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Abstract
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Adolescents who are chronically exposed to violence and poverty respond with rage, distrust, and hopelessness. Successful programs for these youth include nine essential elements: street outreach and referral; needs and interest assessments; provisions for supportive, personal relationships with adults; availability of role models; peer group discussions; family interventions; neighborhood projects; education and job preparedness training; and program objectives. Neighborhood youth centers should engage youth in program planning and program operation. Success cannot be achieved without a deeply ingrained faith that our young people can be resourceful and energetic agents of constructive and productive change.
VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The goal of this study by Greene was to describe and discuss interventions that are successful in dealing with youth who are chronically exposed to violence and poverty.
METHODOLOGY:
A non-experimental literature review was employed for this study.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
The working assumptions of this paper were that exposure to poverty and violence is traumatic, specific negative effects result from these traumas, and programs must be adopted to intervene between these effects and youth. The author first reviewed the literature on youth-in-poverty and then on the frequency and nature of the violence to which these youth were exposed. This was followed by a discussion of the critical elements and philosophical underpinnings of programs that work for youth exposed to these stresses. Children and adolescents were found to be disproportionately represented among the poor in our country. Over 650,000 (1 in 3) children in New York City are living in households with incomes at or below the poverty line, as of 1991. Disproportionate numbers of these children were African-American or Latino. In the United States, 23% of children under the age of 6 lived in poverty. Violence was found to be a frequent phenomenon in poor areas. 23% of high school students in the southside of Chicago had seen someone killed, and 40% of those victims were family, friends, classmates or neighbors. Similar findings were reported in a survey of second to eighth graders. Victims of violence were also overrepresented among our youth. Each year from 1985 to 1988, 12-19 year-old youths through the United States were victims of 1.9 million rapes, robberies, and assaults. Homicide was found to be a cause of death ranking high among all causes for youth under 19; this was particularly true for blacks. Black males had a 1 in 21 chance (42% of deaths in 1987) of being a homicide victim as compared to a 1 in 131 chance for white males in this age group. In general, growing up poor in urban America was an experience that exposed all concerned to a tremendous degree of violence.
The author described affective responses to this situation. It was argued that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) should be expanded to include responses of children and adolescents to living in these situations; adolescents were seen to be particularly vulnerable. The author suggested that affective responses could be discussed as being rage, distrust, and hopelessness with the goal of understanding and developing programmic interventions. In a discussion of rage, it was revealed that more than half of all homicides occur in the context of interpersonal conflict--rage. Perceptions of others' inattention to their plight and awareness of the fact violence could erupt at any time, youth were left with a constant edginess that was often taken out on somebody else, taken out on themselves in the form of drug/alcohol abuse or depression, or in some cases, survived through to productive and fulfilling lives in later years. Distrust, according to the author was based on the assumptions that trust derives from supportive, intimate relationships and that chronic, cumulative trauma hinders the establishment of interpersonal trust. The author argued (though, admittedly, with lack of much documentation) that the most common characteristic of youth exposed to these conditions is a lack of ongoing support intimate relationships and, in many cases, have lost a parent or friend to violence or AIDS. Emotional barriers were said to come from this, and subsequently, relationships with peers were developed around what they could offer, not emotional reasons. Hopelessness was often demonstrated in teenagers' questioning of whether they would survive to adulthood. When goals were expressed, they were often realistic and ignorant as to how such things as professional status were achieved. Support was not found; more often, parents and teachers focused on what was wrong.
The author identified 9 elements of programmic intervention for the purpose of providing a concrete direction for programmic development and a vision of what youth can do and what they currently face. These elements were street outreach and referral, needs and interest assessment, supportive and personal relationships with adults, role models, peer group discussions, family interventions, neighborhood projects, education and job preparedness training, and stating program objectives. Street outreach and referral referred to the use of word of mouth from other young people for attracting youth to programs and reaching out to them to give them a sense of involvement in the youth center. Publicizing the program among police and probation officers, family court judges, and other such people was also seen as important. Needs and interest assessment referred to finding out what each youth needs and wants and, based on this assessment, developing an initial plan structured to try to meet these needs and attend to interests--an area frequently ignored by programs who seek more to provide treatment. Initial point of entry needs to be easy and attractive for youth, it was argued. Preliminary short- and long-term goals would, then, be established along with a schedule for reviewing accomplishments. This initial stage, the author claimed, could open the way for significant breakthroughs through identification of strengths and previously ignored or unseen problems. According to the author, services and activities could be provided by volunteers in the community or through networking in programs and services, and referrals to programs that do offer appropriate services and activities need to be made. Supportive, personal relationships with adults referred to a "primary counselor"--defined as a good parent substitute that can offer support, faith that adulthood can be all right, and answers to questions and concerns. The most important feature of this person was that he/she makes time for and really care about the young person. Role models referred to the exposure of youth to adults with whom they could identify, often adults who grew up in similar circumstances and with the same ethnic background and who could demonstrate to youth that it is possible to make it without resorting to crime. Youth, the author stated, also need to see adults from different backgrounds cooperating and treating each other with respect. Positive heroes beyond sports and entertainment superstars were also said to be needed. Peer group discussions referred to the methods used to help teach youth how to peacefully resolve interpersonal conflict and to communicate. Essential, the author claimed, is an ongoing, structured setting in which young people can freely talk about feelings and thoughts in a kind of consciousness raising. In these groups, youth would be led to see that others experience some of the same insecurities and fears that they do. Adult facilitators were seen as necessary to help facilitate groups that go into areas of racism, sexism, and revenge and to make the discussion positive and productive. Friends would also be a possible result of such a group. Family interventions referred to, in particular, those efforts for establishing and/or reestablishing good communication between adolescents and their parents. Some of the forms that these took were the following: 1) family therapy, 2) having parents actively involved in celebrations and ceremonies at the youth center, 3) encouraging parents to be volunteer tutors, and 4) having young people talk to parents about the parents' childhood. Home visits were seen as crucial, and intensive home-based counseling was supported by the author. Neighborhood projects referred to efforts to draw the energies and resourcefulness of the young people to combat the demoralizing nature of many impoverished neighborhoods. Young people were used in many ways including recruiting and organizing other youth for positive projects, taking action for proposed improvements to the community, and other active involvement. The end result, according to the author, has been the provision of important services to the neighborhoods, teaching youth how to work cooperatively with peers and adults, and instilling in young people the sense that they can make a difference and create positive change. Education and job-preparedness training was offered to combat the results of high school drop-out rates. Programs can lend themselves to the application of basic skills to what interests them. Annexes to schools could be created to teach troublesome youth. Social service programs, the author contended, should be invited into the schools. Training in job seeking and etiquette as well as entrepreneurial programs with local businesses were also seen to be needed. Finally, program objectives were needed to serve as an internal process evaluation for ongoing assessment and adaptation. Program objectives, according to the author, should be set at a point just beyond what the program planners hope to accomplish and will outline, for example, how youth will be recruited, how many, and so forth.
AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS:
The author concluded by saying that we need to help young people to become hopeful, have support networks, and have positive channels of self-expression as well as a sense of control over their lives. Comprehensive youth centers situated in the neighborhoods in which the youth reside, the author claimed, can accomplish these goals.
EVALUATION:
What this author proposes is a process of youth empowerment that will help to overcome the stress and devastation of living with violence and poverty. The suggestions for creating programs were presented in a detailed, specific, and useable manner. In general, there is promise to an approach which actually gives youth control over their destinies. However, there is a sense that this approach will treat the aftermath in hopes of treating the cause. This task might be a difficult one, given the fact that the program would be trying to help youth cope with the violence in their neighborhoods at the same time that the violence continues. When would the violence end? Overall, the quest for instilling a positive sense of hope and control for youth is a worthy one, albeit a difficult one. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
KW - Exposure to Violence
KW - Low-Income Youth
KW - At Risk Youth
KW - At Risk Child
KW - At Risk Juvenile
KW - Juvenile Witness
KW - Child Witness
KW - Witnessing Violence Effects
KW - Witnessing Community Violence
KW - Violence Intervention
KW - Intervention Program
KW - Poverty
KW - Socioeconomic Factors
KW - Intervention Recommendations
Language: en |