ABSTRACT
This publication is meant for persons involved in the care of children and adolescents. It will hopefully be useful for child and youth care workers and others who are concerned with the growth and development of our younger generation. The following chapters deal with the essential developmental requirements of young persons as they mature — and more specifically with the development of those children and adolescents who must spend a major portion or all of their daily lives in group care settings. Children and adolescents in group care, just as their age-mates living in their own or foster family homes, are engaged in the life processes of development; they are striving and being challenged to achieve growing maturity. The notion of maturity is an elusive concept, but it is clear that the periods of child- and adolescenthood are the years within the human developmental life span in which the thrust to develop is viewed as the central energy investment.
