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“Attitudes Affecting Physical Dating Violence Perpetration and Victimization: Findings From Adolescents in a High-Risk Urban Community” (abstract), Violence and Victims, Volume 26, Number 5, 2011.
What it’s about: The researchers surveyed over 4,000 urban middle- and high-school students to find out if attitudes about dating violence predicted whether or not teens acted violently toward their romantic partners or became victims of dating violence.
Why read it: Understanding what makes teen boys and girls more likely to act violently toward their girlfriends and boyfriends or to become victims of dating violence may help youth workers to prevent it.
Biggest takeaways for youth workers: Among the researchers’ findings:
- Girls who thought hitting boys was OK, girls and boys whose peers acted violently towards dating partners or peers, and girls who used drugs were more likely to commit dating violence
- Girls and boys who thought it was OK for girls to hit boys were more likely to be victims
- Boys who thought hitting girls was OK were more likely to commit dating violence and more likely to be victims
These results, the researchers say, underscore the importance of working to change young people’s views on violence in intimate relationships.
Additional references: The Centers for Disease Control's Dating Matters Initiative promotes healthy teen relationships in economically disadvantaged urban communities. The initiative includes an online training for youth workers and teachers.
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of these and other publications.)
Plans to open a new drop-in center for homeless youth in the picturesque waterside town of Poulsbo, WA, have brought concerns and criticism from some citizens and enthusiastic support from others. We spoke with Dave Frederick, executive director of The Coffee Oasis, the youth-serving group that will operate the center. He shared the lessons he’s learned about some people’s wariness of facilities for the homeless and the proactive steps organizations can take to appease fears and develop good relationships in the community.
NCFY: You’ve encountered some pushback in developing the new drop-in center. Why do you think that happens sometimes?
Frederick: I think the major pushback came from where it always comes from, which is fear of the unknown. You hear the words “street youth” or “homeless youth,” and that conjures up fears in some people because they don’t know any, and they’ve heard stories about crimes, drugs and vandalism. Our biggest focus is on eliminating [misconceptions about homeless youth] through building relationships and disseminating information.
NCFY: Why are good relationships with neighbors important?
Frederick: What we do is a part of a community. If we don’t see ourselves as part of the community and are just doing our own thing, we’re missing out on the depth, breadth, skills and resources of the community. Taking the time to build those resources and those networks makes it a community thing.
NCFY: What can programs do when they’re first getting involved in a new community to establish good relationships and set a good tone from the beginning?
Frederick: There are key groups that people should reach out to—civic clubs, faith communities, the police and schools. The leaders in a community are usually represented in those groups and are people who care about their community and want to make a difference. When we first reach out to a community, we start with who we know and meet people through them and go relationship to relationship to relationship.
NCFY: Are there any missteps that programs make that can damage those relationships?
Frederick: It can be a misstep to think, “Hey, we have enough support so we can run over those who aren’t on board.” Maybe it's my bent as a peacemaker, but I think it’s important to reach out to people who oppose what you’re doing. It’s always worth the extra effort to keep relationships smooth and build more support. In a community everyone’s connected, so if you get someone new to support your program, you might then have the support of their husband, who might be a city councilman.
Additional Resource
"Please Leave a Message: Marketing and Communications for Youth-serving Organizations"
In a new Youth Speak Out podcast, two young people share how they use the common language of popular music to broach a difficult subject: teen dating violence.
Jaquil and Jalisa, youth leaders at the anti-dating violence nonprofit Start Strong Boston, bring a list of pop, rap, rock and country songs when they talk to local middle schoolers about dating and relationships. By analyzing song lyrics and discussing whether they promote healthy or unhealthy relationships, Jaquil and Jalisa help younger teens develop healthy attitudes before they start dating.
Going to a clinic or getting tested for sexually transmitted infections can be scary for young people, especially if they don't know what to expect. To help youth get over the hurdle of fear, a group of youth in New York City has produced several videos that encourage their peers to take care of their sexual health.
Part of a series written by and starring members of Community Healthcare Network's teen health program, the videos could be incorporated into life skills classes or sexual health workshops.
"Teen Clinic Tour": A young woman visits a teen-health clinic for the first time.
"Face Your Fears": Young people face typical fears, including getting tested for HIV, and overcome them.
Additional Resources
"Answering Questions, Building Trust: The Role of Health Services in Promoting Well-being"
Peer Education and Leadership in Dating Violence Prevention: Strengths and Challenges (abstract), Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, Vol. 19, 2010.
What it’s about: The authors of this article interviewed 52 domestic violence and sexual assault prevention practitioners about their experiences using youth as educators and leaders in efforts to prevent dating violence and sexual assault among adolescents.
Why read it: Using peer educators, or leaders, to encourage healthy behavior among other teens is a popular component of many programs aimed at ending teen dating violence and sexual assault. This article reports on the pros and cons of the peer education approach.
Biggest takeaways for youth workers:
Pros:
- Peer education can be rewarding for both the young leaders and the youth they educate, and it can make programs more relevant to diverse audiences.
- Skits in particular seem to successfully engage youth, who often resist lecturing and are more used to dynamic or interactive media.
- Allowing peer educators to relate their own traumatic histories can be a valuable way to engage the youth they are educating.
Cons:
- Programs should take care that survivors who share their stories are supported and not made to feel vulnerable.
- Coordinating and facilitating peer leadership programs can be challenging, especially maintaining a consistent group of peer leaders when youth are busy with school and other activities.
- Programs need enough resources to provide training and support for youth leaders.
Additional references: For more information on dating violence prevention, visit Loveisrespect.org. For more information on peer education, visit youthpeer.org or read NCFY's articles about peer education and outreach.
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of these and other publications.)
Each year, thousands of youth come to the United States illegally without a parent or guardian. Many of them wind up in immigration court without a lawyer to help them navigate the system.
To find out what youth workers can do to help these young people, NCFY spoke with Megan McKenna, who directs communications and advocacy for Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that arranges free legal representation for undocumented, unaccompanied youth.
NCFY: What can youth workers do if they find out one of their young people is undocumented?
McKenna: The most important thing is for the child—no matter what—to try to have a lawyer or some sort of professional legal advice to help them navigate the system.
NCFY: How long does it take to secure lawful status for young people?
McKenna: It can take a while. It really depends on the type of case. For example, an asylum case can take some time because it takes time to gather all the information needed to present the case to the U.S. government. And there are a number of procedures for some of the other types of immigration relief, sort of steps you have to take. So it can take a year or more.
The immigration courts are backlogged, so a lot of it may depend on when the child gets his or her first court date. They may not get a court date for six months, eight months.
NCFY: While this long process is happening, what can youth workers do to help the young person?
McKenna: There are a number of circumstances that the kids can get work authorization. Contact a social services agency or a lawyer who knows what forms of immigration relief would allow them to work after a period of time.
One of the main things is to help youth stay out of trouble. Any kind of contact with law enforcement could have a negative effect on the case. It wouldn’t necessarily make the child ineligible for protection, but it could complicate things, and in some cases it could bar the child.
Help them stay in school as well. A number of the judges ask children who are before them in their immigration court proceedings, Are they in school? What are they doing in school? How are their grades? And although legally that has no binding on the judge’s decision, it’s sort of part of the picture that the judge would have of the child. So it’s another helpful thing to show that the child is working hard, trying to be a good student, and that sort of thing.
To find free legal counsel for undocumented youth, request a referral from KIND or go to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s list of free legal services providers.
Additional Resource
“Immigration and Schools: Supporting Success for Undocumented and Unaccompanied Homeless Youth”(PDF, 1.4MB) by KIND and the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth
Controlling behavior and emotional abuse in teen dating relationships are nothing new. But technologies like smart phones, texting and social networking sites have made young people vulnerable to new avenues of harassment and abuse—because abusers can reach them anytime, anywhere.
Parents and youth service providers might not understand the seriousness of so-called digital abuse or know how to help. That's why Liz Claiborne Inc.'s Love Is Not Abuse campaign against dating violence created an iPhone app to help grown-ups get the seriousness of the problem.
"Even if you have experienced some type of abuse in your life, it probably wasn't digital or on social media," says Jane Randel, director of Love Is Not Abuse.
The Love is Not Abuse app mimics the controlling and abusive behaviors teens might face in their relationships. It simulates the text messages, emails, and calls young people receive from abusive partners: checking up, harassing, deleting their friends from social media, threatening violence, sexting and so on. Randel says that this helps adults "to really get a feel for what it is the kids are experiencing, and what it is that people are talking about when they say 'digital dating abuse.'"
The Love is Not Abuse app also helps adults learn:
- Warning signs of abuse and the ways dating abuse manifests itself in teen relationships
- Immediate, concrete steps they can take if they are concerned that a young person may be a victim of dating abuse
- Resources for help outside such as loveisrespect.org, the National Dating Abuse Helpline and other services
- Action steps to educate teens
- How to talk to teens about dating violence
Randel suggests that youth service providers could use the app to help young people recognize what isn't a healthy relationship. "It's not healthy if someone emails, and texts and calls you twenty times an hour," she says. The app can be convincing for teens, she says, because "it's not coming from a parent or a teacher or whatever—it's coming from the phone."
The Love is Not Abuse app is available free through the Apple iTunes app store. To create the app, Love is Not Abuse partnered with the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Joyful Heart Foundation, Verizon Foundation, Wired Safety, Break the Cycle, Love Is Respect, MTV, Futures Without Violence, Seventeen Magazine, Mom Central and the American School Counselors Association. For a preview, visit the Love is Not Abuse website.
Additional Resources
"Bright Idea: Mobile Apps Foster Community and Combat Abuse"
"Hooking Up With Teens to Promote Healthy Relationships"
"Keeping Teens Safe in the Social Networking Era"
Dating Matters: Understanding Teen Dating Violence Prevention, an online training sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Liz Claiborne Inc.
In "The State of Young America: Economic Barriers to the American Dream," the policy organization Demos and the nonprofit Young Invincibles portray the experiences of young Americans struggling to make it.
The report is based on a survey of young adults, ages 18-34. An accompanying data book describes the increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor and compares the economic status of today's young people to that of the previous generation.
The report finds that:
- Many young Americans are falling into personal debt. Forty-two percent of those under age 35 have more than $5,000 in personal debt.
- Among all young people who have seen their debt increase, school loans (42 percent), credit cards (35 percent) and medical bills (27 percent) are the most common.
- The percentage of young adults with jobs is at its lowest point in a generation.
Additional Resource
When a young person lives on the streets or in an abusive home, their brain develops differently than if they lived in a stable, safe environment. To learn more about the teen brain, trauma and healthy ways to stimulate young people’s frontal lobes, NCFY spoke with Heather Higgins, director of training and development at The Upside Down Organization, which demystifies brain science for people who work with children and youth.
NCFY: My understanding is that when youth experience trauma or neglect, parts of their brain over- or under-develop.
Higgins: Yes, if you’re in a potentially dangerous situation, the amygdala, which is the fear and emotional center of the brain, becomes overactive. If all the blood and brain activity is focused on the amygdala, it slows down the development of the frontal lobe, which controls judgment, insight and critical thinking.
NCFY: Are there any strengths or resources that come about from this?
Higgins: The amygdala does things very fast; it doesn’t stop and think. In a lot of situations we don’t want that, like in school, but at other points in life you need to be able to do that. There are jobs that you need to be able to think very quickly, such as working as an EMT [emergency medical technician], where you need to be able to assess situations and react very quickly.
NCFY: How can a youth worker respond to a youth who has experienced trauma?
Higgins: Teach them about their brains and how much room there is to grow. This helps explain why they’re feeling the way they’re feeling, that they’re not supposed to be great at everything yet, and that the habits they get into now are going to be really hard to change. Develop healthy coping skills early on, like talking to a friend when you get upset. It’s hard to rewire the brain.
NCFY: How can a youth worker help repair the ways the brain has developed abnormally?
Higgins: Serotonin is the chemical that makes you feel happy and content. It isn’t hard to get, but young people are around so many things that take it away—being around kids that are mean to you, doing drugs or alcohol. Helping youth produce serotonin in healthy ways will develop the frontal lobes and allow the brain to repair itself. Playing or listening to music, exercising, eating right, volunteer work, or doing whatever the youth enjoy creates serotonin. The extreme version of serotonin is dopamine. Adolescents naturally have less dopamine, so they crave it. It’s important to give them healthy ways to get it, through acting in a play, playing in a big game, playing in a band—really exciting things produce dopamine.
Additional Resources
- Podcast with Dr. Nik Stefanidis on the impact of trauma on an adolescent’s brain
- Tips for youth workers on trauma-informed care
- How yoga can help young people heal from trauma
- More NCFY content on trauma-informed care
"Residential treatment for sexually exploited adolescent girls: Acknowledge, Commit, Transform (ACT)" (abstract), Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 33, No. 11, November 2011.
What it's about: Young people who have been sexually exploited often run away from a residential treatment program and return to the streets.They may also lack engagement in the program, behave aggressively and abuse substances. The authors of this study wanted to know what administrators at Germaine Lawrence, a residential treatment facility for adolescent young women in Massachusetts, did to prevent these situations.
Why read it: The proportion of young women who prematurely left the treatment program at Germaine Lawrence dropped from 65 percent to 15 percent after staff at the facility started using used ACT (Acknowledge, Commit, Transform), a program for sexually exploited adolescent girls living in group homes. To be admitted to ACT, youth must acknowledge the need for change and be ready to adjust to group-home life.
Biggest take aways for youth workers: Each ACT participant meets regularly with a mentor who is a survivor of sex trafficking. The mentor helps the participant feel more engaged in treatment and supports her emotionally after she leaves the program. Participants also receive individualized discharge planning and meet weekly with a therapist who involves the girls’ families, if possible. Culturally competent treatment, such as making services available in Spanish or other languages reflected in the community, is crucial to the program’s success. The authors suggest that youth workers do the following when working with sexually exploited young women:
- If possible, designate a separate group-home program specifically for sexually exploited youth, adjacent to a larger residential facility. This allows young people to move slowly to group-home life, and to move to and from a more restrictive setting as needed.
- Strive to create a warm, homelike environment, with rules and consequences but more freedom than regular treatment facilities. For example, ACT residents receive a small monetary incentive to participate in group activities and do their chores. Allowing them to earn and access their own money helps them to learn necessary life skills.
- Educational groups may help young women to acknowledge sexual exploitation or at-risk behaviors. Including relapse prevention as part of the program can help young women successfully leave the life of sexual exploitation.
Additional reference: Germaine Lawrence also uses the My Life My Choice group-counseling program to reach adolescent girls who have not yet acknowledged that they are being exploited and those who are vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation. The groups are led by an adult survivor and the ACT program director.
Listen to NCFY's "Voices from the Field: Rachel Lloyd" podcast, in which the founder and CEO of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, or GEMS, in New York, explains why runaway and homeless youth providers are so well-suited to combating sex trafficking.
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of this and other publications.)
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