Tuning into child and youth care: an audio drama inquiry with child and youth care practitioners who have lived in residential placement

Description

Child and youth care (CYC) practitioners (CYCPs) who have lived in residential placement as children or youth represent an understudied and thus largely unknown cohort. This lack of knowledge has resulted in assumptions, generalizations, and unfounded claims impacting discourses, and potentially practices, within CYC. Based on the development of an original research method—audio drama inquiry—this sonic dissertation presents the first documented examination of the perspectives, experiences, and insights of 17 Canadian CYCPs “from care” (CYCPfC). Informed by research-based theatre, CYC theory, and care ethics, two audio drama series were created asking “what does residential placement experience do to CYCPs, and how do CYCPfC do CYC?” The resulting performances reveal frictions and desires related to working for, within, and at times against the same systems that one grew up in. CYCPfC articulate benefits resulting from their “lived experience,” such as identification, empathy, inimitable systemic knowledge, and motivations to initiate change within such systems. However, the audio dramas also reveal perils related to their personal histories, the institutions in which they work(ed), and the “the field” more broadly. Through greater understanding of CYCPfC, who provide insights, cautions, and learnings from their unique perspectives, this study advances our knowledge regarding what is done when doing CYC. Moreover, Tuning into CYC broadens existing frames of qualitative inquiry through explicating and demonstrating the theoretical and practical elements of audio drama inquiry. / Graduate

Links & Downloads

1. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/13867
2. Vachon, W. (2020). From experience: Child and Youth Care, lived experience, and wounded practitioners. Relational Child and Youth Care Practices, 33(1), 19-35.
3. Vachon, W. (2021). CYC aesthetics and the beauty of relational inquiry. In H. Modlin, J. Freeman, C. Gaitens, and T. Garfat (Eds.), Relational child & youth care in action (pp. 117-207). PreText Publishers.
4. Vachon, W. (2021) The cost is unacceptable: Excerpts of an arts-based inquiry with child and youth care practitioners from care. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, 34(3), 98-114.
5. Vachon, W. (in press). Audio drama inquiry: A telling method of research. In S. Woodland and W. Vachon (Eds.), Sonic engagement: The ethics and aesthetics of community engaged audio practice. Routledge.

Tags

care

children and youth

lived experience

audio drama inquiry

residential care

child and youth care

Additional Fields

Identifer	oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/13867
Date	21 April 2022
Creators	Vachon, Wolfgang
Contributors	White, Jennifer Hume
Source Sets	University of Victoria
Language	English, English
Detected Language	English
Type	Thesis
Format	application/pdf, application/octet-stream, application/octet-stream
Rights	Available to the World Wide Web