Positive Youth Development: Conceptual Issues, Empirical Findings, and Practical Applications

1. Positive Youth Development: Conceptual Issues, Empirical Findings, and Practical Applications Carl E. Paternite Don Domenici Marc McLaughlin Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs Department of Psychology Miami University Presentation for the Partnerships for Success Academy September 23, 2003

2. Positive Youth Development (PYD) • An approach that • encourages the following: • Promoting and fostering positive aspects of young people’s lives. • Promoting healthy ways of living in young people, families,and society.

3. Instructional Objectives For Presentation: • Increase awareness of the importance of schools as a setting for promotion of positive youth development. • Increase knowledge of critical issues and perspectives taken on the study of positive youth development. • Increase knowledge about application of principals of positive youth development to problem prevention.

4. Themes Addressed in Presentation: • Program development. • Interdisciplinary collaboration and partnership. • Health promotion and problem prevention. • Research, training and education.

5. The need for increased attention to positive youth development is quite clear: “ We have a burgeoning field of developmental psychopathology but have a more diffuse body of research on the pathways whereby children and adolescents become motivated, directed, socially competent, compassionate, and psychologically vigorous adults. Corresponding to that, we have numerous research-based programs for youth aimed at curbing drug use, violence, suicide, teen pregnancy, and other problem behaviors, but lack a rigorous applied psychology of how to promote youth development. The place for such a field is apparent to anyone who has had contact with a cross section of American adolescents.” (Larson, 2000, p. 170)

7. Report of President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Healthhttp://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov • “…the mental health delivery system is fragmented and in disarray…leading to unnecessary and costly disability, homelessness, school failure and incarceration.” • Unmet needs and barriers to care include (among others): • Fragmentation and gaps in care for children. • Lack of national priority for mental health and suicide • prevention. • July, 2003

8. Report of President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health: Six Goals for a Transformed System • Americans understand that mental health is essential to overall health. • Mental health care is consumer and family driven. • Disparities in mental health services are eliminated. • Early mental health screening, assessment, and referral to services are • common practice. • Excellent mental health care is delivered and research is accelerated. • Technology is used to access mental health care and information. • July, 2003

9. Four Recommendations Supporting Goal 4: Early Mental Health Screening, Assessment, and Referral to Services are Common Practice Promote the mental health of young children. Improve and expand school mental health programs. Screen for co-occurring mental and substance use disorders and link with integrated treatment strategies. Screen for mental disorders in primary health care, across the lifespan, and connect to treatment and supports. July, 2003

10. Expanded School-Based Mental Health Programs • National movement to place effective mental health programs in schools, serving youth in general and special ed. • To promote the academic, behavioral, social, emotional, and contextual/systems well-being of youth, and to reduce “mental health” barriers to school success. • Programs incorporate primary prevention and mental health promotion, secondary prevention, and intensive intervention,joining staff and resources from education and other community systems. • Intent is to contribute to building capacity for a comprehensive, multifaceted, and integrated system of support and care.

11. University of Maryland Center for School Mental Health Assistance Mark Weist (http://csmha.umaryland.edu) ESBMH

12. UCLA Center for Mental Health Assistance Howard Adelman & Linda Taylor (http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu) “Barriers to Learning”

14. Potential of Schools as Key Points of Engagement • Opportunities to engage youth where they are. • Unique opportunities for intensive, multifaceted approaches and are essential contexts for health promotion, prevention and research activity.

16. Clearly, intellectual, social, and emotional education go hand-in-hand, and all are linked to creating safe schools, building healthy character, and achieving academic success: “The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as it is for graduate students, for fledgling artists as graying accountants. A good education ought to help people become more perceptive to and more discriminating about the world: seeing, feeling, and understanding more, yet sorting the pertinent from the peripheral with ever finer touch, increasingly able to integrate what they see and to make meaning of it in ways that enhance their ability to go on growing. To imagine otherwise, to act as though learning were simply a matter of stacking facts on top of one another, makes as much sense as thinking one can learn a language by memorizing a dictionary. Ideas only come to life when they root in the mind of a learner.” (Daloz, 1999, p. 243)

17. Schools: The Most Universal Natural Setting • Over 52 million youth attend 114,000 schools • Over 6 million adults work in schools • Combining students and staff, one-fifth of the • U.S. population can be found schools • From Weist, 2003

18. Schools: The Most Universal Natural Setting • Educators are key partners in efforts to intervene with children in need and to promote positive youth development. • In fact, through their day-to-day interactions with students, educators are the linchpins of school-based efforts to encourage healthy psychological development of youth.

21. Educators as Key Members of the PYD/Health Promotion Team • Schools should not be held responsible for meeting every need of every student. • However, schools must meet the challenge when the need directly affects learning and school success. (Carnegie Council Task Force on Education of Young Adolescents, 1989) • There is clear and compelling evidence that there are strong positive associations between mental health and school success.

22. Educators as Key Members of the PYD/Health Promotion Team • “Children whose emotional, behavioral, or social difficulties are not addressed have a diminished capacity to learn and benefit from the school environment. In addition, children who develop disruptive behavior patterns can have a negative influence on the social and academic environment for other children.” (Rones & Hoagwood, 2000, p.236) • Contemporary school reform—and the associated high-stakes testing (including federal legislation signed in 2002)—has not incorporated the Carnegie Council imperative. That is, recent reform has not adequately incorporated a focus on addressing barriers to development, learning, and teaching.

24. Educators as Key Members of the PYD/Health Promotion Team “Most educators, parents, students, and the public support a broader educational agenda that also involves enhancing students’ social-emotional competence, character, health, and civic engagement.” (Greenberg, et al., 2003, p. 466)

25. The Ohio Mental Health Network for School Success Mission To help Ohio’s school districts, community-based agencies, and families work together to achieve improved educational and developmental outcomes for all children — especially those at emotional or behavioral risk and those with mental health problems.

26. The Ohio Mental Health Network for School Success • Action Agenda • Create awareness about the gap between children’s mental health needs and “treatment” resources, and encourage improved and expanded services (including new anti-stigma campaign). • Encourage mental health agencies and school districts to adopt mission statements that address the importance of partnerships. • Conduct surveys of mental health agencies and school districts to better define the mental health needs of children and to gather information about promising practices.

27. The Ohio Mental Health Network for School Success • Action Agenda (continued) • Provide technical assistance to mental health agencies and school districts, to support adoption of evidence-based and promising practices, including improvement and expansion of school-based mental health services. • Develop a guide for education and mental health professionals and families, for the development of productive partnerships.

28. The Ohio Mental Health Network for School Success • Action Agenda (continued) • Assist in identification of sources of financial support for school-based mental health initiatives. • Assist university-based professional preparation programs in psychology, social work, public health, and education, in developing inter-professional strategies and practices for addressing the mental health needs of school-age children.

30. Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative: Mental Health, Schools and Families Working Together for All Children and Youth

31. Policy Maker Partnership (PMP) at the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) and the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) Concept Paper: Mental Health, Schools and Families Working Together for All Children and Youth: Toward A Shared Agenda (2002)

32. Purpose of the Concept Paper “Encourage state and local family and youth organizations, mental health organizations, education entities and schools across the nation to enter new relationships to achieve positive social, emotional and educational outcomes for every child.”

33. The concept paper is available online at:www.nasdse.org/sharedagenda.pdfwww.ideapolicy.org/sharedagenda.pdfwww.nasmhpd.org

34. Policy Maker Partnership (PMP) at the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) and the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) Shared Agenda Seed Grant Awards to Six States: Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, and Vermont

35. Additional Funding for Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative Ohio Department of Mental Health Ohio Department of Education Ohio Department of Health and Numerous Additional State-level and Regional Organizations

36. Infrastructure for Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative The Shared Agenda seed grant is being implemented in Ohio within the collaborative infrastructure of the Mental Health Network

37. Three Phases of Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative Phase 1—Statewide forum for leaders of mental health, education, and family policymaking organizations and child-serving systems (March 3, 2003) Phase 2—Six regional forums for policy implementers and consumer stakeholders (April-May, 2003) Phase 3—Legislative forum involving key leadership of relevant house and senate committees (October 9, 2003)

38. Phase 1 and Phase 2Shared Agenda Forums Logo Here Columbus, OH — Statewide Forum, March 3, 2003 Athens, OH—Southeast Wooster, OH—North Central April 15, 2003 April 28, 2003 Columbus, OH—Central Bowling Green, OH—Northwest April 29, 2003 April 29, 2003 Cleveland, OH—Northeast Hamilton, OH—Southwest May 5, 2003 May 5, 2003

39. Strategies and Features of Various Shared Agenda Forums • Keynote presentations by national and state experts: • Mark Weist, Center for School MH Assistance, U. of Maryland • Steve Adelsheim, New Mexico School MH Initiative • Howard Adelman & Linda Taylor, UCLA School MH Project • Kimberly Hoagwood, Columbia University • Howie Knoff, Project Achieve • Joseph Johnson, Ohio Department of Education • Eric Fingerhut, Ohio State Senator

40. Strategies and Features of Various Shared Agenda Forums • Promising work in Ohio showcased • Youth and parent testimony • Cross-stakeholder panel discussions • Facilitated discussion structured to create a collective vision, build a sense of mutual responsibility for reaching the vision, instill hope that systemic change is possible, and problem-solve regarding implementation issues • Appreciative Inquiry model for promotion of systems-level change and transformation informed the process

41. Outcomes and Recommendationsfrom Phases 1 and 2 of Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative • Approximately 725 participants • Report being compiled that will inform the Fall, 2003 Shared Agenda Legislative Forum • Through Legislative Forum raise public awareness and build advocacy for policy and fiscal support for better alignment for education and mental health in the next biennial budget process • Website created to track and publicize Ohio’s Shared Agenda initiative (http://www.units.muohio.edu/csbmhp/sharedagenda.html)

42. Ten Emerging Recommendationsfrom Phases 1 and 2 of Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative Logo Here • Promote EFFECTIVE mental health and educational • practices in schools • 2. Increase family and community involvement in school mental health and educational programs • 3. Actively solicit and appreciate student input in program planning and operation • 4. Reduce stigma for children who need mental health • services

43. Ten Emerging Recommendations from Phases 1 and 2 of Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative (cont’d) Logo Here • Maintain focus on all children, not just students in • special education • Promote a better understanding of children’s mental • health needs in schools • Expand cross-discipline training (preservice and • inservice) for mental health/family-serving providers, educators and parents

44. Ten Emerging Recommendations from Phases 1 and 2 of Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative (cont’d) Logo Here • Work more effectively to reduce “turf issues” that interfere • with children’s mental health service delivery and with mental health-education collaboration • Coordinate more effectively between state-level and • regional/local efforts in the area of school mental health and in promotion of mental health and school success • Develop organizational structures (e.g., 501C3) that will • promote strong coalitions and facilitate funding

47. Creating and Maintaining Ongoing, Empowering Partnership with Educators • Multi-level, formal and informal dialogue with policy makers, formulators, enforcers, and implementers—adopt an inclusive definition of “educator” • Programs for school board members and administrators. • Newsletter for teachers. • Website resources. • Extensive “contact time” with educators in their school buildings. • “Joining” the school community. • Key opinion leaders.

48. Creating and Maintaining Ongoing, Empowering Partnership with Educators • Careful, detailed, local needs assessments from the perspective of educators, and a commitment to be responsive to identified needs. • Results used in advocacy efforts and as guideposts for ongoing work. • Incorporate academic and school success outcomes in youth development initiatives.

49. Creating and Maintaining Ongoing, Empowering Partnership with Educators • Capitalize on schools’ unique opportunities for PYD and health-promoting activities. • Many recommended strategies for drop-out prevention and non-violence promotion can be implemented, in partnership with educators, in school settings.

50. Prioritizing Promotion of Healthy Development and Problem Prevention For drop-out prevention, these include: • Early intervention. • Mentoring and tutoring. • Service learning. • Conflict resolution and violence prevention curricula and training for students/staff. • Alternative schooling.