Visioning for the Future: What Can Educational Leaders Do to Build a Shared Commitment to Interagency Collaboration?
Interagency collaboration is being touted as a means for schools to address the increasing social, emotional and health care needs of students. In this article, we contend that if interagency collaboration is to become more than a buzzword, then school leaders must work diligently to build a shared commitment to the school's vision by engaging service providers in sustained and collective discussions and decisions about the school's direction. Two promising approaches for building this shared commitment—strategic planning and collaborative visioning—are highlighted, including a discussion of how several newly-formed collaboratives are confronting the cultural, procedural/regulatory, and personal barriers that prohibit meaningful interagency collaboration.
The professional education of youth workers: A role for teacher education?
This paper suggests that education faculties are ideally placed to develop, initiate, coordinate the initial educational needs of youth workers, and to prepare teachers to collaborate with other agencies in responding to the needs of youth. Consequently, a role for teacher education exists in the design and development of courses for the initial educational needs of youth workers, to coordinate the implementation of those courses, and to prepare both prospective and practising teachers for a role in responding to youth problems. This extended role for education faculties is new and the result of changing societal and environmental factors currently facing today's young people. This paper describes current issues surrounding the education of youth workers, describes the specific design features of youth worker education and proposes that education faculties are ideally placed to coordinate a multidisciplinary approach to the professional education of youth workers. An extended role for teachers in responding to the needs and problems of youth is also described INTRODUCTION There is strong support in the literature for an inclusive or collaborative inter-agency approach for the professional education of people who work with young people and their families, but few papers of practical value appear in teacher education journals, faculties or programs * Education faculties seem to have been slow to meet the changing circumstances of youth workers, generally failing to provide for their professional education needs which typically are addressed through social work programs. While research into issues concerning young people has been widely reported in the education studies literature, there are few accounts of how these issues have been addressed within teacher education programs. The authors' recent survey of a number of teacher education journals for the period 1988 to 1995 (specifically, the South Pacific Journal of Teacher Education [Australia], the Journal of Teaching Practice [Australia], and the Journal of Education for Teaching [England)), revealed no articles dealing with issues relevant to the preparation of teachers working with youth, or which saw the preparation of youth workers as part of the role of education faculties. However, the Journal of Teacher Education (USA) recently featured several papers on the development of integrated, cross-disciplinary services for children and their families, for instance, schools share the same clients as youth worker agencies and the needs of young people cannot be addressed solely in terms of the services of one particular profession, but require the expertise of multiple disciplines (Zuniga-Mll & George, 1995). Teacher education needs to be Australian Journal of Teacher Education 2 Vol. 23, No. 1 1998 restructured to work more effectively with other faculties, schools and community services to meet the professional education needs of youth workers. Isolationist approaches to youth worker education are likely to be limited and much less effective than they could be (Winitzky, Sheridan, Crow, Welch and Kennedy, 1995). Teacher educators have the skills and expertise to become active in contributing to the on-going development of youth workers by coordinating a multidisciplinary approach to the education of youth workers. This paper proposes that teacher educators now need to consider taking up the challenge of contributing to the professional education of youth workers. In initiating this new field of endeavour, it is suggested that the professional education needs of youth workers have to be mapped using a multidimensional approach which addresses the various concerns youth workers face in dealing with their clients and their own needs for professional recognition. Accordingly, the first two sections of this paper describe the main features and problems of youth work and some current models employed or recommended in the professional education of youth worker,;. The final section provides a rationale for the location of youth studies in teacher education faculties and proposes how this process might be accomplished to meet the criteria established in the literature as summarised above. PROBLEMATIC FEATURES OF YOUTH WORKER EDUCATION All citizens pass through a period of their life known as "youth". Consequently, youth are ubiquitous and the nature of "youth work" is as varied as the needs of the individuals covered by the term "youth". However, "youth" and "youth work" are terms generally taken to refer to those individuals who encounter difficulties in the transition from childhood to adulthood, and during this period of development, are "at risk" and in need of assistance. Therefore, youth work contains many different, and often unrelated, issues including, ethnicity, rural isolation, youth accommodation, homelessness, drug education, suicide, AIDS, sexuality, physical disabilities, eating disorders, behaviour disorders, education and vocational training, school retention, crisis support, and mental health. Currently, youth work itself tends to be defined by the service provided by a specific agency. For instance, a Youth Crisis Support agency may offer individuals support, advocacy, counselling, supervision, assistance with practical needs such as accommodation, safety, transport, and/or financial advice, and refer clients to other mental health services. Alternatively, a Youth Mental Health Agency may assist individuals to manage stress and panic attacks, provide individual counselling, behaviour therapy, family therapy, psycho-therapeutic/educational groups and programs. The majority (65%) of youth workers are likely to be employed in suburban areas, others (15 %) work in the inner-city area, with the remainder (20%) located in non-metropolitan areas (White, Omelczuk & Underwood, 1991, p. 48). Youth workers in Australia may be involved in a broad spectrum of tasks and functions such as face-toAustralian Journal of Teacher Education 3 Vol. 23, No. 1 1998 face work with young people in a variety of community, residential, juvenile corrections, local government, case work and outreach programs. In addition, senior youth workers may be employed in the management, supervision, coordination, research, policy development and administration of youth workers and youth agencies (Muanders & Broadbent, 1995, p. 2 1). However, the reality is that youth workers are likely to be part-time, short-term or volunteer workers who have had limited opportunities to gain appropriate education and training (White, Omelczuk & Underwood, 199 1, p. 48). Not surprisingly, there is a high-job turnover and significant geographical mobility among youth workers. Consequently, the preparation of youth workers continues to be problematic. Youth workers are likely to be employed in a variety of geographical locations, in government or non-government agencies, be called on to perform a wide variety of functions for which they have received little or no preparation and for which they hold limited tertiary qualifications. It seems that education faculties may be in an ideal situation to address the problems of the education of youth workers, which is the focus of the following section. DESIGN FEATURES OF YOUTH WORKER EDUCATION In the light of the problematic features of youth worker education identified in the foregoing section, this section addresses the design features of youth worker education. The first point to note is that, at the present time, there is a relative absence of formal qualifications and training in youth work. Forty-five per cent of youth workers have no tertiary qualifications (White, Omelczuk and Underwood, 1991, p. 48), and the Queensland Community Services and Health Industries Training Council (1995) found that youth workers had "lower levels of language, literacy and numeracy skills" (p. 91). Youth workers who do have tertiary qualifications are likely to be graduates of related fields such as teaching. Overall, there is an apparent lack of professional status within the community for youth workers (Denholm & Ling, 1990; Muanders & Broadbent, 1995). The Queensland Community Services and Health Industries Training Council (1995, p. 88) commented that the need for professional qualifications and recognition for youth workers was critical. Similarly, Maunders and Broadbent's (1995) research indicated the need for professional recognition for youth workers, enhanced opportunities for in-service education and significant changes in the professional education of youth workers. University qualifications would enhance job prospects for youth workers and, combined with work experience, would provide them with the skills for making decisions about their own career paths. On completion of a university degree, possibilities exist for them to capitalise on opportunities in a broad range of human service work, including psychology, counselling, training, consultancy, community health and entrepreneurial activities. Traditionally, the professional education of youth workers usually is undertaken within a social Australian Journal of Teacher Education 4 Vol. 23, No. 1 1998 welfare framework, tends to be generalist rather than specialist, and attempts to address the multiple needs of youth workers' clients (NVhite, Omeiczuk and Underwood, 1991, p. 46). In some cases prospective youth workers are permitted to specialise in an elected area or to enhance career options by undertaking electives in a related area such as education, health, welfare, politics, management, counselling, cultural studies, or Aboriginal studies. Generally, youth work courses aim to develop:  a professional and informed orientation to youth work based on principles for practice, conceptual frameworks, and definitions of professional work;  knowledge of politics, state funding, youth policies (their formulation and realisation), knowledge of the structure of all three levels of government, knowledge of how these infl
Cambodian refugee health care beliefs and practices.
Since 1975, when refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia first began coming to the United States, many articles have been written about Southeast Asian or Indochinese refugees and health care. A careful review of the literature shows that most of these articles have one thing in common: they are written primarily about Vietnamese and do not address the unique health care beliefs and practices of Lao or Cambodian refugees.1 Although some beliefs and practices are common to most Southeast Asians, many are not. Understanding at least that differences exist, and hopefully what some specific differences are, will allow nurses and others to give better care to the various people commonly grouped together as Southeast Asians. This article will introduce readers to some Cambodian beliefs and practices related to health care. Of the principle refugee groups admitted to the U.S. since 1975, the Cambodians are presenting the greatest challenges to health care providers. Cambodians are usually poorly understood by Americans, their health status statistics are hidden among the broad category of "Asian-Pacific Islanders" or "Indochinese Refugees," and cultural and institutional barriers combine to make access to care an overwhelming problem. The end results, of course, are more problems and more expense for the Cambodians, increased stress placed on an already terribly overstressed people, and ultimately greater demands and expense placed on the health care system. One of the most common misunderstandings about Cambodians is that they (and Lao) are basically the same as the Vietnamese. "They speak the same dialect don't they?" There are some similarities, but there are also very significant differences.