Working with at-risk teens, including those who are homeless, incarcerated, or in foster care, is a rewarding but often challenging endeavor, especially with a growing number of at-risk teens in both urban and rural areas of the country. Based on best practices and personal experiences from many leaders in the field today, including authors Angela Craig and Chantell L. McDowell, this book shows how libraries and communities can work together to find new ways to serve this population. Packed with accessible and affordable programming ideas, ready-to-use templates, and techniques, this addition to the Teens @ the Library series Demonstrates why serving at-risk teens is important, and offers advice for gaining institutional support for outreach services Shows how to understand the needs of at-risk teens, including a discussion of the factors that place teens at risk Examines diversity within the at-risk population Suggests ways to partner with youth facilities, with real-world examples of working with non-library personnel and caregivers Provides guidance for collection and resource development Gives examples of technology-based programs to promote literacy and connectedness

"An eye-opening and heart-opening book." -Bonnie Benard, Senior Program Associate, WestEd Identify and promote overlooked strengths to cultivate resilience. Now more than ever, counselors, teachers, community youth workers, and parents are striving to prevent individual and school-wide tragedy before it happens. Critical to the success of their efforts is a deep respect for the adolescent experience. In this book, author and social worker Michael Ungar takes a fresh, hopeful approach to challenging youth by looking beyond the surface of "bad" behaviors to understand them as ways of coping with life′s adversities. Strengths-Based Counseling With At-Risk Youth provides the tools both to understand and access strengths buried beneath problem behaviors. It offers specific, effective strategies in working with adolescents to construct positive identities and realistic action plans. Features include Six strategies for youth engagement, covering common problem behaviors such as drug use, violence, delinquency, and promiscuity An entire chapter on bullying An abundance of real-life examples and counseling narratives A Resilient Youth Strengths Inventory to assess resilience and identify areas that need strengthening Sincere application of Ungar′s compassionate and open-minded strategies is sure to transform the lives of countless adolescents in need, and the institutions that serve them.

This innovative book focuses on helping high-risk adolescents and their families rapidly resolve long-standing difficulties. Matthew D. Selekman spells out a range of solution-focused strategies and other techniques, illustrating their implementation with vivid case examples. His approach augments individual and family sessions with collaborative meetings that enlist the strengths of the adolescent's social network and key helping professionals from larger systems. User-friendly features include checklists, sample questions to aid in relationship building and goal setting, and reproducible forms that can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size. Blending family therapy science with therapeutic artistry, the book significantly refines and updates the approach originally presented in Selekman's Pathways to Change.

Adolescents obviously do not always act in ways that serve their own best interests, even as defined by them. Sometimes their perception of their own risks, even of survival to adulthood, is larger than the reality; in other cases, they underestimate the risks of particular actions or behaviors. It is possible, indeed likely, that some adolescents engage in risky behaviors because of a perception of invulnerabilityâ€"the current conventional wisdom of adults' views of adolescent behavior. Others, however, take risks because they feel vulnerable to a point approaching hopelessness. In either case, these perceptions can prompt adolescents to make poor decisions that can put them at risk and leave them vulnerable to physical or psychological harm that may have a negative impact on their long-term health and viability. A small planning group was formed to develop a workshop on reconceptualizing adolescent risk and vulnerability. With funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Workshop on Adolescent Risk and Vulnerability: Setting Priorities took place on March 13, 2001, in Washington, DC. The workshop's goal was to put into perspective the total burden of vulnerability that adolescents face, taking advantage of the growing societal concern for adolescents, the need to set priorities for meeting adolescents' needs, and the opportunity to apply decision-making perspectives to this critical area. This report summarizes the workshop.

This text provides the conceptual and practical information on key issues and problems that students need to prepare effectively for work with at-risk youth. The authors describe and discuss the latest prevention and intervention techniques that will help future and current professionals perform their jobs successfully and improve the lives of young people at risk.

Rich with illustrative case material, this book guides mental health professionals to break the cycle of at-risk behavior by engaging adolescents and their families in home, school, and community contexts. The authors explore the multigenerational patterns that shape the lives of poor and ethnic minority adolescents and present innovative strategies for intervening beyond the walls of the agency or clinic. Grounded in research, the book shows how to implement both home-based family therapy and school-based achievement mentoring to provide a comprehensive web of support. Building on the earlier Reaching Out in Family Therapy, this book reflects the ongoing development of the authors' multisystems approach and many other important changes in the field; the majority of the content is completely new. It is an indispensable resource for beginning and experienced professionals or text for courses on adolescent intervention or adolescent mental health.

Based on the book by the same title, the Reclaiming Youth at Risk video workshop takes viewers inside two schools and two residential treatment centers that have experienced great success in creating environments that allow young people to transfrom crisis into opportunity and failure into success.

In Massachusetts, a 12-year-old girl delivering newspapers is killed when a car strikes her bicycle. In Los Angeles, a 14-year-old boy repeatedly falls asleep in class, exhausted from his evening job. Although children and adolescents may benefit from working, there may also be negative social effects and sometimes danger in their jobs. Protecting Youth at Work looks at what is known about work done by children and adolescents and the effects of that work on their physical and emotional health and social functioning. The committee recommends specific initiatives for legislators, regulators, researchers, and employers. This book provides historical perspective on working children and adolescents in America and explores the framework of child labor laws that govern that work. The committee presents a wide range of data and analysis on the scope of youth employment, factors that put children and adolescents at risk in the workplace, and the positive and negative effects of employment, including data on educational attainment and lifestyle choices. Protecting Youth at Work also includes discussions of special issues for minority and disadvantaged youth, young workers in agriculture, and children who work in family-owned businesses.

This book describes a specific program for teaching and mentoring expressive writing by at-risk youth—a program that can generate transformative change in the teens, and generate significant new satisfactions for you. When young people write personally and creatively, it helps them to overcome challenges in their lives. They feel better, think more clearly, are more self-confident, and are better able to relate to others, including their helpers. This personal creative process is enriching and enlivening for everyone. It brings emotional clarity and meaning to everyone. It brings closeness, in addition to learning and growth.Welcome to the Pongo Teen Writing Method.

This fully revised and expanded second edition focusses on high-risk youth - whose struggles include neglect and abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, the risk of being exploited, mental health issues, and the inability to self-regulate and trust - a population of youth that government child welfare services and community agencies struggle to serve adequately. The focus has traditionally been on punishment-consequence interventions and demanding compliance, but experience and research shows that they can be better served through relationship-based practice incorporating harm reduction principles, resiliency and strength-based approaches, community collaboration, and an understanding that these youth typically come from experiences of early trauma impacting their brain development and their ability to form attachments. With new material on attachment, trauma and brain development, the "perfect storm" youth, how to end relationships, shame, and societal divisions, this book provides an overview of the Get Connected practice framework and philosophy which has been successfully used in Canada and New Zealand and provides strategies for engaging and working with the most disconnected, challenging, and troubled youth in society. It will be required reading for all agency service providers, community outreach workers, youth workers, group home workers, probation officers, foster parents, adoptive parents, service navigators, counsellors, addictions workers, mental health workers, teachers, youth group leaders, and youth pastors/advisors in religious settings, and camp counsellors.