HCHY List: Community Youth Strategy

[Mel Tremper]

That sounds ambitious.  

Some random thoughts strike me......

I assume the community is not very large, and thus does not have a lot
of agencies serving youth.  It is usually easier to pull together fewer
people rather than many.

What do you mean by "our community?"   that is, I presume there is some
group that thinks this is a good idea.  Has this group actually asked
"the community" what they would like to see?  Are key players in the
youth serving arena part of the group trying to pull these things
together or is the group mostly made up of interested citizens?  

What do external funders (provincial, federal grantors) think about
unified strategies, what do rules/laws/regulations say about crossing
service area boundaries?

Do you include police/courts juvenile justice in general as part of the
youth serving entities?  In the US child protective services and the
foster care system is usually administered from outside the community
through state agencies.  Are these entities likely to be part of the
integrated system?

 

Perhaps the most critical question is, what is the goal of the strategy?
One mechanism to convince individual agencies to agree to merge their
work and interests (and resources??) with others is a compelling vision
of what can be achieved if everyone works together.  Have
providers/agencies gotten together to forge or agree upon a compelling
vision or goal toward which the united strategy would be moving?  Do you
have some solid assessment evidence of the current state of affairs for
youth in the community, and how that differs from the vision and then
what is missing or not being done that needs to be done to transform the
actual situation into the ideal of the vision?  If you do that, then the
individual players can see the roles they can play as part of a team to
bring the vision about.  

 

The implicit "model" in my ramblings above has elements of the ability
to envision a compelling end state, to use data and solid planning
methods to figure out how to achieve the vision, being open and
inclusive of the concerns of all the actors when crafting the vision and
doing the planning, and paying attention to the resources and structural
supports needed to make the whole thing possible.  The details of the
strategy your community will develop will emerge from your visioning and
planning processes.    

________________________________

From: hchylist-bounces at lists.search-institute.org
[mailto:hchylist-bounces at lists.search-institute.org] On Behalf Of Sue &
Mike Trefry
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 7:27 PM
To: Mel Tremper
Cc: Healthy Communities Healthy Youth
Subject: HCHY List: Community Youth Strategy

 

Our community is looking to develop an integrated youth strategy that
would include all youth serving agencies.  Does anyone have a good model
they would be willing to share?

 

Sue Trefry

Board Chair Jericho Youth Society (The VAULT Youth Drop-In)

Cold Lake, Alberta

Canada

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