Best Practice Standards

BEST PRACTICES AND COMPETENCIES

CHILD & YOUTH CARE PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
The Association for Child & Youth Care Practice, Inc., its Board, and its members have been active in developing professional ethics for the field of child and youth care work. In cooperation with the International Leadership Coalition for Professional Child and Youth Care, the Standards for Practice of North American Child & Youth Care Professionals was developed in 1995. These ethical and practice standards have been adopted by many child and youth care associations around the world.

The ongoing development and updating of the ethics code is carried out by an ACYCP committee. The code was most recently updated in 2017. Practitioners who are interested in ethics work are encouraged to join the committee.

CHILD & YOUTH CARE PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES
As part of the North American Certification Project (NACP), The Association of Child and Youth Care Practice, developed a set of competencies that describe what a fully competent CYC practitioner employed in any setting in the field knows and can do. These competencies serve as the basis of the international CYC Certification Program.

The Competency Committee, chaired by Martha Mattingly, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh Program in Child Care and Child Development, sought to identify competencies that were present across multiple practice settings. Over a two-year period, the committee conducted a meta-analysis of 87 competency sets drawn from all major child and youth care practice settings. These competencies were collected internationally and represent the largest pool of competencies analyzed to date in the CYC field. Through this process the committee was able to identify knowledge and skills competencies that are believed to be the basis for preparation of CYC professionals working in any setting.