This paper explores social class, gender, Great Britain's Youth Training Scheme, and social reproduction in the context of entry into "caring" careers. Data are drawn from one of a group of ethnographic studies. The focus is on participant observation with a group of 16- to 18-year-old girls training for jobs in the field of institutional care. The paper begins by exploring aspects of the girls' experience of their training and work placements, which involve physically and emotionally stressful tasks, such as coping with violence, dealing with incontinence, and laying out the dead. It then documents a gradual process of adjustment to this type of work that ends with the girls positively seeking work in the field. This discussion serves as the basis for posing the central questions of the paper--why working class girls enter working-class, gender-stereotyped jobs and what role the Youth Training Scheme plays in promoting their adjustment. An explanatory framework is developed that revolves around features of the occupational culture of institutional care, gender socialization in the context of working class families, specific functions of the hidden and visible curriculum of the Youth Training Scheme program, and the wider context of youth unemployment and job scarcity. (14 references.) (YLB)