This volume tells the story of major organizational change efforts at one municipal youth-serving organization to better support healthy youth development system wide. Presenting the viewpoints of young people, frontline staff, supervisors, managers, and the director, it reviews how the organization developed and transformed. Each article then describes the different strategies and tactics used to support organizational transformation. Learn: How a youth work professional development strategy ended up as an organizational development and change strategy How the partnership with a university expanded to include community-based research and evaluation to support youth program development and improvement within the organization. How youth advice structures can support high-quality youth programming and, by extension, improvements in organizational supports for quality youth programs How partnerships with other organizations supported ongoing adaptation of the organization to better address youth needs This is the 139th volume of New Directions for Youth Development, the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions.

The transition to adulthood for many is mediated by class, culture, and local/global influences on identity. This volume analyzes the global injustices that create inequities and restrict future opportunities for young people during this transitional time, including poverty, unemployment, human rights, race, ethnicity and location. It critically examines global instances of youth discrimination, offering positive strategies and practices such as youth work that successfully remediate these injustices. With international contributions from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, England, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Morocco, Jordan and the U.S., this volume is particularly important to researchers and scholars in the fields of youth studies, education, and social work.

Social settings have enormous power to promote or hinder positive youth development. Researchers and practitioners know a great deal about features of schools and programs for youth that affect development, but much less about how to transform settings to bring about these desirable features. This book shows how to harness the power of settings. It shifts the debate from simply enhancing youth outcomes at the individual level to improving the settings of youths' daily lives. The book offers researchers and practitioners blueprints for creating and changing influential settings including classrooms, schools, universities, out-of-school time programs, ethnic systems of supplementary education, and other community-based programs. Leading scholars in psychology, education, human development, sociology, anthropology, economics, law, and public policy discuss a wide array of social change strategies, and describe how to measure key features of settings as a target and guide for change. The authors also demonstrate how larger social structures - such as school districts, community coalitions, community data resources - can support change. Many of the chapters describe ways to make settings work for all youth, including those marginalized by reason of race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. Toward Positive Youth Development will guide researchers, educators, administrators and policy makers to improve schools and youth programs for all of America's youth.

Youth civic engagement efforts have become common across the globe. With the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many have turned to civic engagement methodologies to create opportunities for young people to have a voice in decisions that affect them. With the dissemination of youth civic engagement practice, there is a need to evaluate these efforts to satisfy funders, stakeholders, and participants. As a social innovation, youth civic engagement efforts present unique issues to evaluation and invite innovative and participatory evaluation designs. This volume brings together experienced evaluators, evaluation and youth civic engagement scholars, and civic youth workers to inform evaluation designs for youth civic engagement practice and programs. The book uses the US Center for Disease Control's framework for evaluation process, and explores issues, questions, and choices an evaluator can make when designing an evaluation of youth civic engagement practices. The heart of the book includes case studies written by professional evaluators, evaluation and youth scholars, and youth workers to define issues for each stage and provide guidance for others who want to design a robust, rigorous, and responsive evaluation for youth civic engagement initiatives and practices. The final chapters of the book provide straightforward and clear guidance for beginning to intermediate evaluators when designing and conducting evaluation studies.

"The definition of psychotic spectrum disorders such as schizophrenia has evolved with changing nosogy and scientific advancements over the last 200 years. Understanding both the historical evolution of the concept as well as recent changes reflected in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) as well as the National Institute of Health's (NIH) Research Domain Criteria (RDOC) framework are critical for informing current efforts to further update and refine the nosology of psychotic spectrum disorders. This chapter offers an overview of past classification schemes, current standards, and novel approaches to further improve the validity of these definitions through use of biomarkers, reverse nosologies, and digital phenotyping tools like smartphones and sensors"--

John F. Kerry United States Senator If we are to reinvigorate and reinforce civic participation in this country at a time when our society is increasingly fragmented and highly technologically based, we must find a way to unite distinct communities, such as universities, regional and non-profit organizations, and families. We must find ways to link academicians, students, teachers, and professionals with the reality of events and circumstances so that theories and ideas mightily pursued within the "ivory tower" are connected to social reality and useful. As the editors and contributors in this volume point out, the way to bridge theory/practice divide is not merely to interpret and report on circumstances of the real-world; but rather, to deconstruct the separate and distinct communities that exist within our society and actively engage other communities to realize a continuum of mutual understanding, collaboration, and action. It is crucial to include our nation's public schools in this new approach of social inquiry and social action. Improving and creating educational opportunity for all children in the United States has been an ongoing critical federal issue. We know that when children achieve in school they have a much greater chance of living healthy, productive adult lives that will benefit themselves and society, and we know that increasing the base of stakeholders in children's education yields those positive results.

Transforming Residential Interventions: Practical Strategies and Future Directions captures the emerging changes, exciting innovations, and creative policies and practices informing ground-breaking residential programs. Building on the successful 2014 publication Residential Interventions for Children, Adolescents, and Families, this follow-up volume provides a contemporary framework to address the needs of young people and their families, alongside practical strategies that can be implemented at the program, community, system, and policy levels. Using the Building Bridges Initiative as a foundation, the book serves as a "how-to manual" for making bold changes to residential interventions. The reader will learn from a range of inspired leaders who, rather than riding the wave of change, jumped in and created the wave by truly listening to and partnering with their youth, families, advocates, and staff. Chapters provide real-time practice examples and specific strategies that are transformational and consider critical areas, such as family and youth voice, choice and roles, partnerships, permanency and equity, diversity, and inclusion. These methods benefit youth with behavioral and/or emotional challenges and their families and will improve an organization’s long-term outcomes and fiscal bottom line. This book is for oversight agencies, managed care companies, providers of service, advocates, and youth/family leaders looking for an exemplar guide to the new frontier of residential intervention. In this era of accountability and measurement, it will become a trusted companion in leading residential interventions to improved practices and outcomes.

An 8-point statement of objectives & strategies designed to strengthen State & local initiatives to reduce juvenile violence & to increase the capacity of the juvenile justice system to respond to, & prevent, delinquency. Presents innovative & effective strategies designed to reduce violence & victimization, describes how communities can generate solutions & how individuals & groups can prevent or reduce violence in their neighborhoods. Provides important information about Federal training, technical assistance, grants, research, evaluation, & other resources that support these efforts. Extensive bibliography.