This Powerpoint discusses how libraries can address Disconnected Youth in their communities, how they can target specific programming and tailor it to their needs and gives suggestions for community partnerships.

1. Get Connected
Your Disconnected Youth and how to reach them

2. Where you are now

3. “Prevention is the best cure. The long-term solution
to youth disconnection is to address in a meaningful
way the deep historical inequalities that persist in
American society. Building connections between
communities and both educational and employment
opportunities is vital, as are community
empowerment and greater investment in people and
neighborhoods. Ensuring that families have
the resources they need to help their children pass
safely through the obstacle course of adolescence
and early adulthood to realize their full potential
benefits as Americans. Ensuring that young people
and their families know about and can access a
variety of pathways to a productive adulthood is
vital to the future: theirs and ours.”

4. Developmentally Supportive
Places
• Features*:
– Physical and psychological safety
– Appropriate structure
– Supportive adult relationships
– Feelings of belonging and being valued
– Opportunities to develop positive social
values and norms
– Support for efficacy and mattering
– Opportunities for skill building and
mastery
– *National Academies of Sciences/National Research Council’s Panel on
Community Youth Development Programs

5. Challenges to Developing an
Effective Response
• No one agency or public system can
typically address the multiple obstacles
facing disconnected youth
• Collaboration among stakeholders is
essential, but hard to achieve
• Libraries are rarely considered one of the
key stakeholders

6. Public Libraries and Youth
Development
• Public Libraries as Partners in Youth Development
(PLPYD)
– Challenges, activities and
opportunities designed to support six
basic developmental outcomes
• Youth contribute to their community
• You feel safe in their environment
• Youth have meaningful relationships with
adults and peers
• Youth achieve educational success
• Youth develop marketable skills
• Youth develop personal and social skills

7. National League of Cities
• Local government sets the tone and direction for
local efforts to reengage disconnected youth.
– Promote educational
achievement
– Developing workforce
connections
– Supporting youth in transition
– Build a citywide system

8. NLC’s findings include:
• Intervene Early
• Don’t Give up on Older Youth
• View Youth as Resources
• Create Multiple Pathways to Success
• Commit to Comprehensive Approaches
• Insist on Accountability

9. Implications for organizational
policy
• Analyze internal policies against research on
healthy youth development
• Create opportunities for disengaged youth to
engage in healthy behaviors
• Create opportunities for disengaged youth to
articulate how libraries can support their efforts
to transition to adulthood.

10. PPL Recommendations
for Action

11. Get Connected Timeline
• In 2004:
– Serving Disconnected Youth becomes
part of Phoenix Public Library’s Strategic
Plan
– A task force is formed
– Needs Assessment is performed
• In 2005
– Gathered information from several
sources
– Brainstorming event
– Series of Focus Groups
– System wide Survey

12. LaTisha - 19
Get Connected Timeline
2005
• Recommendations for action:
– Partner with existing organizations
& Implement System wide
programs
– Improve materials
– Advertising and outreach
– Train Library Staff

13. Committee Staff Programming
The formation of
a standing •Identify service
Committee •GED
organiz
creates a workshops
ations in
number of staff •Job & School
branch service
dedicated to Fair
areas
creating •Create
•Train library
, implementing, Information
staff
organizing and al Kiosks
•Implement
recogni •Create Website
Internship
zing services to •Other
program
Disconnected types of
•DVD
Youth at all classes
•Listserv
Phoenix Public
Libraries

14. Onyx -17
Get Connected Timeline
In 2006:
• 2nd Brainstorming Breakfast
• GED classes begin at Burton Barr Library
• All staff informational emails begin
• Staff training begins

15. Get Connected Timeline
In 2007:
• Work Begins on DVD
• Work Begins on
Informational Kiosks
• Job and School Fairs
begin
• Job Readiness and other
classes begin regionally
Cesar - 19

16. Partnerships are the key
to your success

17. Partnerships with Classes at
PPL
Interview &
GED Job Searching Life Skills
Resume
Glendale
Community X X
College
Rio Solado
College
X X
Jobing.com X X
Fresh Start X
Jobs for Valley
Youth
X X X

18. On the Horizon
Programs Outreach Kiosks Website
Bi-annual Brochures Stand
Fairs Distribution
from valley alone web
GED cont. of
organizations presence
Life Skills information
in every and
Classes to schools
library directory
Regionally and facilities
Branch are
More Staff being added
Trainings to continually

24. How it all comes
together

25. How It All Comes Together
Classes & Fairs
Staff Trainings
Ready
Information
All Youth
Benefit
Website Advertising
http://getconnectedppl.googlepages.com/home

26. Lazy Nick
• Drug addict mom
• Drug addict dad
• Moved from house to house
• Kicked out at 15
• Librarians to the rescue
• Call-a-teen program
• Weekend Nurse

27. Twitchy Ben
• Normal parents
• Normal childhood
• Bad neighborhood
• Introduce Meth
• Annoys librarians
• Rehab
• Concrete Laborer

28. The Five Strategies

29. Re-Engage
Re-engage disconnected youth and young adults in
education. Disconnected youth and young adults
need multiple options for continuing their education,
including accessible “on-ramps” leading to re-
enrollment in high school.

30. Support
• Include provisions for disconnected youth in
economic recovery and infrastructure investments
and programs. Investments geared to economic
recovery should incorporate efforts to help out-of-
school youth get the training and supports they need
to secure sustainable, family-supporting employment.

31. Employment
• Address obstacles to employment. In neighborhoods
with entrenched poverty, workforce development
efforts need to help young people address barriers to
work, including physical and mental health problems,
drug and alcohol addictions, domestic violence, or
limited English proficiency. Practical or legal
problems, such as inadequate transportation, lack of
child care, immigration problems, or criminal records,
may also impede employment.

32. Developmental Opportunities
• Provide developmental opportunities that recognize
the importance of social networks. Sustained
relationships with adults in the community can help
students thrive despite adverse conditions.
Disconnected youth need connection to positive adult
role models, including both family members and other
adults. They need chances to become engaged in
community or civic affairs and expand their social
networks.

33. Comprehensive Reform
• Aim for comprehensive reform, with a focus on cross-
system collaboration. Efforts to reach and re-connect
struggling youth require collaboration across all
youth-serving systems, including school districts,
foster care agencies, pregnancy prevention
initiatives, juvenile justice, workforce development,
and social service agencies.
• To read the whole indicator brief go to Reducing the
Number of Disconnected Youth

34. Some Resources you
might use

35. RuFES.org
• Provide program ideas like job coaching, contextual
vocational education, pre-college assistance,
and career mapping, and suggest ways that you can
link these programs to other family economic success
initiatives.
The Approach
http://rufes.org/about/
Job Coaching
http://rufes.org/2012/12/06/job-coaching/
Resources
http://rufes.org/resources/

36. Kids Count
• Check out the KIDS COUNT Data Center to find out
how many youth in your state are disconnected from
work and school. Then contact your KIDS COUNT
State Organization to find out who to connect with to
tackle this complex challenge.

37. Annie B. Casey Foundation
Report examples
http://www.aecf.org/KnowledgeCenter/Publications.aspx
?pubguid=%7bDFAD838E-1C29-46B4-BE8A-
4D8392BC25C9%7d
http://www.aecf.org/KnowledgeCenter/Publications.aspx
?pubguid=%7b3213DA55-8216-4065-B408-
D7A521CDD990%7d
National Outreach Partners
http://www.aecf.org/MajorInitiatives/KIDSCOUNT/Outrea
chPartners.aspx

38. Wisconsin Council on Children
and Families
http://www.wccf.org/kidcount_pub.php
http://www.wccf.org/
Events
http://www.wccf.org/events.php

39. Juvenile Justice Snapshots
• http://www.wccf.org/kidcount_data_snapshots_juvenil
e_justice_trends.php

40. Operation Fresh Start
This is one seriously cool program!
http://www.operationfreshstart.org/

41. One In Seven
measureofamerica.org

42. Youth Transitions Funders
Group – connected by 25
• Most young people make a safe passage from
adolescence to adulthood with the support of their
families, caring adults, communities, and schools.
However, youth with few supports – such as teens
aging out of the foster care system, youth who don't
finish high school, or youth in the juvenile justice
system – need help to find the right path to success.
• YTFG is dedicated to improving the lives of the 3
million young people, between the ages of 14 and 24,
in need of extra support.
http://www.ytfg.org/knowledge/connected-by-25-online-
toolkit

43. National League of cities
Very big picture here.
• http://www.nlc.org/find-city-solutions/institute-for-
youth-education-and-families

44. Forum for Youth Investment –
Ready by 21
Ready by 21 is the Forum’s signature initiative based on
decades of experience working with state and local
leaders. It is a set of innovative strategies that helps
communities and states improve the odds that all children
and youth will be ready for college, work and life. Ready by
21 provides clear standards to achieve collective impact,
tools and solutions to help leaders make progress, and
ways to measure and track success along the way.
Specifically, Ready by 21 helps leaders build broader
partnerships, set bigger goals, collect and use better data,
and take bolder actions. A growing number of communities
and states are using these strategies to change the way
they do business.
http://www.readyby21.org/toolkits/broader-partnerships
www.forumforyouthinvestment.org

45. Urban Libraries Council
• http://www.urbanlibraries.org/

46. What it all boils down to

47. Healthy
development is
not an
individual
process;
rather, it is a
community
affair

48. All alone? What can you do?
• Present something about library services at a local
homeless shelter
• Put out a brochure of resources
• Make a book display
• Create an online list of resources and connect it to
your website.
• Train your staff to be sensitive to the issues that DY
face.
• Invite a local organization to hold meetings at your
library
• Beef up your internet and resume classes
• Start a seed library
• Partner Ideas from the Whitehouse Brief:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2012/01/05/we-cant-wait-white-house-
announces-federal-and-private-sector-commitment

49. Just for fun, Our video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpF0HFvyT68

50. Questions? Comments?
Hit me up!
Terry Ann Lawler
602-534-5014
Terry.lawler@phoenix.gov
Look me up on Google+ or check
out my online profile @
https://sites.google.com/site/terryannlawler/