How to become a child or Youth residential care assistant
Official title: Child/Youth residential care assistant
Also called: Child residential care assistant, Home parent, Hostel parent, House parent, Youth residential care assistant, Home parent, Youth residential care assistant
Child/Youth residential care assistant cares for children in private households and provides support and expertise to parents in satisfying children’s physical, emotional, intellectual, and social needs. He/she is also involved in meal planning and preparation, laundry and clothing care, organisation of play activities and outings, discipline, intellectual stimulation, language activities, and transportation.
Main tasks
- Assisting children to wash, dress and feed themselves
- Taking children to and from school or outdoors for recreation
- Playing games with children, or entertaining them by reading or storytelling
- Assisting in the preparation of materials and equipment for children’s education and recreational activities
- Managing children’s and youth’s behaviours and guiding their social development
- Disciplining children and recommending or initiating other measures to control behaviour, such as caring for their own clothing and picking up toys and books
- Observing and monitoring children’s play activities
- Keeping records on individual children or youth, including daily observations and information about activities, meals served, and medications administered
Ways in
- Apprenticeship: Work-study diploma. Related ITE work-study diplomas: Work-Study Diploma in Community Care Integration & Management. You are employed by a company and study at ITE at the same time. Peernovo matched these from course names.
- Polytechnic or ITE: ITE course (Nitec or Higher Nitec). Related ITE courses: Higher Nitec in Community Care & Social Services. Peernovo matched these from course names; ITE does not publish which jobs each course leads to.; Polytechnic diploma. Related diplomas: Diploma in Integrated Community Care (Republic Polytechnic). Peernovo matched these from course names; polytechnics do not publish which jobs each course leads to.
Pay · Outlook · AI and this job
- Generative AI can do relatively little of this work, by the ILO's global estimate.
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Questions people ask
How do I become a child or Youth residential care assistant?
Ways in include: ITE course (Nitec or Higher Nitec); Polytechnic diploma; Work-study diploma.
Will AI change the work of a child or Youth residential care assistant?
Generative AI can do relatively little of this work, by the ILO's global estimate.
Sources
- International Labour Organization, Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure (ILO Working Paper 140, Gmyrek et al.) (ILO Working Paper 140, May 2025, Annex Table A1), CC BY 4.0, retrieved 4 October 2026
Updated 4 October 2026