When There Is No Blueprint: The Provision of Mental Health Services in Alternative School Programs for Suspended and Expelled Youth

A variety of alternative programs are being implemented in Canada and the United States for students who have exhibited conduct problems and who are suspended or expelled from their schools. Given the complexity of issues that these students frequently face, treatment must be multifaceted, wrap-around, delivered by trained professionals and be targeted to these students' unique biopsychosocial needs. This article reviews the literature on delivery of mental health services within the broader school-based context. Specific mental health issues endemic in the high-risk adolescent demographic are highlighted, and implications for mental health professionals, particularly psychologists, working with such individuals are discussed. Suggestions are made with respect to screening and assessment instruments and treatment.     

The Importance and Benefits of Supervision in Youth Work Practice

This article explores the concept of supervision and its implementation within a youth work context. The article describes and explores a process of staff development facilitated by the author which involved providing supervision training to a group of youth work practitioners at Cork YMCA in Ireland and continuing to meet them on a monthly basis over a period of a year in a mentoring capacity. These sessions provided a supportive space for supervisors and aimed to facilitate a reflective process in relation to their own supervisory practice. This article explores the opportunities and challenges of the supervision process, advocates the importance of supervision in ensuring effective youth work practice, and identifies the beneficial impact of this at a number of levels.     

Not-Knowing Gives Way to Knowing

One of the few truly reassuring features of not-knowing among youth workers is the realization that not-knowing cannot last forever. Eventually, some feature of the situation shifts, and youth workers move back into the capacity for action. This chapter describes the last of five themes associated with youth workers' experiences of not knowing what to do: Not-knowing gives way to knowing. In addition to presenting the dominant theme, this chapter discusses the three variations on it, as described by youth worker participants: (a) The rousing power of someone else, (b) I have to respond, because no one else will, and (c) The power of winging it.     

Whose Stories are These?

Phenomenological research investigates the meaning of lived experiences for participants, as well as the implications of those experiences. This chapter presents brief biographical sketches of 12 youth workers who participated in a phenomenological investigation of the experience of self in moments of not-knowing what to do. Each participant's characteristics, professional location in the broad field of American youth work, and circumstances surrounding the experience of not-knowing are described.     

The Voice of Young People

No abstract available for this article.     

Reducing Black Adolescents' Drug Use:

This article focuses on prevention and reduction of drug use among Black adolescents. The family is considered to be a major source in preparing children to handle adolescent stresses such as drug involvement pressures. Primary prevention of drug use begins in early childhood. The family is an underutilized and minimally acknowledged resource in drug abuse prevention efforts. The discussion centers on a review of research findings intimately related to adolescent drug use and Black family issues. An argument is made for a national family policy in support of all American famiiies. Young famiIies are a prime area for the investment or resources. Now and in the future, the American family represents the best primary prevention program available.     

Remediation of Social Withdrawal in Young Children:

The last 15 years have witnessed a marked increase in the development of intervention techniques designed to promote isolate children's friendships and to increase their peer group interactions. However, there has been a paucity of research directed towards defining social competence and its underlying skill components. With the practitioner in mine, the present report presents a recent intervention strategy for remediating social withdrawal, followed by our current development of a skill deficit model designed to expand our knowledge case of causal contributors. PEERS, a broad-based intervention program, involves all of the child's social agents, thus assuring him/her of entry into the peer group in an atmosphere of social support. Our more comprehensive view of social withdrawal examines deficits in four skill areas: the child's social, language, and motoric competences, and the parents' child-rearing ability. Additional research is needed to pinpoint the precise relationship between these skill components and social withdrawal. With the further contributions of researchers in the field, we foresee the development of a more refined set of intervention procedures which the practitioner may use selectively to meet the individual needs of each child.     

Chapter 13: Group Therapy for Birth Parents of Children in Foster Care

Psychological impairments render many biological parents of children placed in treatment foster care incompetent to meet child-rearing tasks. Service agreements identify and address critical areas of dysfunctioning but do not engage parents in a broader inventory of their parental functioning and dysfuntioning. A group method provides mutual support, exploration, and a positive child-rearing model. A clinical assessment of parenting that highlights ongoing developmental needs of nurturance and empathy, limit setting, structure, role modeling, reality testing, and separation and individuation is used to promote progress. Parents gain insight into their own overall impairments, origin of impairments, and compensatory techniques. Parents recognize broader responsibility for parenthood enhancing reunification efforts.     

Chapter 17: The Community as an Advocate for Youth:

State treatment foster care programs established by the National Youth Advocate Program are described in terms of youth served, homes established, treatment program, implementation problems, and evaluation procedures.