Enduring wisdom: towards a comprehensive history of professional child and youth care

In this article we trace some of the important eras in our child and youth care history and highlight a number of the early and more recent contributors to our evolving field whose legacies deserve to be passed on. We can trace the roots of our work to at least the Byzantine era and the founding of the first group care homes and orphanages. The notion of consilience is used to link longstanding practice wisdom to the findings of modern science. The movement towards community-based, family-supportive child and youth care is likely to be dominant in the future, especially in “majority world” countries, and this is to be welcomed. At the same time, we suggest there are good reasons to value and find potential in good residential care. It is proposed that the 2,000 year history and unique role of residential care may offer a defining and unifying theme for the future of our discipline and profession.