Purpose: 

This Qualification is an entry-level qualification for those who want to enter the field of Child & Youth Care Work (C&YCW) as a potential career. It builds on practical experience and community-based learning, and equips people for their role as an auxiliary child and youth care worker. As such the Qualification will also be valuable for those who may have been practising within the field, but without formal recognition. In particular, this Qualification will be useful for: 

• Auxiliary child and youth care workers.
• Persons who work in related fields such as social workers, pastoral counsellors, where knowledge and skill of C&YCW is an advantage. 

Recipients of this Qualification will be able to: 

• Perform clearly defined tasks and activities which contribute to holistic care and development of the young person.
• Develop themselves purposefully, professionally and as a resource for C&YCW.
• Demonstrate knowledge of and work in ways that are consistent with the ethics of the field and workplace.
• Demonstrate understanding of on-line and consultative supervision and their role in the provision of care and own personal development.
• Describe and uphold the rights of young people, and promote these in their practice.
• Solve common problems within familiar contexts: 
• Adjust an application of a common solution within relevant parameters to meet the needs of small changes in the problem or operating context. 
• Motivate the change using relevant evidence. 
• Auxiliary workers will carry out their role at all times: 
• Under the supervision of an appointed supervisor.
• As a member of a team. 

Auxiliary workers will not be assigned full responsibility for the young person’s welfare. 

Rationale: 

Traditional learning streams are proving inadequate to equip people for child at risk contexts, and there is an increasing call for the skills particular to child care work across diverse sectors including prisons, hospitals, schools and communities. South Africa’s unique combination of threats and circumstances presents a special challenge in the area of children at risk. Those who work with children at risk must be empowered to promote and facilitate the optimum development of children and adolescents with both normal and special developmental needs, so as to ensure that they are able to be effective within all contexts. Current experience suggests that the degree of sophistication and expertise demanded requires specialist input and time-related on-the-job mentored experience. 

This Qualification aims to address some of the needs of the large numbers of enthusiastic but generally poorly trained people for high quality learning and assessment opportunities if they are to meet the requirements of the Social Welfare and Child Care sectors. The possibilities for incremental learning, which builds on generic social work and/or child care training, must be created if the sector is to make the equitable distribution of skills a reality. In addition, there are people who have been working in the sector for some time, and who have gained the additional skills and expertise required through systematic on-the-job training or practical experience. This Qualification offers possibilities for appointment in line with their recognised skills.