Course Code: COUN 2000
Academic Year: 2025-2026
The focus of this course will be to situate the history, characteristics and philosophy of Child and Youth Care relational practice within the larger context of counselling and approaches to psychotherapy. Students will be introduced to the key concepts, and positions of the major schools of psychotherapeutic practice and counselling relative to constructs of children's mental health. The vocabulary, concepts, philosophy, strengths and challenges of psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive, and post-modern approaches will be considered; each approach will be framed developmentally through the lens of relational care. Child and Youth Care Practice setting scenarios will be used to critically examine the fit of these approaches as they apply to child and youth care relational practice. This course is not intended to teach supervised intensive practice nor interventions methods but rather seeks to deepen the understanding of relational child and youth care practice while establishing a basic awareness of and vocabulary fluency with various approaches to the care of children, youth and families.