $22.95 (p).

This book shows how care is handled, not how it should be handled. It introduces the reader to a social reality, a sometimes difficult and challenging social reality, as it is viewed by its participants. It broaches the problem of tension between workers and residents in the hope that bringing the problem out into the open will be a first step toward a solution. The reader is shown that the very arrangement of residential care automatically sets up antagonism between the sole group care worker and his or her wards; residents tend to resist the inherently coercive efforts of the worker who tries to bring them through processes of change and socialization. Interviews with Israeli residential care workers are presented to help the reader understand the circumstances under which residential care providers experience discontent, or job dissatisfaction. The reader will learn which workers are most likely to feel discontented and how staff members cope with the stress and discontent they experience. Youth care worke rs. policymakers, childcare staff recruiters. supervisors. and trainers will find that this book sheds light on the problem of discontent and the need to make child and youth care facilities more humane for residents and staff alike. It will also help social work educators and researchers in sociology, social work, and the social psychology of education get in touch with what goes on inside the walls of residential care centers.