A Hard Place to Call Home: A Canadian Perspective on Residential Care and Treatment for Children and Youth

Residential care and treatment for children and youth remain ubiquitous across Canada in spite of frequent critiques and an ideology of constructing group care as a last resort. In the first book of its kind, Dr. Kiaras Gharabaghi argues that the absence of a unifying theory or conceptual idea(s) pursuant to residential care and treatment perpetuate dynamics of mediocrity and complacency toward inadequate standards and practices. Drawing on organizational examples from across Canada, Gharabaghi re-constructs the possibilities for this form of care as a space for healing, growth, and the promotion of autonomy for young people.

This well-timed resource offers the child and youth services community a positive, constructive, and revolutionary framework for residential care and treatment that is fundamentally based on a partnership between caregivers and young people, their families, neighbourhoods, and communities. Dr. Gharabaghis sophisticated and provocative analysis of the systems key issues is essential reading for students, practitioners, and educators in the field of child and youth care and in the human services more broadly.

Features:

• explores residential care and treatment with a focus on the needs of unique populations, such as black youth, Indigenous youth, and young people impacted by developmental disability or neurodevelopmental challenges
• emphasizes the voices and participation of young people with lived experience in residential care and treatment
• written in a uniquely Canadian context, but its theoretical elements draw on residential care in the United States, Germany, South Africa, and elsewhere

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