The Beat: Well-being
Chris Molinelli calls it “a happy accident.” In September, his Middletown, NY, youth shelter, A Friend’s House, received a 3 a.m. call from a young man who needed emergency housing. “He met all our criteria, but we couldn’t get him transportation,” Molinelli says.
Frustrated by that missed opportunity, Molinelli knew there had to be a way to help youth in similar situations. One of his partner organizations helped run a local after-hours hotline for homeless adults and families. Clients only had to dial 211 to access services. Molinelli set out to bring A Friend’s House under the 211 umbrella as a primary resource for homeless youth, and he achieved that goal on April 1.
By following Molinelli's lead and including your program in a local 211 network, you can connect your organization to other social services and make it easier for youth to contact you.
The 411 on 211...
"A Family Intervention to Reduce Sexual Behavior, Substance Use, and Delinquency Among Newly Homeless Youth." Journal of Adolescent Health, Vol. 50, No. 4, April 2012.
What it’s about: Support to Reunite, Involve and Value Each Other, or STRIVE, is a five-session, in-home program that aims to repair homeless youths’ relationships with their families. Researchers wanted to see how well the intervention worked at keeping homeless 12- to 17-year-olds from having risky sex, using drugs and getting in trouble with the law. Each STRIVE session uses cognitive-behavioral theories, which help families learn better problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills.
Why read it: Researchers have found a number of programs, curricula and practices that improve the education, employment, family relationships and health of at-risk youth in general....
“Pregnancy and Mental Health of Young Homeless Women” (abstract). American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 81, No. 2, April 2011.
What it’s about: This study explores the experiences and mental health of homeless young women who are pregnant or have children. The researchers looked at 222 homeless 16- to 19-year-old girls who were sexually active at the beginning of the three-year study. Data came from from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Homeless Adolescents.
Why read it: We know that homeless young women in the United States are much more likely to become pregnant than their peers. But few studies have looked at mental health or other stresses that negatively affect young homeless mothers. A good understanding of what homeless young moms go through may help youth workers tailor their services.
Biggest...
Social Control Correlates of Arrest Behavior Among Homeless Youth in Five U.S. Cities (abstract), Violence and Victims, Volume 26, Number 5, 2011.
What it’s about: Researchers interviewed 238 homeless youth from five large U.S. cities about their time spent on the street, employment history, substance use, mental health, criminal history and use of social services. The researchers wanted to know which factors were associated with more criminal activity and higher rates of arrest among homeless youth.
Why read it: To survive on the streets, some homeless youth engage in illegal activities like prostitution, theft and selling drugs. When these youth want to leave the streets, having a criminal record can keep them from getting the services and support they need.
By understanding the factors that make homeless youth more...
Poetry is powerful. Clinical psychologist Rebecca Chalmers sees that power whenever she uses poetry as a therapeutic tool.
“When young people share a poem they’ve written, and everyone says that it’s beautiful, that’s supporting who they are and how they’re able to intellectually and emotionally express themselves, and that feels so good,” says Chalmers, who practices in New York and has a Master of Fine Arts in poetry.
As a mode of expression, poetry is tailor-made for teens. “Poetry is very immediate and about the self and helps sort out ‘who I am’ in a way that speaks to them,” Chalmers says. And working on poetry with a group of other youth can feed teens’ need to relate, she says. “By the time they’ve written something and shared it with other group members and gotten that supportive feedback, they form such a bond.”
April is National Poetry Month, and what better...
When 18-year-old Dan Wall started out as a messenger at the Seattle logistics company Expeditors in 1988, he had no intention of attending college. And he never imagined he would become the senior vice president of a Fortune 500 Company.
His bosses, CEO Peter Rose and President of Sales and Marketing Tim Barber, saw what he couldn’t see. They knew he had the right attitude to go far. He just needed training to help him gain the skills that would get him there.
Twenty years later, Wall founded Opportunity Knocks, an Expeditors job training program based on the philosophy that, like him, young people need to be given the chance to succeed. Expeditors recruits high school students who aren’t considering secondary education. But candidates possess what Walls calls the “organic” skills they need to succeed: “a positive attitude, good customer service and work ethic.”
A...
In honor of Sexually Transmitted Disease Awareness Month, in April, NCFY asked two longtime sexual health educators to recommend their favorite online resources on STDs.
Monica Rodriguez is president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS. Deborah Mathis is administrative chief of women’s health at the University of Pennsylvania’s Student Health Center.
Here are the sites they recommend:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Sexual Health Pages
Mathis likes the CDC’s accurate, easy-to-read Web pages on a range of sexual health topics. “They make a great stepping stone,” she says.
Offerings include interactive charts on reported rates of various STDs by age and PDFs of young people’s STD rates in each state, as well as bilingual STD fact sheets.
“The CDC just amped up their site in time for STD Awareness Month,”...
The National Institute on Drug Abuse's Easy-to-Read Drug Facts site is just that: Easy to read.
The site talks about drug abuse, addiction and treatment in short sentences and plain English. Pages can be easily printed out for people who don't have computers. And users can listen to pages if they prefer that to reading.
The site is a good tool if you work with young people and families who have difficulty reading or understanding English. You'll find:
- A guide to drugs that people abuse, including marijuana, painkillers and alcohol. The guide lists each drug's effects and impact on the body, slang names for the drug, and personal stories from recovered addicts.
- Advice for parents on how to keep young people drug-free. ...
Seems like there’s never enough time to do all the things that need to be done to make the world a better place. Maybe that’s why Global Youth Service Day -- the largest and longest-running service event in the world, and the only day of service dedicated to children and youth -- is actually a weekend. Mark your calendar for April 20-22, 2012.
But don't stop there. Here are three things you can do to use Global Youth Service Day as a springboard for a year's worth of community service:
1. Help youth to plan and do a community service activity in April. Last year, NCFY talked to a Honolulu mentoring program before and after the big day to find out how their project went.
2. Learn about the best ways to...
Births among African American teens have fallen a whopping 47 percent since the early 1990s. Still, half of all African American girls in the United States will get pregnant at least once before their 20th birthdays.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy recently teamed up with ESSENCE magazine to survey 1,500 African American youth, ages 13 to 21. The research team wanted to better understand the young people's attitudes on sex, dating, relationships and the media. NCFY spoke with Paula Parker-Sawyers, who directs outreach and partnerships at the National Campaign, about the survey and how youth workers can best help all young people avoid unintended pregnancy.
NCFY: Were any of the findings from the survey surprising?
Parker-Sawyers: I would say they were enlightening,...
