Strategy
Roca’s High-Risk Youth Intervention Model
Roca helps young people to change their behavior and shift the trajectories of their lives through our High-Risk Youth Intervention Model. The Model is based on cognitive-behavioral intervention to enable young people to move toward the outcomes of economic independence and living out of harm’s way. Roca’s intervention model is based on a framework for change used in medical and mental health fields and includes:
Transformational Relationship (TR)
Roca knows that when a young person is re-engaged through positive and intensive relationships, he/she can go on to gain competencies in life skills, education and employment. Therefore, at the core of our High-Risk Youth Intervention Model is the Transformational Relationship (TR).
We can not wait for these young people to show up at our doors, because they never will. Youth workers build these relationships by finding young people where they are at, learning where they hang out, knocking on their doors, and continuously circling the neighborhood in the infamous Roca vans. It is the relentlessness of a youth worker who shows up day after day, no matter what, that awakens hope in a young person. As trust builds and the visits to Roca increase, the youth worker strategically develops a relationship that is a commitment between youth and youth worker: they are now “in it” together.
Youth workers carry a caseload of 25 youth and connect with each young person no less than three times each week. Youth workers are available 24 hours a day and are often the one adult in a young person’s life that is there when they go to court or enter lock up; who is present during lock up and picks them up when they are out. Their relationship is not a friendship it is more profound, effectively intentional, and mutually respectful. Youth workers are trained in motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral strategies preparing them to use their self effectively to guide and support young people.
Stage-Based Programming
Each component of Roca’s High-Risk Young Person Intervention Model is designed to drive toward outcomes and is based on the five Stages of Change, commonly accepted in medical and mental health fields, that an individual typically moves through to improve and then sustain life changes. The second part of Roca’s Model, Stage-Based Programming engages young people literally “where they are at” in the stages of change cognitively and behaviorally.
Roca is driving this population, who will not move in a straight trajectory, toward outcomes by engaging them in stage-based programming as opposed to a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Whether in pre-vocational training, GED, or parenting groups, these positive steps keep the young parents coming back as they begin to reengage in a positive way. Through these stage-based programming strategies, Roca can move young people along a continuum of life skills, education, pre-vocational training, and transitional employment:
Life skills and engagement activities, run regularly by youth workers, are designed to address issues that affect our young people and also support a young person’s ability to make healthier and safer choices. This work may be done through intensive one-on-one relationship building, as well as peacemaking circles and formal curriculum-driven groups. These groups explore personal issues as well as emotional barriers to parenting; to deal with the extraordinary emotional and basic-need stress, groups utilize emotional literacy curricula such as Power Source. These spaces also address hard, yet relevant, issues such as substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, sexuality, and domestic violence. Youth workers guide them through the difficult conversations that lead towards commitments such as to stay sober or learn skills that will allow them to show up “in a good way” for their children. As young people come to terms with the complex roles and relationships in their lives, they are able to focus specifically on gaining the skills needed to improve their ability to parent, to go to work, or to access education. As they develop these skills, young people can access Roca’s range of alternative education and pre-vocation training programs.
Given the range in behavior, attitude and general readiness for learning as young people move them through stages of change, increasing readiness to participate consistently in increasingly structured alternative educational and competency building classes. Classes include: basic literacy, pre-GED, GED, ESOL levels, Spanish GED, and computer classes. Roca’s integration of alternative education with pre-vocational training is focused on helping young people acquire the basic knowledge and skills that are prerequisites to successful employment. Roca is delivering pre-vocational programming through a range of informal short-term projects to formal certification and trainings that includes Culinary Arts, Financial Literacy, Digital Storytelling, Carpentry, Custodial Arts, Hospitality, Cosmetology, and Pre-Health Career Credentials.
To reach outcomes of economic independence, it is critical to develop workforce ready skills. Roca has developed unique employment programming to help young people with virtually no job skills learn and practice the skills they need to get a job and stay employed. Transitional employment provides time-limited, subsidized jobs that combine real work, skill development, and support services. Designed for multiple relapses, young people are able to continually re-enter transitional employment as they learn from their relapse and increase their own accountability. Participants who choose to enter transitional employment will move through this process until they are able to successfully “graduate” to job placement assistance and retention services. Read more about our employment programs for young people here.
As change can be extremely difficult, young parents often relapse and return to negative and destructive behavior. Unlike other programs, Roca turns this setback into opportunity: Relapse becomes a tool that allows the youth worker to re-engage the young person and bring them back again and again. This allows a young person to grow, have the hard conversations, and move forward. A young person who relapses into substance abuse or other negative behaviors is not going to show up again willingly. Youth workers must find and reengage a young people even if it takes one hundred times, again and again, until the young person is ready to trust. This is what it takes to re-engage young people and keep them from slipping back into harm’s way. This is how we keep young people alive.
Engaged Institutions Strategy
The third part of the High Risk Youth Intervention Model is the Engaged Institution Strategy. The institutions that are in a young person’s life schools, local government, agencies, and organizations' are just as influential to the needs and growth of a young person as Roca. In recognizing this, Roca sought to create partnerships with these institutions, open the lines of communication, and benefit from each other’s expertise. Roca’s work has resulted in initiatives such as: area-specific gang intervention practices with the Chelsea Police, shared youth work practices with the Department of Social Services, and an integrated partnership and on-site programming with the Chelsea Public Schools. Roca is committed to shifting the trajectories of not only our young people, but of all the institutions involved in a young person’s life. In dialogue and action, over time, Roca continues enacting alternative, restorative policies in our communities that will result in a systemic change of how our communities address the needs of this high-risk youth population. Read more about some of our emerging partnerships here.
