|
THE
INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK
HOME / CYC-ONLINE
READING FOR CHILD
AND YOUTH CARE WORKERS
ISSUE 24 • JANUARY 2001
The report Youth Development: Issues,
Challenges, and Directions (Fall 2000, 324 pages) has recently been
released. It speaks directly to the programs which child and
youth care workers are involved in.
Get the full report at: http://www.ppv.org/content/reports/youthdevvolt.html
Youth Development
Introduction and Overview
The last several decades have witnessed a growing skepticism in
America about the capacity of social programs—especially publicly
funded social programs—to address the problems and prospects of
American youth. This skepticism is especially strong once youth reach
the pre-teen years and beyond. Thus interest in early childhood programs
continues and grows—while support for teenage employment programs
declines and dwindles. The body politic seems to be in the process of
deciding that a young person’s life course is set in concrete after
the onset of puberty.
This trend is disturbing in itself, and is exacerbated by other trends:
- First, in the opening decade of the
new millennium the sheer number of adolescents in America will
increase enormously—more teenagers than we have had since the
early 1970s.
- Second, the past few years there has
been a growing number of high-profile events involving young people
and deadly violence. The young people involved were not poor; not
minority; not from central cities.
- Third, the demands of the new
“global economy” are more rigorous, and less forgiving of
individual shortcomings and early mistakes, than was the American
economy from the postwar period to the present. In short, there will
soon be more young people making the transition to adulthood in
America than ever before—and the requirements for their success
economically will be stricter and greater.
These trends together pose difficult challenges for our society—and
especially for our young people. They make it an odd time for American
society to be drifting into a "What will be, will be..."
policy stance toward its adolescents. Increased interest in early
childhood programs is sensible and important, and will no doubt help
increase the capacity of some young people to meet life’s later
challenges—but to see a child’s life as if its later, ongoing
challenges can be neutralized by an early inoculation is to ignore what
common sense and science tell us about human development, especially in
an age of such rapid and basic social and economic change. It is also to
ignore the evidence from the last two decades of social programming:
that short-term interventions bring only short-term improvements.
There are counter-trends. The recent
incidents of youth violence in non-central city schools have acted as a
wake-up call to many Americans, and, although some see the solution in
metal detectors and security guards, for others these incidents have
stimulated increased interest in what is going on in the minds and lives
of young people—and in what adult society can do to promote the
healthy development of those minds and lives. The increase in support
for after-school programming is a prominent example of this renewed
interest.
There is also a growing body of evidence about the positive relationship
between the number of supports and opportunities children experience
while growing up—their “assets” or “social capital”—and the
increased successes and decreased problems they have during adolescence.
This data confirms what many think is self-evident common sense; to
others it is revealing evidence that environment does have a powerful
effect, one which can be broken down into practical bits. Many
communities have expressed a commitment to learning how they can
organize to implement a “positive youth development” approach for
their young people.
In addition, evidence is accumulating that individual social programs
can produce the assets that increase a youth’s successes and decrease
his or her problems. The most publicized example is the impact study of
Big Brothers Big Sisters, which shows that mentoring significantly
reduces initial drug use and school violence, and increases school
performance. In short, the evidence is clear that we do not have to
“give up” on youth if they experience serious problems and do not
have adequate support, guidance or opportunities in their immediate
environment.
Lastly, there arose in the early 1990s a movement to augment the typical
“problem-reduction” orientation of youth policy with a new (at least
new to public policy) orientation toward “positive youth
development.” The new orientation is more attuned to the basic needs
and stages of a youth’s development, rather than on simply
“fixing” whatever “problem” may have arisen. It focuses on
youth’s need for positive, ongoing relationships with both adults and
other youth; for active involvement in community life; and for a variety
of positive choices in how they spend non-school time. It aims to build
strengths as well as reduce weaknesses.
The movement’s fundamental assumption—one receiving increased
corroboration both from the study of human behavior and program
evaluations—is that enduring, positive results in a youth’s life are
most effectively achieved by tending to basic needs for guidance,
support and involvement, and not by surgical interventions aimed at
removing problems.
These counter-trends have gained in force, credibility and support
throughout the 1990s, especially in the nonprofit and philanthropic
sectors. They have not, however, supplanted skepticism about public
social programs generally, and specifically about public support for
programs for adolescents. Rather they have co-existed with that
skepticism.
These counter-trends have helped many youth organizations gain greater
(and deserved) recognition and resources—both larger, nationally known
groups like Boys & Girls Clubs, and smaller, local efforts like
Brooklyn’s El Puente. They have also stimulated greater political and
media attention to other sources of support, opportunity and guidance
for young people, most notably from their families, schools, churches
and volunteers. In the spring of 1997 a host of American
notables—including three Presidents—gathered in Philadelphia for the
President’s Summit to declare their support for “positive youth
development”—and to push for more private contributions and
volunteers to that end.
All the above are favorable and
promising. Yet, in the many highly publicized statements over what to do
with the projected multi-trillion dollar budget surplus that America may
experience over the next decade, there are almost none that make the
positive development of young people a high priority. The most
publicized discussions about young people are about the age at which
they should be prosecuted as adults.
As a society, we are at a crossroads. Awareness that our youth need more
and better support is growing—as is the willingness to use private
time and resources for that support. However, our willingness to use the
only source of funds able to meet the size and scope of the
need—public funds—has hardly budged, even in the face of
unprecedented surplus.
A large (and growing) number of neighborhoods, cities and states have or
are holding “summits” to address youth issues, and involve parents,
neighborhood leaders, corporate leaders, elected officials and youth
themselves. These “summits,” as well as the philanthropic and public
officials increasingly engaged in youth issues, all quickly face several
key issues: What exactly do we do? What is most effective—for which
youth? How do we address the youth with the most difficult issues? What
does it cost—and who will pay? How do we know if we are succeeding?
This seems, then, a good time to take stock of the emerging “positive
youth development” field, and to begin charting the issues it must
address if it is to play a significant role in the future of American
youth.
The Youth Development Directions Project was established in the spring
of 1998 as a vehicle for taking stock and charting the issues. This
volume summarizes the project’s work. The aim of the project was not
to cover all youth, but rather to focus on adolescents—the hardest age
group for which to generate positive public interest and support, and
thus the group (unsurprisingly) for which the public and nonprofit
sectors provide the least amount of support, opportunities and guidance.
The project’s aim was not to cover every issue relevant to adolescent
development but rather to produce a group of essays that would stimulate
the thinking of leaders in the public, private, philanthropic and
nonprofit sectors about the actions needed to support the healthy
development of America’s youth.
The project’s approach was to pull together a group of national
intermediary organizations that work with service providers, funders and
policymakers, and that regularly and publicly communicate the findings
of their work—and to take their collective pulse on the issues laid
out above. Other kinds of organizations will have different perspectives
on the issues the essays address, and we hope that this volume
stimulates their involvement in the dialogue.
The project’s structure was simple: the group met for a day and a half
in late May 1998 to discuss the major issues facing the “youth
development” field, and to determine the topics and writers for this
volume. The writers wrote drafts over the remainder of 1998 and early
1999, and also met again for a day and a half in late 1998 to continue
the May discussion and to critique the draft papers. Editing and further
discussions took place during the remainder of 1999.
The discussions, and the papers in this
volume, center on three themes:
- The American historical, political and
social context for “positive youth development” as a guiding
idea in youth policy;
- The state of the science and evidence
underlying “positive youth development”; and
- The institutional challenges that
require intensive attention if “positive youth development” is
to affect large numbers of youth.
The essays in this volume are organized
by these theme issues. Below are brief summaries of the discussions on
these theme issues that took place at the May and October meetings, and
of the essays themselves.
1. The Context for Moving Forward
The group’s discussions on this issue, like the three papers
related to this topic,1 revolved around two views: on the one
hand, appreciation and some surprise at the progress of the youth
development approach over the last decade; on the other hand, great
respect for the challenges ahead. There was pride over what has been
accomplished, and concern that progress may have now stalled.
Some of the concern over stalling has to do with America’s historical
reluctance to dedicate significant portions of public budgets to
developmental activities for youth. The recent attempt to get federal
legislation and funding for a Youth Development block grant did not
succeed. Even Head Start, after decades of support across the political
spectrum, has only enough funds for less than half of the eligible
children—and Head Start, being for young children, is a much easier
sell than almost anything for adolescents, who have a far less
attractive image.
There was also concern that “positive youth development” is not a
compelling enough phrase under which to mount a public campaign to
maintain the newly emerging field’s momentum. It is not a single
program, and does not bring to mind any particular substantive action or
content. In fact, it may be that no single phrase could be both a
compelling banner and a concrete program, since individual adolescents
vary considerably in the level, number and priority of their needs.
Effective youth work is creative and responsive, and can only be
structured and packaged to a certain extent.
Nonetheless there was strong feeling among many participants, especially
foundation representatives, that there needs to be an agreed-upon set of
principles or phrases that can be effectively used for public
communication—something between the vagueness of “positive youth
development and the concreteness of “mentoring and after-school
programs.
There was consensus that key challenges for the coming decade are to
create information and messages that can generate public and political
support for positive youth development, and to secure leadership to
publicize these messages and information. Several thought that General
Colin Powell and the five element agenda of his America’s Promise
campaign were the right vehicle; others were skeptical. Some felt that
aiming at local and state leadership was more critical, given the
devolution of public funds and decision-making on most social policy
issues. A few wondered if an overall message or banner was necessary at
all, noting that “positive youth development’s” greatest successes
to date have been mentoring and after-school programming, and that both
those successes were based on targeted advocacy, the common sense appeal
of those interventions and people’s belief that they reduced problems.
Nevertheless, all agreed that the “messages and information” issue
was a key strategic challenge that needed more focused attention, since
promoting a broad public consensus around investing in young people is
of critical importance.
Three essays in this volume elaborate on different aspects of the
context for moving forward. Pittman, Irby and Ferber provide an overview
of the accomplishments of the past decade, the key challenges remaining
and the priorities for achieving them; Newman, Smith and Murphy analyze
what the costs would be of providing “youth development” to
America’s youth; and Walker discusses the opportunities and limits
that American social and political culture provide in advancing youth
development as a public agenda priority.
2. What We Know and Don't
The state of knowledge about positive youth development depends on
your perspective; the group’s discussions reflected these various
perspectives. On the one hand, from the perspective of common sense, it
is clear that active attention to a youth’s developmental needs has a
high probability of paying off in terms of increasing a youth’s
successes in life and decreasing his or her serious problems. Many
surveys provide important backup data for this proposition. There would
seem to be little need to have more basic evidence on this point.
On the other hand, there is only a modest body of evidence about
effective interventions. It is possible for someone to support
“positive youth development” and yet not be convinced that social
programs can do much to accomplish it. There are many small studies, but
few are large and methodologically stringent enough to persuade a
skeptic. Mentoring has the most substantial and scientifically sound
evidence about its effectiveness; after-school programming is also
generating evidence. But the scientific evidence is less compelling
beyond that.
The group did not feel that simply calling for more evaluations of
individual youth development programs was the best way to address this
issue. Several factors make the youth development field’s evidentiary
needs more complex than simply increasing the number of program
evaluations.
- As Benson and Saito’s essay2
states, there is little institutional support in academia for work
in “positive youth development.” That may not trouble some youth
advocates, but it means that youth development and its social
interventions are not being taught to students, making it more
difficult to recruit the talent needed for youth programs, and more
difficult to convince adults of their value. It means that when the
media does in-depth stories on youth issues, its primary sources for
“objective information”—
academics—are not always providing a youth development
perspective, or at least are not aware of the many initiatives and
studies under way in the youth development field.
- As MacDonald and Valdivieso’s
article recounts, our country’s basic data collection systems
about youth are not focused on development, but on problems. Since
Pittman’s bumper-sticker phrase, “Problem free is not fully
prepared,” seems increasingly true of the “new world economy”
and its fast-moving societies, capturing developmental data becomes
more important than ever.
Such data would be especially important to portray the difficult
challenges for youth in poor communities. With welfare, crime and
teen pregnancy rates (the “problems”) down, complacency about
these youth and their life chances is likely to rise without
a credible portrayal of the supports and opportunities for their
development. Chapin Hall’s landmark study of those supports and
developments in two Chicago communities—one rich, one poor—is
now over a decade old, and largely unreplicated.
- A proliferation of modest-cost program
evaluations will not sum up to the overall value of several
well-funded evaluations of programs which typify important youth
development strategies that the public—and thus
decision-makers—care about. The Big Brothers Big Sisters impact
evaluation was viewed as an exemplar.
The discussants agreed that it would be useful for the
philanthropies and public agencies most involved in youth
development to agree on a common agenda of priority issues for youth
development research and evaluation. Such an agenda would hopefully
spark some collaborative projects, but even when it did not, would
help guide the design and funding of research projects by individual
funders. Without such an agenda, the concern was that the
uncoordinated expenditure of evaluation funds might not address,
efficiently or effectively, the various issues noted above.
3. Institutional Challenges
It is a major challenge to take any social policy idea to scale in
the United States. Ours is not a political culture inclined favorably
toward social interventions, and the last two decades have underscored
that disinclination. Thus, by any measure “positive youth
development” has its work cut out. The recommendations above regarding
creating a research agenda and a message agenda address this political
culture challenge.
There are also distinct institutional challenges. The vast majority of
America’s adolescents are involved with an institution or
organization: they are either in school, incarcerated or working. Many
are involved with nonprofits. Those that are not involved in any of
those institutions will, odds are, soon be—and too many will end up
incarcerated. Those that have not succeeded at the first—school—will
find economic self-sufficiency an increasingly difficult goal to
achieve.
Youth development has made the greatest inroads with youth-oriented
nonprofits. It has made the least progress in influencing schools,
employers and employment intermediaries, and justice institutions.
Why has there been such limited progress with those institutions? The
four essays in this section3 attempt to articulate the
obstacles to positive youth development in these major institutions, and
to present the opportunities for addressing those obstacles.
Costello, Toles, Spielberger and Wynn’s essay describes the
fundamental incongruency of adolescent developmental needs with the
dominant organizational structures of most public youth-serving
institutions. These incongruencies are formidable—but there is a
growing movement of more appropriate organizational structures.
Schwartz recounts the history of juvenile justice institutions, and
notes that while the history and culture of juvenile justice systems
across the country present major obstacles to youth development, there
are several promising initiatives.
Zuckerman recounts the history of youth employment initiatives, and how
the lack of a youth development approach may have
been a vital part of the decline of public support for youth employment
programs.
Connell, Gambone and Smith address an even larger
“institution”—entire communities and neighborhoods—and provide a
framework and recommendations for organizing their resources to make
youth development a more integral part of the everyday process of
growing up.
Although it was (and still is) easy to dwell on the enormous challenges
each institution poses to change, the discussion also emphasized a
broader pattern: that each of these institutions is under external
pressure to change and improve, and each has within it advocates for new
approaches that are consistent with positive youth development. Thus,
though the challenges are formidable, the opportunities are present. The
direction that change takes in each institution is, to put it most
simply, up for grabs.
Thus the group’s recommendations in
this area focused around three priorities:
- First, that it is vital that each
institution be addressed with a distinct “youth development”
initiative, one that is preceded by involvement of key institutional
representatives, and careful planning, to ensure that the right
language and the most productive entry points are defined. Broad
youth development rhetoric is unlikely to penetrate far or with much
speed into the policies and practices of these institutions.
- Second, that each initiative define
and measure how it will help the institution meet its basic outcome
goals. There is little chance that a new approach will be adopted if
it cannot prove it will improve an institution’s ability to meet
its key goals.
- Third, that an intensive effort be
made to understand the many community- and neighborhood-wide youth
development initiatives currently under way—their approaches,
successes and failures. Substantial effort and resources are going
into such initiatives around the country, and it is important that
we understand both their potential and their limits.
One cross-cutting theme recurred
throughout the discussions and the papers that merits special attention:
a concern about front-line practice—what teachers, youth workers,
juvenile facility staff and others who work with youth actually do, and
how they are trained and supported in doing it. The oft-quoted notion
that some people are “just born” to work with adolescents—and, by
implication, that everyone else just can’t—is a tremendous barrier
to the codification and spread of effective practice, and an easy
justification for regarding these front-line jobs as less than
“professional.” There was consensus that promoting the wider
application of youth development is not just a matter of public will and
policy, but is also a matter of building and transmitting an accepted
body of knowledge about practice and performance. This will require a
substantial focus of resources and effort. Considerable work has been
done in mentoring regarding effective practice and operational
benchmarks, and similar work is under way regarding after-school
programming. Such work needs to be carried out regarding the
institutions and issues discussed throughout this volume.
The social and economic reality of our times is that adolescents need
more support, guidance and active involvement than ever to successfully
navigate their lives—and they are instead, in too many cases, getting
less.
We hope these essays help promote the
actions and dialogue that are necessary to meet this critical challenge.
Academy for Educational Development
Center for Youth Development and Policy Research,
Academy for Educational Development
Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of Chicago
IYF-US, International Youth Foundation
Community Action for Youth Project (A cooperative project of
Gambone & Associates/Institute for Research and
Reform in Education)
Juvenile Law Center
National Youth Employment Coalition
Public/Private Ventures
Search Institute
Endnotes
1. Unfinished Business: Further Reflections on a Decade of Promoting
Youth Development, Karen Pittman, Merita Irby and Thaddeus Ferber; The
Policy Climate for Early Adolescent Initiatives, Gary Walker; A Matter
of Money: The Cost and Financing of Youth Development, Robert P. Newman,
Stephanie M. Smith and Richard Murphy.
2. The Scientific Foundations of Youth Development, Peter L. Benson and
Rebecca N. Saito; Measuring Deficits and Assets: How We Track Youth
Development Now, and How We Should Track It, Gary B. MacDonald and
Rafael Valdivieso.
3. History, Ideology, Structure: Shaping the Organizations that Shape
Youth, Joan Costello, Mark Toles, Julie Spielberger and Joan Wynn;
Juvenile Justice and Positive Youth Development, Robert G. Schwartz;
Youth Development in Community Settings: Challenges to Our Field and Our
Approach, James P. Connell, Michelle Alberti Gambone and Thomas J.
Smith; The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same: The
Evolution and Devolution of Youth Employment Programs, Alan Zuckerman.
|