TA Partnership Newsletter — December 2009/January 2010

Youth Matter!

Meaningful Youth Involvement in Systems of Care: Tips to Help New Communities Get Started, Part II

The work of engaging young people in decisions that affect their lives is important and exciting; however, it is not always easy. In an effort to keep on track, it is common for newly funded system of care communities to eagerly focus on recruiting youth, often with no clear purpose or strategy for doing so. In some communities, well-meaning adults begin their youth involvement efforts by focusing solely on recruitment while in others they struggle for months without making any notable progress in developing a plan. Regardless of where your community falls on this spectrum, you can benefit from knowing some common pitfalls to avoid and recommended pointers for getting started.

This new tip sheet is designed to help you get your youth involvement efforts started on the right track. This current tip sheet supplements the Youth Matters! article from September 2009. Below are tips to help you start with a few steps that can be taken in the next two to three months. As you read this, note whether the points addressed here match up with your experience in your community and then feel free to share your experiences with us at RReid@air.org.

1. Hire a Youth Engagement Specialist (YES)

A YES serves as your system of care's lead in matters related to creating leadership opportunities for youth with mental health challenges as well as engaging young people in decision-making. The YES applies focused attention on youth engagement and helps your community develop and implement a workable game plan for engaging youth in meaningful ways. In hiring for this position, keep in mind that this person will need to have a strong background in working directly with young people, but there are a few other key skill areas that will be essential to success within this position. Recognize that the YES hired may need additional training and coaching in other skill areas. General skill categories that will be critical to the YES's success are:

  • youth engagement/direct service work
  • administration
  • policy/governance
  • communication/public speaking

You are now probably wondering how all of these other categories of skills are relevant to the job of a YES. The main thing communities must understand is that the role of the YES is a very complex position. While much of this individual's efforts will be in engaging young people, it is the job of the YES to be the lead advocate for young people within systems of care, and to ensure that youths' voices are heard and are infused within all levels of the system. This becomes a twofold task in that at times the YES must be the facilitator between other adults and youth in order to bring young people into decision-making roles, and, when young people are not present, it is the YES's job to represent their needs and concerns. To be effective, the YES will have to build relationships with youth, parents, staff, and community partners.

Most important for your community to recognize is that the success of the YES and the youth of your community rest not only in hiring the person who is the best fit, but also in having an upfront commitment by all community members to give the YES the authority to do his or her best work. The position of the YES works best when the individual is given the authority to act on youth issues as their top priority even when  faced with challenges from community partners about including youth in decision-making within systems of care and larger community governance. The YES will need to have the authority to come before your local governance structure to address the hard questions and be able to tackle the policy, service, and structural changes needed to bring about true systems transformation. For more information on the hiring of an effective YES, see the Technical Assistance Partnership's Tip Sheet for Hiring a Youth Coordinator (PDF).

2. Involve young people and families in the hiring process and community discussions early on.

Some communities feel as if they should wait to involve youth and their families in system of care discussions until they are actually enrolled in their local services program. This idea is imprudent. How equal would you feel within a group if many key organizational and process decisions had been made before you got there? More often than not, many key community partners and providers have direct access to youth and their families that fit the criteria of community service provision early in the implementation of systems of care. Communities should be proactive in engaging youth and family members in discussions early. Just inviting youth to an informal meeting, in which they can meet other youth, learn about the assistance coming to their community, eat, and find out how they can be a part of bettering their community, is often enough to drum up interest. As relationships develop and young people are informed of possible opportunities to be involved in governance, policy, a youth organization, and/or evaluation and social marketing, to name a few, they will then be more prepared and interested in being a part of larger development discussions.

3. Discuss the value of youth-guided care up front with system of care staff and the larger community.

These conversations will not always end in agreement; nor will you have all the answers you want after filling out an organizational assessment. Discussing the deeper meaning of "youth guided" will be an ongoing process that must occur to assess the community's cultural value of young people. Sooner rather than later, the needs of the community must reflect those of its young people and families. Some pre-teens (ages 10-12) and generally all teens and young adults can be engaged directly for the purposes of community discussion. Pre-teens may need to have more age-appropriate activities, in which value questions are part of a larger interactive brainstorming game and/or activity.

The true value of youth-guided care is not always fully understood by youth, community partners, and system of care staff. In the beginning, discussion generated by the YES, youth, staff, and community partners can start the process of building or strengthening youth voice, youth leadership, and youth-adult partnerships, all of which will be vital to the success of actualizing the principle of "youth guided." One of the discussion topics to consider is the value the community places on young people having decision-making authority in their lives and on them acting as representatives of their community. For each community, depending on the ages of youth to be served, decision-making authority will look very different based on cultural values and age. Therefore, the engagement strategies and youth voice opportunities will be distinct between the communities.

The involvement of young children under the age of 7 will be limited and different from the involvement of a 9-year-old, and even more different from the partnership with a 13- or 18-year-old. Through your discussions, brainstorm to identify your community's strengths, needs, opportunities, and barriers. By doing this you can then start to work with youth to set clear goals with actions steps to help make the value of youth-guided care systematic within your community process, governance, and service delivery. During your discussion and brainstorming, explore issues such as: how youth are currently involved in decision making, the sentiments of families and adult partners in power sharing with youth, youths' (community services recipients') views on partnering with adults, and policies and procedures that impact youth involvement.

4. Identify your community's youth-specific assets and have youth be a part of the process.

The beauty of this step is that it is so simple that with the support of a few staff or community partners' child service workers, this step can be accomplished in five weeks or less. Again, you can start now with involving interested young people who are current or past recipients of existing systems services to act as community representatives to help build a youth-guided system. Start small. It's as simple as A-B-C-D:

  1. Find out by word of mouth from youth and workers a good time and day (most likely an evening) to hold an informal event.
  2. If you are wondering how you find "interested" youth, recruit through your local service worker channels. All you need is an adult or older teen that is good at interacting with youth and has experience in facilitating youth icebreakers, brainstorming, and games.
  3. Have a comfortable meeting space with a fair amount of floor space, some music, and tables and chairs for eating. Create a relaxed event where you are giving them an opportunity to have their hand in community betterment and take leadership and ownership of what their peers are experiencing (and of course have some snacks). This is how you find "interested" youth.
  4. By creating a comfortable environment where young people can see that they are being heard, are being allowed to express their concerns, and now have an avenue to be directly involved, you will find many youth who once seemed uninterested very engaged and ready to help support systems of care.

At a short meeting, you can accomplish a great amount in less than two hours by only doing two activities: Have an icebreaker to help the youth and attending adults introduce themselves to one another, and create and play one or two short games in which youth identify and discuss issues they feel are affecting youth in their community, existing resources, youth-led organizations, organizations that have supported youth initiatives in the past, and their project ideas to help improve the issues. Such a process will work with teens and young adults, but special consideration must be given to involvement of youth as young as age 6, depending on their developmental level. One method of involving them in such activities would be to pair them with older peers.

In less than two hours you will have supported youth voice by providing a space for young people to share their concerns and helping them to identify ways in which they can contribute! You will also be amazed at just how fun community work can be when you involve young people, how much they have to contribute, and the impact of their discussion and ideas.