Yo Bro | Yo Girl Youth Initiative

YOUTH MENTORSHIP ENGAGEMENT TEAMWORK

(YMET) PROGRAM GUIDE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As children grow to adulthood, there are individual and contextual variables that either positively or negatively influence their development. These are often referred to as protective or risk factors. Current studies have successfully identified individual and contextual risk factors that contribute to young people engaging in delinquency. Extensive research demonstrates that those individuals with early onset of delinquency are more at risk of later serious violence and chronic offending (DeRuiter, C. & Augimeri, L.K. 2012). These studies also indicate that the more risk factors a young person accumulates in different domains, the greater the probability that he or she will move onto a trajectory of serious offending (Hawkins et al 2000). Moreover, these risk factors have both a cumulative and interactive effects (Thornberry, Huizinga & Loeber, 2004). Fortunately, protective factors have the same cumulative and interactive effects. So much so, that they have been shown to ameliorate the negative affect or risk factors, as well as longer term negative outcomes. The Youth Mentorship & Empowerment Team (YMET) will engage youth and families with individualized preventative strategies to address risk factors while promoting protective factors in their lives. 

PROGRAM FRAMEWORK

Case Management Principles

The Youth Mentorship & Empowerment Team’s objective is to increase a young person’s protective factors by connecting youth to their school, community, family and each other by building a trusting and positive relationship.  Families will join program staff in goal setting while being supported with specific interventions that enhance resiliency in their current circumstances.    

The 10 key principles of the case management approach taken by the YMET team are as follows (Burns, B.J. & Goldman, S.K. 1999): 

  1. Family Voice and Choice – Family and youth perspectives are intentionally elicited and prioritized 
  2. Team Based – The agreed upon service support teams are linked in a community of care  
  3. Natural Supports – Draw from family members networks of interpersonal and community relationships 
  4. Collaboration – Team members work cooperatively and share responsibility for developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating the plan 
  5. Community Based – Inclusive, responsive, accessible and least restrictive settings are sought 
  6. Culturally Competent – Processes that demonstrate respect for and build on values, preferences, culture and identity of the child, family and community 
  7. Individualized – Customized set of strategies, supports and services 
  8. Strength Based – Plans identify, build on and enhance capabilities, knowledge, skills and assets of the child, family and community 
  9. Persistence –Despite challenges the team persists towards goals and adverse events are an opportunity to revise plans  
  10. Outcome Based – Goals and strategies have observable or measurable indicators of success

Review of Literature

Historically, many prevention and intervention programs were aimed at reducing a single problematic behaviour or risk factor, such as drug use, sexual health, or violence prevention (Garcia-Poole, Byrne, & Rodrigo, 2019). With the advent of Positive Youth Development (PYD) came a new approach to proactive efforts in working with adolescents within the community and within juvenile justice settings (Butts, Mayer, & Ruth, 2005). PYD is a program or intervention approach to working with youth that focuses on moving away from traditional deficit-based approach and moving towards a competency building framework (Baber & Rainer, 2011). The rise of PYD has seen a rising body of literature that supports competency development programs (Ciocanel, Power, Eriksen, & Gillings, 2017; Morgan & Ziglio, 2007; Schwartz, Chan, Rhodes, & Chan, 2013), eventually evolving to space where risk avoidance and PYD have been recognized and concepts capable of coexisting (Garcia-Poole, Byrne, & Rodrigo, 2019; Hale, Fitzgerald-Yau, Viner, 2014). PYD is a framework that emphasizes the need to create opportunities for youth to develop competencies, which could include social bonding, setting pro-social standards, learning constructive pastimes, and developing a positive sense of identity – all protective factors (Ince, Van Yperen, & Valkestijn, 2014).   

  The setting of youth programs also plays a significant role. Many youth programs are embedded within the school system and leverage the school community to intervene in a youth’s life (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 2004). A large bulk of the literature on the subject of youth programs has focused almost universally on schoolbased programs (see Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 2004 and Ciocanel, Power, Eriksen & Gillings, 2017 for systematic reviews). While these programs function to capture a large pool of participants in a single context, they do, at times, fail to capture those youth most in need of services who are already experiencing school absences or have dropped out (Kremer, Maynard, Polanin, Vaughn, & Sarteschi, 2015). It has also been suggested that community-based programs have a greater potential to introduce a variety of activities, facilitate broader relationships and mentoring opportunities with adults, and may foster more opportunities to engage different ethnic, religious, and cultural practices that may not be acceptable in a school setting (Ince, Van Yperen, & Valkestijn, 2014).  

  Another area worthy of consideration is the role of risk and protective factors, and how our understanding of these can be incorporated into program development. Pridemore (2004), a researcher from the United States, provides a well-written review of the literature on risk factors, which can be applied to the Canadian context. Risk factors are those factors which raise the likelihood of a negative outcome and protective factors reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes (Pridemore, 2004). Along a similar vein, protective factors have been further broken down into external assets (supports) and internal assets (strengths); external assets being the relationships and opportunities present in the family home, community, and school system, while internal assets constitute the socio-emotional strengths and values and nurtured within the individual (Benson, Scales, & Syversten, 2011). Some factors can be conceptualized as universal and relevant to any prevention program, such as poverty, poor mental health, and drug/alcohol abuse. That said, it has been suggested that there are certain risk and protective factors that are culturally specific, such as racism, histories of colonization, and inter-generational trauma. Crooks, Psych, Chiodo, Thomas, Burns, and Camillo (2017) stress the overlap of universal risk factors and cultural risk factors. Programs should clearly identify the focus of activities as comprising of risk management or strength development, and identify the particular areas (internal or external) and which assists are to be developed to increase the youth’s opportunity for positive outcomes in the community. It is also important to gauge that specific challenges that the target population face. 

OVERALL WORK FLOW

Intake Process

The YMET program will use a referral form that includes information of the youth’s five domains; school, community, family, individual and peer. Referrals will be screened with priority given to youth at greater risk. A standardized and evidence-based risk assessment tool is being considered, but currently there has not been a clear match between the intended impacts of the YMET program and a specific tool that measures risk. The Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI-SV) has been identified as having promising synergy for the YMET program.  It provides a framework to evaluate a range of child, family and community risk factors known to influence children’s propensity to engage in future antisocial behaviours. Children not selected for the program due to low risk factors will be referred to alternative community programs. The tool will help teams develop, prioritize and implement risk-reducing intervention options.   

After screening and determination of risk level, youth and families are given an appropriate level of support through the program. As youth move through the program interventions they will be classified as active, completed, parked or closed. Active participants are being supported through targeted engagement. Successful completion would occur when children and families demonstrate capacity and resilience to overcome challenges. There are several circumstances in which a file would be parked or closed and those include family relocation outside the area, refusal/non-compliance and aging out (future considerations may include alumni programming).

Intervention

Intervention strategies will be implemented and categorized into the five developmental domains. Each intervention plan will be individualized and specific to each youth, family and community. They will be collaboratively created in partnership with the youth, family and relevant service support providers. Some considerations for each domain are as follows: 

  1. School – After-school or extra-curricular programming, school-based mentorship, leadership opportunities, academic tutoring, review of individualized education plan 
  2. Family – Counselling or parenting support group, parent education training or seminars, adult work placement, housing, recreational, nutritional services, language education, respite support, referrals for MCFD or other social supports 
  3. Community – Recreational, volunteer, interest based (reading, art etc.), leadership, low-barrier resources, advocation for services gaps 
  4. Individual – Physical and emotional health, hygiene support, counselling, psychoeducational assessment, anger management, conflict resolution 
  5. Peer – Community outings, co-applications to clubs or teams, empowering and strengthening networks 

Interventions will be also be guided by the principles of the 40 developmental assets. These were created by the Search Institute. It consists of preventative measures, positive experiences, and qualities of youth need to grow up health, caring and responsible. These assets are protective factors that buffer youth from risk. Please see appendix for complete description and a checklist of these 40 developmental assets. 

Documentation

Intervention and timelines for those interventions will be tracked and recorded. Program staff will track the types of services provided and partnerships established in enhancing resiliency and self-efficacy within the five developmental domains. See appendix for case tracking sheet. As mentioned earlier the Youth Level of Service/Case Management tool (YLS/CMI) is being considered for a screening tool. However, at this current moment the referral form will provide key information that describes the level of risk in a youth’s life. Evaluation will utilize both qualitative and quantitative measures with a pre/post intervention evaluation for each accepted referral. A participant list will keep track of key participant demographics including gender, age, other key identifying features, ministry of Education designations, and home address. Other data collected will be gathered from pre-existing database structures with the police, including PRIME-BC. The Police will securely hold confidential information about youth and families.

ASSESSMENT

The program will utilize a structured referral form as a screening procedure in order to ensure the appropriate resources, programs and services are allocated. The referral form will help develop a clearer understanding of a child and family by collecting information relating to different risk factors in their lives. Future practice may include the use of a screening tool such as the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS-CMI). The YLS-CMI assess the risk of recidivism as well as the needs that must be taken into consideration in the development of a treatment and case management plan. This particular assessment tool is based on the following three principles: 

  1. the risk principle, which stipulates that the intensity of the intervention should reflect the level of risk presented by the offender. 
  2. the need principle, which stipulates that the services provided to the young offender should match with his/her criminogenic needs. 
  3. the responsitivity principle, which stipulates that decision about interventions should consider the young offenders characteristics and circumstances that may affect his/her responses to the interventions. 

Of significance, the YLS/CMI assessment was developed in Canada and is designed for use with youth aged 1217yrs old and 42 risk factors are identified as those most predictive of criminal activity in young people. The risk factors fall into the following eight categories: 

  1. Prior and current offences/dispositions 
  2. Family/Parenting 
  3. Education/Employment 
  4. Peer Relations 
  5. Substance Abuse 
  6. Leisure/Recreation 
  7. Personality/Behaviour 8) Attitudes/Orientation 

Public Safety Canada has categorized all available tools to identify and assess the risk of offending among youth (see appendix for complete list of assessments available). 

Evaluation Considerations

Very few programs conduct empirical evaluations measuring their success. At times, this is due to resource and funding challenges, a lack of knowledge on how to conduct research, or a longstanding focus on service delivery rather than evaluation. While evaluations can be complex, at the program planning stages there are often two areas in which programs fall short: measures that are not well-articulated and objectives that are not sufficiently defined (McDavid, Huse, & Hawthorn, 2013).  

 Important questions to ask are: What is our objective and how will we measure success? In line with those questions, it is prudent to differentiate between outputs and outcomes. Outputs represent the direct measure of products as a result of the program activity (Frechtling, 2007), which might reference the number of youths upon which an intervention was deployed. By contrast, outcomes represent the benefit for participants form program activity or the level of achievement that occurred as a result of the activity (Frechtling, 2007), which would refer to the positive or negative effect that the program had on the youth reached by the program. A few other components that need to be identified are: 

  1. Program Aim (Objective) 
  2. Referral source (Sampling method) 
  3. Activities (Interventions deployed) 
  4. Success indicators (Outputs + Outcomes)

REFERRAL, TRACKING & CONSENT FORMS

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