Preparing Practitioners to be Ethically Responsive to Differences: Practicing in a Pluralistic World

Whether working in family support programs, residential care settings, community based mental health centres, or child welfare contexts, child and youth care practitioners are challenged more than ever to ethically respond in the face of conflicting personal, professional, moral and cultural values. No matter where we live, we are confronted with unprecedented movement across borders, unparalleled levels of migration, and increasing numbers of asylum-seekers and refugees who are fleeing violence and persecution. These shifts are happening at global and local levels and as child and youth care practitioners, we are ethically called to respond to this constantly changing, emergent, and pluralistic world.

But what does it mean to “ethically respond to differences”? How do practitioner values intersect with values that are fundamentally different from those we seek to support? What needs to happen to prepare practitioners to not merely tolerate differences but to embrace and seek out differences with an open mind and heart? While most students and practitioners intend to be open to differences and are sincere in their desires to become “culturally attuned/competent”, we have found in our classrooms and professional contexts, that the rub of difference can often be challenging. What is required of us to actually embody principles of inclusion and diversity? How do these words potentially work to conceal the workings of structural violence and oppression? What has to be negotiated when words are not enough? What values, ethics, and principles do we need to embody/teach/promote? Do we run the risk of lapsing into what is often called “moral education”? If we don’t, then are we sliding into a kind of moral relativism? What kinds of resources can we use to assist students and future practitioners to negotiate these emotionally-laden and complex relational encounters?

In this workshop, we will present some ideas that we have been working on as researchers and educators that will hopefully promote sharing with others from other countries and professional contexts.