“I did a lot of good today”: Child and Youth Care Workers’ Perceptions of Their Work

Child and Youth Care is a challenging field characterized by intensive daily involvement with youth at risk. It belongs to the wider area of helping professions but has its distinct attributes related to clients’ characteristics and working environment. This study explores how Child and Youth Care workers in Israel experience their work with youth, its goals, the challenges involved in it, and how they cope with them.

The study employed a qualitative phenomenological approach. The data was gathered through semi-structured in-depth interviews with 34 Child and Youth Care workers and analyzed in accordance with the phenomenological data analysis approach.

The interview analysis yielded four themes related to participants’ perceptions of their work: Child and Youth Care workers’ job definition, the personal meaning they ascribe to their work, factors that challenge their satisfaction with their work, and factors that help them cope with these challenges.

The workers see their job as an important part of their lives and as a source of satisfaction and meaning. This experience involves several youth-related, workplace-related, and personal difficulties and benefits, conceptualized in terms of risk and resilience factors. The balanced interplay between these factors enables the workers to cope with the high physical and psychological demands of their job and facilitates an enhanced sense of meaningfulness.

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