The Beat
Subscribe to RSS FeedIn a new Youth Speak Out podcast, two young people share how they use the common language of popular music to broach a difficult subject: teen dating violence.
Jaquil and Jalisa, youth leaders at the anti-dating violence nonprofit Start Strong Boston, bring a list of pop, rap, rock and country songs when they talk to local middle schoolers about dating and relationships. By analyzing song lyrics and discussing whether they promote healthy or unhealthy relationships, Jaquil and Jalisa help younger teens develop healthy attitudes before they start dating.
Going to a clinic or getting tested for sexually transmitted infections can be scary for young people, especially if they don't know what to expect. To help youth get over the hurdle of fear, a group of youth in New York City has produced several videos that encourage their peers to take care of their sexual health.
Part of a series written by and starring members of Community Healthcare Network's teen health program, the videos could be incorporated into life skills classes or sexual health workshops.
"Teen Clinic Tour": A young woman visits a teen-health clinic for the first time.
"Face Your Fears": Young people face typical fears, including getting tested for HIV, and overcome them.
Additional Resources
"Answering Questions, Building Trust: The Role of Health Services in Promoting Well-being"
Peer Education and Leadership in Dating Violence Prevention: Strengths and Challenges (abstract), Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, Vol. 19, 2010.
What it’s about: The authors of this article interviewed 52 domestic violence and sexual assault prevention practitioners about their experiences using youth as educators and leaders in efforts to prevent dating violence and sexual assault among adolescents.
Why read it: Using peer educators, or leaders, to encourage healthy behavior among other teens is a popular component of many programs aimed at ending teen dating violence and sexual assault. This article reports on the pros and cons of the peer education approach.
Biggest takeaways for youth workers:
Pros:
- Peer education can be rewarding for both the young leaders and the youth they educate, and it can make programs more relevant to diverse audiences.
- Skits in particular seem to successfully engage youth, who often resist lecturing and are more used to dynamic or interactive media.
- Allowing peer educators to relate their own traumatic histories can be a valuable way to engage the youth they are educating.
Cons:
- Programs should take care that survivors who share their stories are supported and not made to feel vulnerable.
- Coordinating and facilitating peer leadership programs can be challenging, especially maintaining a consistent group of peer leaders when youth are busy with school and other activities.
- Programs need enough resources to provide training and support for youth leaders.
Additional references: For more information on dating violence prevention, visit Loveisrespect.org. For more information on peer education, visit youthpeer.org or read NCFY's articles about peer education and outreach.
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of these and other publications.)
Each year, thousands of youth come to the United States illegally without a parent or guardian. Many of them wind up in immigration court without a lawyer to help them navigate the system.
To find out what youth workers can do to help these young people, NCFY spoke with Megan McKenna, who directs communications and advocacy for Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that arranges free legal representation for undocumented, unaccompanied youth.
NCFY: What can youth workers do if they find out one of their young people is undocumented?
McKenna: The most important thing is for the child—no matter what—to try to have a lawyer or some sort of professional legal advice to help them navigate the system.
NCFY: How long does it take to secure lawful status for young people?
McKenna: It can take a while. It really depends on the type of case. For example, an asylum case can take some time because it takes time to gather all the information needed to present the case to the U.S. government. And there are a number of procedures for some of the other types of immigration relief, sort of steps you have to take. So it can take a year or more.
The immigration courts are backlogged, so a lot of it may depend on when the child gets his or her first court date. They may not get a court date for six months, eight months.
NCFY: While this long process is happening, what can youth workers do to help the young person?
McKenna: There are a number of circumstances that the kids can get work authorization. Contact a social services agency or a lawyer who knows what forms of immigration relief would allow them to work after a period of time.
One of the main things is to help youth stay out of trouble. Any kind of contact with law enforcement could have a negative effect on the case. It wouldn’t necessarily make the child ineligible for protection, but it could complicate things, and in some cases it could bar the child.
Help them stay in school as well. A number of the judges ask children who are before them in their immigration court proceedings, Are they in school? What are they doing in school? How are their grades? And although legally that has no binding on the judge’s decision, it’s sort of part of the picture that the judge would have of the child. So it’s another helpful thing to show that the child is working hard, trying to be a good student, and that sort of thing.
To find free legal counsel for undocumented youth, request a referral from KIND or go to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s list of free legal services providers.
Additional Resource
“Immigration and Schools: Supporting Success for Undocumented and Unaccompanied Homeless Youth”(PDF, 1.4MB) by KIND and the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth
Controlling behavior and emotional abuse in teen dating relationships are nothing new. But technologies like smart phones, texting and social networking sites have made young people vulnerable to new avenues of harassment and abuse—because abusers can reach them anytime, anywhere.
Parents and youth service providers might not understand the seriousness of so-called digital abuse or know how to help. That's why Liz Claiborne Inc.'s Love Is Not Abuse campaign against dating violence created an iPhone app to help grown-ups get the seriousness of the problem.
"Even if you have experienced some type of abuse in your life, it probably wasn't digital or on social media," says Jane Randel, director of Love Is Not Abuse.
The Love is Not Abuse app mimics the controlling and abusive behaviors teens might face in their relationships. It simulates the text messages, emails, and calls young people receive from abusive partners: checking up, harassing, deleting their friends from social media, threatening violence, sexting and so on. Randel says that this helps adults "to really get a feel for what it is the kids are experiencing, and what it is that people are talking about when they say 'digital dating abuse.'"
The Love is Not Abuse app also helps adults learn:
- Warning signs of abuse and the ways dating abuse manifests itself in teen relationships
- Immediate, concrete steps they can take if they are concerned that a young person may be a victim of dating abuse
- Resources for help outside such as loveisrespect.org, the National Dating Abuse Helpline and other services
- Action steps to educate teens
- How to talk to teens about dating violence
Randel suggests that youth service providers could use the app to help young people recognize what isn't a healthy relationship. "It's not healthy if someone emails, and texts and calls you twenty times an hour," she says. The app can be convincing for teens, she says, because "it's not coming from a parent or a teacher or whatever—it's coming from the phone."
The Love is Not Abuse app is available free through the Apple iTunes app store. To create the app, Love is Not Abuse partnered with the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Joyful Heart Foundation, Verizon Foundation, Wired Safety, Break the Cycle, Love Is Respect, MTV, Futures Without Violence, Seventeen Magazine, Mom Central and the American School Counselors Association. For a preview, visit the Love is Not Abuse website.
Additional Resources
"Bright Idea: Mobile Apps Foster Community and Combat Abuse"
"Hooking Up With Teens to Promote Healthy Relationships"
"Keeping Teens Safe in the Social Networking Era"
Dating Matters: Understanding Teen Dating Violence Prevention, an online training sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Liz Claiborne Inc.
In "The State of Young America: Economic Barriers to the American Dream," the policy organization Demos and the nonprofit Young Invincibles portray the experiences of young Americans struggling to make it.
The report is based on a survey of young adults, ages 18-34. An accompanying data book describes the increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor and compares the economic status of today's young people to that of the previous generation.
The report finds that:
- Many young Americans are falling into personal debt. Forty-two percent of those under age 35 have more than $5,000 in personal debt.
- Among all young people who have seen their debt increase, school loans (42 percent), credit cards (35 percent) and medical bills (27 percent) are the most common.
- The percentage of young adults with jobs is at its lowest point in a generation.
Additional Resource
When a young person lives on the streets or in an abusive home, their brain develops differently than if they lived in a stable, safe environment. To learn more about the teen brain, trauma and healthy ways to stimulate young people’s frontal lobes, NCFY spoke with Heather Higgins, director of training and development at The Upside Down Organization, which demystifies brain science for people who work with children and youth.
NCFY: My understanding is that when youth experience trauma or neglect, parts of their brain over- or under-develop.
Higgins: Yes, if you’re in a potentially dangerous situation, the amygdala, which is the fear and emotional center of the brain, becomes overactive. If all the blood and brain activity is focused on the amygdala, it slows down the development of the frontal lobe, which controls judgment, insight and critical thinking.
NCFY: Are there any strengths or resources that come about from this?
Higgins: The amygdala does things very fast; it doesn’t stop and think. In a lot of situations we don’t want that, like in school, but at other points in life you need to be able to do that. There are jobs that you need to be able to think very quickly, such as working as an EMT [emergency medical technician], where you need to be able to assess situations and react very quickly.
NCFY: How can a youth worker respond to a youth who has experienced trauma?
Higgins: Teach them about their brains and how much room there is to grow. This helps explain why they’re feeling the way they’re feeling, that they’re not supposed to be great at everything yet, and that the habits they get into now are going to be really hard to change. Develop healthy coping skills early on, like talking to a friend when you get upset. It’s hard to rewire the brain.
NCFY: How can a youth worker help repair the ways the brain has developed abnormally?
Higgins: Serotonin is the chemical that makes you feel happy and content. It isn’t hard to get, but young people are around so many things that take it away—being around kids that are mean to you, doing drugs or alcohol. Helping youth produce serotonin in healthy ways will develop the frontal lobes and allow the brain to repair itself. Playing or listening to music, exercising, eating right, volunteer work, or doing whatever the youth enjoy creates serotonin. The extreme version of serotonin is dopamine. Adolescents naturally have less dopamine, so they crave it. It’s important to give them healthy ways to get it, through acting in a play, playing in a big game, playing in a band—really exciting things produce dopamine.
Additional Resources
- Podcast with Dr. Nik Stefanidis on the impact of trauma on an adolescent’s brain
- Tips for youth workers on trauma-informed care
- How yoga can help young people heal from trauma
- More NCFY content on trauma-informed care
"Residential treatment for sexually exploited adolescent girls: Acknowledge, Commit, Transform (ACT)" (abstract), Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 33, No. 11, November 2011.
What it's about: Young people who have been sexually exploited often run away from a residential treatment program and return to the streets.They may also lack engagement in the program, behave aggressively and abuse substances. The authors of this study wanted to know what administrators at Germaine Lawrence, a residential treatment facility for adolescent young women in Massachusetts, did to prevent these situations.
Why read it: The proportion of young women who prematurely left the treatment program at Germaine Lawrence dropped from 65 percent to 15 percent after staff at the facility started using used ACT (Acknowledge, Commit, Transform), a program for sexually exploited adolescent girls living in group homes. To be admitted to ACT, youth must acknowledge the need for change and be ready to adjust to group-home life.
Biggest take aways for youth workers: Each ACT participant meets regularly with a mentor who is a survivor of sex trafficking. The mentor helps the participant feel more engaged in treatment and supports her emotionally after she leaves the program. Participants also receive individualized discharge planning and meet weekly with a therapist who involves the girls’ families, if possible. Culturally competent treatment, such as making services available in Spanish or other languages reflected in the community, is crucial to the program’s success. The authors suggest that youth workers do the following when working with sexually exploited young women:
- If possible, designate a separate group-home program specifically for sexually exploited youth, adjacent to a larger residential facility. This allows young people to move slowly to group-home life, and to move to and from a more restrictive setting as needed.
- Strive to create a warm, homelike environment, with rules and consequences but more freedom than regular treatment facilities. For example, ACT residents receive a small monetary incentive to participate in group activities and do their chores. Allowing them to earn and access their own money helps them to learn necessary life skills.
- Educational groups may help young women to acknowledge sexual exploitation or at-risk behaviors. Including relapse prevention as part of the program can help young women successfully leave the life of sexual exploitation.
Additional reference: Germaine Lawrence also uses the My Life My Choice group-counseling program to reach adolescent girls who have not yet acknowledged that they are being exploited and those who are vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation. The groups are led by an adult survivor and the ACT program director.
Listen to NCFY's "Voices from the Field: Rachel Lloyd" podcast, in which the founder and CEO of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, or GEMS, in New York, explains why runaway and homeless youth providers are so well-suited to combating sex trafficking.
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of this and other publications.)
There’s a hot new deal out there for charities looking to raise money for specific projects. And several youth-serving agencies have been among the first to snap it up.
The nationwide deal-a-day site Groupon -- with more than 100 million subscribers -- recently launched a program called “G-Team,” offering nonprofits a chance to raise money and reach people they may never have reached before.
Heartland Farm Sanctuary, which runs a farm-animal shelter and an animal-therapy program for youth in Madison, WI, raised more than $2,000 with its G-Team campaign in January. The two-year-old organization also gained a few dozen new supporters.
“It’s great for a newer program like us, raising awareness and getting the word out,” says Dana Barre, Heartland’s founder and executive director. “We didn’t raise a huge amount, but it helped us launch a new area of programming.”
When G-Team chooses to feature an organization, an ad for the group’s fundraising campaign appears at the bottom of the Groupon home page and on all “deal” pages for that city or area for several days. Groupon also advertises G-Team deals via Facebook and Twitter. In order to collect their donations, organizations must reach a “tipping point” of a certain number of pledged donations. Donations are small, usually $5 or $10, and Groupon members aren’t charged until the tipping point is reached.
G-Team’s roster has filled for 2012 in Chicago, New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. But other locations are still accepting applications. Barre and Valerie D’Ambrosi, who until January coordinated marketing for Covenant House New York, offer this advice to youth-serving groups that want to apply:
1. Build your social media presence first. Having a good number of Facebook and Twitter followers and a list of your supporters’ emails will help you publicize your Groupon campaign and get more donations.
2. Pinpoint a very specific aspect of your program that you want to raise money for. Research on charitable giving habits shows that people are more likely to contribute when they know what their money will do. Heartland asked for contributions to help the organization take animals on visits to youth groups. Covenant House solicited donations to provide free medical care to homeless youth in its G-Team campaign last spring.
3. Be familiar with Groupon’s intended audience and the style of its site. “Groupon uses youthful language and interesting catchphrases,” D’Ambrosi says. “I didn’t write my application like a grant proposal. I wrote it like I was writing for twenty-five-year-olds who would sign up for Groupon.”
4. If your campaign is accepted, tell people about it. Barre sent emails to her supporters and stakeholders, like board members and community leaders, a week before the three-day campaign, and posted announcements on Facebook and Twitter. Then she sent a reminder the day before. The first day, she added a link to the Groupon offer to Heartland’s website and Facebook page. Once Heartland reached its tipping point of $400 – which happened fairly quickly, Barre says -- donations dropped off, so she sent another email encouraging more people to give.
5. Find a "matching donor." Barre recommends contacting your most ardent supporters to find someone who can match other people’s donations. Then announce the match on the final day of the campaign to drum up last-ditch support.
6. Thank your donors. Just as you would with any other fundraising campaign. (Read “Five Ways to Thank Your Donors.”)
“Lighthouse Independent Living Program: Predictors of Client Outcomes at Discharge,” Children and Youth Service Review, April 2011.
What it's about: The authors studied how youth in the Lighthouse Independent Living Program in Cincinnati, Ohio, fare when exiting the program. They looked at how old the youth were between 2001 and 2005 when they entered program, whether they were teen parents, and whether they had mental health problems. Then they examined whether these factors were associated with certain outcomes, such as whether or not youth were employed, had housing, or had finished high school or earned a GED by the end of the program.
Why read it: Youth workers who accurately assess the problems youth face and engage them in creating specialized plans to overcome those problems may be better able to help homeless youth feel safe, have a sense of belonging, recognize their own strengths and transition successfully to independence.
Biggest takeaways for youth workers: When youth in the study exited the program at age 19, over half of them had completed high school, and more than a third were employed and living independently. Other findings:
- Youth with mental illness were only half as likely as those without to have earned a high school diploma or GED and to have obtained stable employment and housing.
- Parenting youth were less likely to have gotten a diploma or GED than were youth without children. Young parents were also less likely to be employed.
- Youth with a history of getting in trouble with the law were less likely than other youth to have gotten housing.
- Older youth and those who remained in the program longer had better outcomes than others.
Overall, the authors of the study say, youth workers should consider providing an intensive life-skills regimen that takes into account each young person's needs, including mental health services. The researchers also suggest offering family planning for parenting youth and having “safer sex” conversations with them to prevent future unintended pregnancies.
Additional reference: Read more about transitioning youth in NCFY's "Transitional Living Programs Move Homeless Youth Closer to Independence.” For more information about independent living programs visit the Child Welfare Information Gateway section on independent living.
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of this and other publications.)
