Domain IV: Belonging, Relationships and Accepting Environments

Domain IV: Belonging, Relationships, and Accepting Environments
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Domain IV: Belonging, Relationships, and Accepting Environments
Child and youth care (CYC) ensures that children and youth are treated as unique individuals who matter. As Gharabaghi and Charles (2020) reveal, CYC is centered on the concepts of caring, relationships, and love, among others. These concepts ensure that children and youth have the necessary skills and resources to grow into healthy adults. This paper reflects on Domain IV: belonging, relationships, and accepting environments as it relates to meaningful care, its importance in the lives of young people, and how it affects CYC work.
Description of Domain IV
This domain is concerned with the relationships maintained by individuals involved in children's and youth's lives. It stresses the importance of ensuring that residential programs/facilities provide children and youth with a sense of belongingness, respect and dignity, safety and accessibility, transparency in the setting’s rules and procedures, and meaningful relationships with family, peers, and staff (The Students Commission (TSC), 2017). These elements ensure that children and youth have a meaningful, wholesome childhood. The domain ensures that children and youth in care are treated as individuals and have similar life experiences as other children/youth. According to the TSC (2017), children/youth in care should be treated as simply children/youth rather than preventing them from experiencing childhood like regular kids.
In particular, the quality of care provided to them should not change just because they are children/youth in care. They deserve to feel safe, respected, loved, and have a sense of belonging. As Johnson et al. (2020) note, it is common for children/youth in care to be overlooked, yet all they want is to know that they matter and belong in the community, just like regular kids. They want to feel connected and supported, and since this sense of belonging is a universal basic human need, children/youth in care should not be treated as exceptions.. In addition, children/youth in care should not be expected to just follow the rules in a facility. Instead, the rules should be explained to them (TSC, 2017) so it is apparent why they have to be followed.
Importance of Domain IV in Young People’s Lives
This domain is essential in the lives of young people because it emphasizes the need to provide them with stable and meaningful relationships nurtured in a safe and comfortable environment (TSC, 2017). The growth and development of young people are influenced by factors such as safety, stability, love, and belongingness. This domain provides a blueprint that CYC practitioners can use to ensure they provide optimum quality of care to young people. The Residential Services Review Panel (2016) notes that such quality of care can only be provided in the context of love, human connection, a sense of belongingness, and a secure practitioner-young person relationship.
The domain stresses the importance of a sense of belonging for young people. According to Steenbakkers et al. (2018), children/youth in care have been sep...