Welcome to the Reaching Teens community. We are a group of youth-serving professionals and community members who care for and about young people, and who are willing to be intentional about being the kind of adults who will support all youth to thrive.

Because you entered the electronic version of Reaching Teens through the pathway specific for your practice setting, you will receive the following tailored materials.

• An introduction to why Reaching Teens is particularly relevant in your setting.
• Suggested chapters that will be most helpful to you.
• Group learning and discussion/personal reflections cases written for the youth you interact with in your setting.

The pathway designed for your setting does not exclude you from any content. Rather, it gives you the option of streamlining your experience.  We suggest that in addition to taking advantage of the pathway, you become familiar with the other options of navigating Reaching Teens. Chapter 10 offers a detailed description, but Navigating Reaching Teens provides a good summary.

[Please note that if you view a chapter from the below access points, you will get the general audience materials, whereas if it has been selected in your setting-specific pathway and you access it from that pathway, you may have tailored materials.]

Getting Oriented to the Toolkit

You may find it useful to first have an overview of key philosophical and practice points. Once you “own” these, you’ll get more out of every other chapter.

We recommend the following chapters to get started:

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Adult Young People Need in Their Lives” (Chapter 1)
• “Reframing Adolescence: Holding Youth to High Expectations and Refuting Undermining Portrayals” (Chapter 6)
• “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13)
• “The Language of Resilience” (Chapter 27)
• “Trauma Sensitive Practice: Working with Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37)
• “Reframing Youth Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization” (Chapter 38)
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44)
• “Healer, Heal Thyself: Self-care for the Caregiver” (Chapter 90)

Orienting New Staff

Professional development (PD) sessions are generally offered in an annual or biannual cycle. This means that staff hired on an ongoing basis may not be exposed to key information until the next time the topic is offered. This leaves them unprepared to join your organizational culture, and more importantly could lead to their making unnecessary errors in serving youth. In addition, many staff may be coming from programs that do not use a strength-based perspective and will need extra support to shift to this approach.

You may assign these chapters to orient new staff prior to their contact with youth:

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Adult Young People Need in Their Lives” (Chapter 1)
• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24)
• “De-escalation and Crisis Management When a Youth Is Acting Out” (Chapter 34)
• “Trauma Sensitive Practice: Working with Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37)
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44)
• “Helping Youth Overcome Shame and Stigma (and Doing Our Best to Not Be a Part of the Problem)” (Chapter 49)
• If new staff does not a youth-development background:
  • “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13)

Familiarizing Yourself with All 95 Chapters Available

You can see the overall Table of Contents here. 

If you want to see a brief overview of what each chapter contains, the easiest way to view that is by looking at the introduction page to each of the 11 Reaching Teens sections. The introduction page offers a brief description of each chapter in the section. Click to see the chapters within each section.

• Section 1 (Chapters 1–6): Orientation to a Strength Based Approach sets the philosophical tone and rationale for strength-based, trauma-sensitive communication.
• Section 2 (Chapters 7–12): Orientation to Using Reaching Teens as a Toolkit offers strategies to get the most out of this toolkit in your personal practice or professional setting.
• Section 3 (Chapters 13–21): Understanding Adolescents and Their World prepares you to consider the developmental milieu and environmental contexts that affect teens.
• Section 4 (Chapters 22–25): Connecting with Adolescents and Their Families offers strategies to build trustworthy and effective relationships.
• Section 5 (Chapters 26–35): Communicating with Adolescents offers essential strategies and approaches to reach youth and facilitate behavioral change.
• Section 6 (Chapters 36–43): Working with Adolescents Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization focuses on applying trauma-sensitive practices.
• Section 7 (Chapters 44–51): Empowering Adolescents to Build on their Strengths and Avoid Undermining Behaviors offers specific strategies that use a shared decision-making model to empower youth to make wiser decisions and healthier choices.
• Section 8 (Chapters 52–58): Supporting Effective Parenting considers how we as youth-serving professionals can support parents to most effectively monitor and guide their children.
• Section 9 (Chapters 59–79): Mental, Emotional. And Behavioral Health includes strategies to help youth navigate a variety of specific psychosocial and environmental challenges.
• Section 10 (Chapters 80–89): Serving Young People Deserving of Focused Attention addresses the specific needs of unique populations.
• Section 11 (Chapters 90–95): Caring for the Caregivers recognizes that this work is emotionally challenging, sometimes exhausting and demoralizing, and that unless we care for ourselves with the same degree of commitment with which we care for others, our capacity to serve over a lifetime will be diminished.

Broader Topics and Overarching Themes

Whether you use Reaching Teens to develop professional development sessions or are navigating it on your own, you will likely want to teach (or learn) overarching themes or broader topics. In some cases, a single chapter will suffice for a topic (e.g., depression). In most cases, however, you’ll consider topics like “How to remain calm amidst chaos,” or “How to transform to trauma-sensitive practices.” In these cases, you’ll want to draw key elements from a group of chapters.

Below are some topics we know based on feedback and experience that the Reaching Teens community have been interested in. Others may be added as we gain feedback from the second edition. Click here to see the variety of chapters that intersect to support each topic. You’ll notice that many key chapters exist in more than one unit. This allows for reinforcement of critical concepts.

• Transforming to a Strength-Based Approach
• Helping Communities and Youth-Serving Professionals See Youth Through a Strength-Based Lens
• Honoring Diversity and Practicing Cultural Humility
• The Basics of Effective Communication With Youth
• Adolescent Development 101
• Adolescent Resilience 101
• Instituting Trauma-Sensitive Practices
• Helping Young People Learn Self-regulation Both to Calm Their Minds and to Improve Their Behavior
• Stress Management
• Building a Sense of Control Within Youth
• Maintaining Your Cool Amidst Chaos So You Can Better Co-regulate With Youth and Settle Their Behaviors
• Supporting Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health
• Meeting the Needs of Youth Who Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer/Questioning
• Creating Effective Professional Boundaries
• Preventing Professional Burnout
• Self-care for Youth-Serving Professionals

This section builds the case for strength-based communication and approaches to young people.

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Kind of Adult Young People Need in Their Live” (Chapter 1). Chapter 1 presents the core philosophical principles that guide Reaching Teens. Furthermore, it calls for a needed course correction. An awareness of trauma, rooted in irrefutable emerging science, could change the course of humanity for the better. It makes abundantly clear how forces of discrimination and inequitable distribution of resources undermine our collective future. It invites our empathy, and we must heed its call. However, we must do so in a way that raises our expectation for youth and prepares them for the world. For these reasons we must integrate all we have learned in the last few decades. The principles of positive youth development implore us to create both high expectations for youth and the resources and infrastructure that allow them to prepare us to lead us into the future. We learned from the resilience framework how to create the nurturant relationships and supports to have young people thrive in good times and recover from challenges. What all three frameworks share in common is the power and primacy of human relationships to protect and to build youth. In sum, Chapter 1 orients you to the lessons that will be reinforced throughout this work.
• “The 7 Cs: An Interdisciplinary Model That Integrates Positive Youth Development, Resilience-Building Strategies, and Trauma-Sensitive Practices” (Chapter 2). This chapter introduces a comprehensive model that captures the key ingredients youth need to thrive in good times and rise above adversity in challenging times.
• “Reframing Adolescence: Holding Youth to High Expectations and Refuting Undermining Portrayals” (Chapter 6). This chapter discusses the myths and misperceptions about adolescents that generate an undermining cultural narrative. This false storyline harms teens’ self-perceptions and undermines adult-youth engagement. If young people are falsely seen as inherently risky or irrational, adults will believe they have little influence. If young people are seen as rejecting adult guidance, or uniformly resentful of parental involvement, we will pull away precisely when we should be drawing nearer.

Adolescence is a time of tremendous opportunity, precisely because it is a time of profound growth and change. To effectively work with teens, it is important to understand both adolescent development and the environmental and emotional contexts teens navigate.

• “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13). This chapter offers a whirlwind tour of the social, cognitive, emotional, and moral development of youth, but focuses on those points that affect our ability to effectively interact with youth.
• “The Teen Brain” (Chapter 15). “The Teen Brain” tells us about the rapidly developing adolescent brain. An understanding of the teen brain enables us to better understand adolescents’ emotions, thinking patterns, and behaviors. It also prepares us to more effectively communicate and intervene with young people. Application of this understanding of adolescent brain development creates opportunities at all levels of the juvenile justice system to improve effectiveness, from individual interactions to program development to system-wide policy development. In particular, the chapter film will cover how and why calm communication strategies brings out the best thinking in young people.
• “Friendship and Peers” (Chapter 16). Adolescents are social beings, and learning how to choose appropriate friends and how to fit in with peers is a key development task. In juvenile justice settings, adolescents may be surrounded by peers. “Friendship and Peers” helps us better understand the social forces that affect youth. If we can help young people develop healthy peer relationships, it has a direct impact on risk of recidivism, and the benefit to the youth’s overall outcome could be long-lasting. This chapter is divided into two halves, you might benefit most from the section contributed by a Boys and Girls Clubs of America expert on “Encouraging Healthy Peer Relationships Within a Youth Development Program”

If we are to enter adolescents’ lives, they need to understand we genuinely care for them and are worthy of their trust. Although trust is built over time, an initial impression can make a difference. Sadly, many adolescents become used to being judged and held to low expectations, making it necessary for us to demonstrate that we expect the best of them. We also need to create spaces that convey we are fully invested in serving them in enriching environments. As we connect, we have to do so in a way that is well-boundaried so that we can safely and therapeutically serve them. Finally, we have to recognize that we are creating two-way (albeit well-boundaried!) connections, and that we benefit greatly from working closely with youth. When youth know that we genuinely enjoy their presence, our connection is more meaningful and authentic.

• “Creating Adolescent-Friendly Spaces and Services” (Chapter 22). This chapter describes how we can create engaging, enriching environments that are welcoming to teens. Juvenile justice has a unique but necessary challenge to create adolescent-friendly environments while still prioritizing community safety and security. However, juvenile justice settings must promote positive development in order to move youth toward more productive futures. A first step might be assuring that your site looks and feels more like a youth development site than one designed to punish or control young people.
• “Setting the Stage for a Trustworthy Relationship” (Chapter 23). This chapter offers a strategy to initially address some of the major issues teens and families consider as they extend their trust to you. Some families may have reservations about trusting the juvenile justice system. You will need to think through how these issues interface with juvenile justice as privacy rules may be quite different in our setting. This poses a particular challenge because trust is still the foundation of our relationships with youth. Therefore, this chapter should help you consider how to develop that trusting relationship while also being clear with young people and families the limitations and scope of your relationship.
• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24). “Boundaries” is a critically important chapter in a body of work that states “unconditional love and absolute respect” are key to reaching youth. We must not be afraid of the word “love,” but we must be very clear about what it means and must practice love with boundaries, both to be protective of our own emotions and to prevent youth from becoming reliant on us in a way that could interfere with their own autonomy. This chapter is a cornerstone of this work and should be continually reflected upon as part of your organizational culture and individual practice. Boundaries are what allow us to serve over a lifetime while maintaining our personal lives. They are not what separate us from the youth we serve, they are what allow us to draw nearer.

This work hopes to build your repertoire in using resilience-focused, strength-based, trauma-sensitive strategies to promote adolescent health and well-being. The previous section focused on the early connection that sets the tone for communication. Here, we go a step further to offer both general strategies and specific skills for effective communication.

• “Communicating With Adolescents 101” (Chapter 26). A brief overview to the basics of communication is offered in “Communicating with Adolescents 101”
• “Cultural Humility” (Chapter 28). We are all “other” to somebody, and the only way we can be uniformly respectful to people is to consistently be prepared to learn about their culture and environment. A critical first step in being culturally humble, however, is having an awareness of our own unconscious biases. The legacy of racism and oppression is a factor that must be taken seriously, and cultural humility must be woven into the fabric of juvenile justice to avoid causing harm to minority populations. Additionally, policy and procedures must be evaluated to determine if interventions are disproportionately impacting minority populations in negative ways or not effectively meeting their needs.
• “Examining Our Unconscious Biases” (Chapter 29). This chapter looks at thinking patterns and assumptions we may have that can interfere with our ability to objectively draw the most appropriate conclusions, and even guide people toward their most positive futures. It is important to consider the life-altering decisions that the juvenile justice system makes on a daily basis. Data-driven risk assessment can minimize bias in judgments about youths’ risk to public safety and their case-management needs. This information positions juvenile justice to make the most effective decisions to help improve the lives of the youth they serve.
• “Body Language” (Chapter 30). This chapter describes how we can reinforce or undermine our connection with youth through nonverbal communication. In fact, our words represent the smaller fraction of what we convey to others. People skilled in the use of body language can better engage and empower people, as well as diffuse tension. It is equally as important to know how to avoid escalations that can follow inadvertent shifts in our body language.
• “De-escalation and Crisis Management When a Youth Is Acting Out” (Chapter 34). This chapter offers strategies to restore calm to a youth whose anxiety, anger, or frustration may be building.
• “Delivering Bad News to Adolescents” (Chapter 35). This chapter acknowledges our own internal struggles with being the bearer of difficult news and offers approaches to conveying information in a supportive manner. Unfortunately, we in juvenile justice often are the bearers of difficult news.

Reaching Teens strives to be trauma-sensitive in its entirety. In fact, the Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model holds as a central imperative to integrate positive youth development principles, resilience-building strategies, and the knowledge we have gained about working with people who have suffered trauma and hardships. It is this integration that assures we will offer the accountability critical to growth and maintain the high expectations that generate confidence. It is this integration of models that gives us hope; we trust that under the right circumstances people can recover from hard lives. Therefore, all of the chapters that focus on development and resilience are an integral part of our trauma-sensitive approach. Below are the chapters specific to trauma.

• “The Impact of Trauma on Development and Well-being” (Chapter 36). This chapter offers the scientific grounding on what childhood trauma does to the body, brain, and behavior. This is important as many juveniles entering into the juvenile justice system have experienced one or more traumatic events.
• “Trauma-Sensitive Practice: Working With Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37). This chapter provides a detailed summary of the Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model and contextualizes it in the existing trauma-informed literature. As the anchor of the trauma-sensitive practices in this work, it is likely your starting point.
• “Reframing Youth Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization” (Chapter 38). This chapter covers the importance of avoiding labels and understanding past traumatic experiences as the origins of current behavior. It goes a step further by offering strategies in recognizing, elevating, and reinforcing the strengths of youth who have endured adversities. You may find the strategies to help young people move past behavioral labels and begin to see the strengths they possess particularly meaningful in your practice. It will help you avoid attributing labels such as delinquent, “bad”, or manipulative to them.
• “Supporting Youth to Build Their Self-regulation Skills” (Chapter 39). This chapter discusses approaches to helping youth gain a sense of control and regulate their response to stressors. It is critical to behavioral management. It also covers the imperative of your being someone who can co-regulate youth through your calming presence that assures them of safety.
• “The Power of Safe, Secure, Sustained Relationships in the Lives of Youth” (Chapter 40). This chapter reviews the role of consistent and caring relationships with adults as a stabilizing force in the lives of youth who have endured trauma. These relationships are, in fact, critical for all youth.
• “Radical Calmness” (Chapter 41). “Radical Calmness” discusses the importance, and approaches to, remaining calm even in the face of challenging youth behavior. Calm begets calm, reinforces felt-safety, and therefore lowers hyperarousal and the need for hypervigilance. It is key to co-regulation.
• “The Traumatic Impact of Racism and Discrimination on Young People and How to Talk About I” (Chapter 42). This chapter discusses the life-course impact of chronic stressors such as racial discrimination. It prepares professionals to have authentic discussions with youth about these undermining forces. It presents a model that integrates how and why racism is so deeply destructive to well-being.

This section offers approaches and strategies that support adolescents to make wise behavioral decisions. These chapters are about enhancing personal empowerment and increasing self-control. Therefore, these chapters are critical both to supporting healthy adolescent development and to restoring control to those youth who have had too little given to them.

• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44). This chapter is the heart of Reaching Teens. It is about seeing young people the way they deserve to be seen, and leveraging their behaviorally operational strengths to drive their forward progress. This can be useful with all young people, but can be key to engaging demoralized youth who may have internalized disempowering messages.
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems by Using Strength-Based Rather Than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45). Restorative practices are about including rather than excluding youth. It allows us to hold young people accountable to being their best selves in a way that supports, rather than disrupts, our relationships with them. It is central to supporting youth in congregate living settings.
• “Motivational Interviewing” (Chapter 46). Motivational interviewing is a strategy rooted in a model of behavioral change that facilitates youth to consider advancing to the next stage of change. It trusts them as the experts in their own lives and lets them guide their own progress.
• “Helping Adolescents Own Their Solutions: Talking With Youth, Not at Them” (Chapter 48). This chapter offers an approach to facilitate youth to make their own decisions. The strategies covered in this chapter both facilitate healthy development and are central to trauma-sensitive practices because they increase youths’ self-control. The chapter offers communication strategies to use in lieu of the dreaded lecture, which backfires by triggering and disempowering youth. It also offers a strategy for working with youth who have grown to view themselves as powerless in their ability to move away from worrisome behaviors. It allows them to contemplate alternate futures and take simple steps toward desirable behaviors.
• “Stress Management and Coping: Powerful Strategies to Take Control of One’s Life” (Chapter 50). An understanding of stress-management strategies allow you to move beyond telling youth what not to do, and instead to suggest positive coping strategies that also alleviate stress. The comprehensive coping strategy presented will aid youth to choose healthy means to deal with discomfort rather than reaching for potentially dangerous quick fixes.

It is likely that the connection to responsible adults who believe in youth unconditionally and hold them to high expectations is the pivotal determinant of whether a youth will thrive. Ideally, that connection is to parents. When it is, then we who serve youth add an extra layer of protection. When it is not, then our role takes on even greater importance.

Despite the popular assumption that teens reject their parents’ views entirely, it is parents who have the greatest influence on teens. This remains true for many parents who have raised children who end up in the care of systems, such as juvenile justice. We may do our greatest good by supporting the parent-adolescent connection and by guiding parents on how to most effectively and responsibly make use of that connection.

This section focuses on how you might consider communicating with parents about (1) raising healthy teens; and (2) their positive behavioral influence with their children. It also may help you form a better relationship with parents who are suspicious of systems that care for youth.

In many cases, youth-serving professionals serve as surrogate parents. This section may help you put on your “parent” hat with young people and offer them the balanced kind of guidance that they crave. This is guidance that offers clear limits but is presented as clearly rooted in caring. You may find it helpful to read these sections through the lens of “I act as parent to my youth, how can I be most effective?”

• “Preparing Parents for Their Children’s Adolescence” (Chapter 53). This chapter suggests that seeing adolescence as a time to dread will create a self-fulfilling downward spiral. It outlines a strategy that will help parents learn to honor adolescents’ growing independence, and, therefore, hopefully prevent part of the rebellion sometimes associated with the teen years.
• “Promoting Balanced Parenting: Warmth, Clear Boundaries, and Effective Monitoring” (Chapter 54). This chapter speaks to the parenting style that has been demonstrated to be associated with greater academic success, higher levels of emotional health, and lower risk among a wide spectrum of behaviors. It is this style that helps parents (and you!) be most influential in young lives.
• “Delivering Upsetting News to Parents: Recognizing Their Strengths First” (Chapter 55). This chapter offers a strategy to engage parents so they can support their children to navigate through challenges. It focuses on doing so without shame or stigma, and while recognizing the parents’ strengths and their critical role in their teen being able to move forward.
• “When Parents’ Resilience Reaches Its Limits” (Chapter 56). This chapter recognizes that parenting a teen can sometimes be difficult, especially when the teen has encountered the juvenile justice system, and that moments of anger and exhaustion are expected. It emphasizes that especially during those times, parents need to make the effort to renew strong connections with their teen. This approach will be critical in helping you reengage parents who have “given up” or think that nothing they do will make a difference.”
• “Parents Who Have Experienced Trauma and Marginalization: Engaging Them in a Strength-Based Partnership” (Chapter 58). This chapter reminds us of the imperative of being as trauma-sensitive and universally respectful with parents and caregivers as we are with young people. When dealing with parents it is of upmost importance to recognize that the parent has oftentimes suffered their own trauma and stigma.

The strength-based strategies offered throughout this work have been written in general terms that will apply to most youth. This section addresses unique populations so that you can better meet their specific challenges and concerns.

• “Working With Youth Involved With Juvenile Justice” (Chapter 87). This chapter was written for outsiders working with youth navigating juvenile justice systems. This chapter presents an aspirational model of how juvenile justice should be. This enables you to compare your own practice setting to the model presented here.

Throughout Reaching Teens, we challenge the assumption that teens are difficult to reach and hope to have enhanced those skill-sets that position you to engage deeply and effectively with youth. We ask you to be the “sensors” who recognize the spoken and unspoken signals that call for attention, and the “protectors” of youth deserving of focused attention. This level of engagement involves an investment of energy, and you will become depleted unless you invest in yourself to restore that energy. Our overriding goal is to enhance your ability to reach youth, while simultaneously building your own strengths, so that you can serve with satisfaction over a lifetime.

Meaningful engagement exposes you to a deeper degree of vulnerability as you bear witness to pain, trauma, and inexplicable disparities. This exposure makes you susceptible to burnout. A key to burnout prevention is to process your emotions in a way that allows you to both express your thoughts and feelings and maintain balance. But this can’t solely be placed on the shoulders of individuals, the agencies and systems we serve within must care for and about us just as they ask us to care for and about youth. To do this, many systems need to reflectively consider their own structures and processes.

This is the last section in the toolkit, but it would be a mistake to believe it should be attended to after the ten youth-serving sections. In fact, it should be integrated within all professional development initiatives, running as a parallel, but not separate, track.

• “Advancing Adult Compassion Resilience in Youth-Serving Professionals” (Chapter 91). This chapter speaks to the imperative of serving with compassion throughout our careers. It addresses both the barriers to doing so and the strategies to assure we can.
• “Supporting Frontline Staff Who Bear Witness” (Chapter 93). This chapter addresses the toll that this work can take on each of us and the necessity of processing both our triumphs and challenges with those who can best relate to our experiences: our coworkers.
• “Have I Really Made a Difference? Trusting That Our Presence Matters” (Chapter 95). This chapter reminds us that although we sometimes wonder if we have made a difference, we need to trust that our guidance can have a lasting effect—even after our visits are a distant memory. Our knowledge that we are planting seeds restores us on a daily basis. It proposes that your site takes on a practice model that allows seasoned staff and new staff to interact in such a way that this principle is continually reinforced.

Adolescents’ health is tightly linked to the behavioral choices they make and their mental and emotional well-being, which, in turn, is heavily influenced by the environments they navigate. Although these chapters will help you better understand these conditions, they are not designed to help you make a diagnosis, nor to offer a specific treatment plan. Rather they focus on how a strength-based approach can help you interact with a young person with these conditions or circumstances.

• “The Role of Lifestyle in Mental Health Promotion” (Chapter 59). This chapter underscores the importance of healthy lifestyle choices in promoting resilience to challenging situations.
• “Finding Resilience in Sports and Physically Active Recreation” (Chapter 60). Strenuous exercise and sports are some of the best ways to help people work out their stress hormones and let go of aggression in a healthy way. For many youth in juvenile justice, participating in extra-curricular activities is a luxury. What would need to happen to make it more likely our youth could benefit from participation?
• “Reaching Treatment: An Overview of Mental Health Treatment” (Chapter 61). This chapter offers a brief explanation of different approaches to mental-health treatment, enabling you to better understand the services you might suggest a young person accesses. Further, it suggests strength-based language that will better position you to refer the teen to appropriate services while avoiding shame or stigma in the process.
• “Depression” (Chapter 62). This chapter offers a strength-based approach to young people suffering from depression. It highlights how many youth with depression might be missed because they present with rage rather than sadness. This is highly relevant to our youth whose distress may have been missed.
• “Anxiety” (Chapter 63). This chapter offers a strength-based approach to young people suffering from anxiety. It highlights how uncertainty can drive anxiety, as can trauma. This is highly relevant to our youth who had large doses of both in their lives.
• “Somatic Symptoms and Related Disorders” (Chapter 64). People in stressful situations have their stress show up in their bodies. Our youth are navigating stressful lives and a stressful system. It is a mistake to see their headaches and belly pains as “faking it” to get out of trouble. It also reinforces for them that they are not worthy of being believed. When we acknowledge their discomfort and help them understand the connection between stress and their bodies, we prepare them for a healthier life.
• “Grief” (Chapter 65). Grief is an ever-present force in our young people’s lives. This chapter offers strategies to have youth process their grief.
• “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Adolescents” (Chapter 66). This chapter offers a strength-based approach to young people with ADHD.
• “Learning Differences” (Chapter 67). Too many of our youth may have been seen as poor or indifferent students when they actually had learning differences.
• “Perfectionism” (Chapter 68). This chapter focuses on perfectionism, which on the surface is generally not the case for most of the youth we serve. In fact, the cases are much more typical of young people from generally affluent backgrounds. You’ll have to draw from the principles in this chapter and apply it to our youth. It is a mistake to believe that youth in juvenile justice might not suffer from some of these issues. Youth who may be the first in their family to finish high school may put inordinate pressure on themselves to succeed. Youth who have endured marginalization and racism may feel driven to succeed while still having incorporated oppressive internal feelings that suggest they are unlikely to succeed. They may push themselves to work twice as hard in order to get on the playing field. Or, they could shut themselves down to get off of the playing field, all the while pretending to themselves or the world that they just don’t care. In fact, they might care so much it hurts.
• “Eating Disorders” (Chapter 69). Many people believe eating disorders are a disease only of affluence. In fact, they strike every group. This chapter will help you recognize these conditions.
• “Adolescents and Substance Use” (Chapter 70). This chapter is informative about substance use and guides you how to assess and support youth.
• “Adolescents and Opioid Use” (Chapter 71). This chapter is informative about opiate use and guides you how to assess and support youth.
• “Teen Pregnancy and Parenting” (Chapter 72). Long-term achievement is associated with delaying parenting until someone has achieved stability. This chapter covers this as well as promoting positive involvement of both teen mothers and fathers with their children.
• “Teen Driving” (Chapter 73). It is important that system-involved youth do not miss major milestones in their lives. Learning to drive can be a very important milestone. Whether or not they own a car, it opens youth up to a wider job market.
• “Managing Electronic Media Use in the Lives of Adolescents” (Chapter 74). This chapter deals with the oversized influence media holds on both youth behaviors and self-perceptions.
• “Helping Teens Cope With Divorce” (Chapter 75). This chapter may offer you insights or strategies to support youth whose parents/caregivers are separated or divorced.
• “Bullying” (Chapter 76). Many of our marginalized youth have endured bullying. Many juvenile justice settings involve congregate living, it is imperative that we create no-bullying zones.
• “Unhealthy Relationships” (Chapter 77). Many of the young people within the juvenile justice system may come from homes that did not have healthy relationships. This makes it imperative that we both expose them to key elements of healthy relationships and screen them to be sure they are not perpetuating a cycle of unhealthy relationships. This chapter prepares you to do so.
• “Emotional, Physical, and Sexual Abuse” (Chapter 78). Too many of our young people’s behavior is rooted in their childhood victimization. This chapter prepares you how to better assesses their histories and be supportive of them as survivors.
• “Youth Violence” (Chapter 79). This chapter prepares you to assess youth for risk of perpetuating violence and to offer behavioral interventions that may deescalate tensions or break the cycle.

The strength-based strategies offered throughout this work have been written in general terms that will apply to most youth. This section addresses unique populations so that you can better meet their specific challenges and concerns.

Whenever you think of a youth with a specific identity, issue, or set of circumstances, remember that they are first and foremost a young person. The topic covered defines only a part of them, intersecting with all of the other identities affecting their development and burgeoning sense of self. People are plural. For example, youth affiliated with the military are young people first with all of the hopes, dreams, and challenges shared by all adolescents. A youth who is gay, as another example, is so much more than their sexuality.

Critically, challenging environments do not define a young person. That is why we do not refer to “foster youth,” but to “youth in foster care.” We do not simply describe “homeless youth,” we serve “youth who are homeless and unstably housed.” And most importantly, there is no such thing as an “at-risk youth.” There are, however, young people who are navigating risky environments.

There are many youth subpopulations deserving of focused attention; however, we have limited discussion to the following chapters.

• “Teens With Chronic Illness and Special Health Care Needs: A Person-Centered Approach to Communication” (Chapter 80). If youth in your caseload have chronic disease or disabilities you might find this chapter helpful in learning how to be most supportive to them. The key is to see them as a young person first, rather than through the lens of their illness or disability.
• “Transitioning From Youth-Centered to Adult Services” (Chapter 81). Transition is a key issue for many of our youth in two very distinctly different ways. First, we are invested in having our young people not transition into the adult legal system. Second, we know that the best chances of that occurring is the success of the supports we put into place for them now. Ideally, those supports would not disappear when they reach adulthood. This chapter is about creating systems and processes that enable social supports to transition into the adult years.
• “Youth Who Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Queer/Questioning” (Chapter 82). Many of the youth we serve are LGBQT+. Too many of them have experienced rejection in their lives, making it all the more critical they are fully valued and accepted by us. Further, many have experienced bullying from peers, making it that much more critical that they are accepted by peers and made to feel safe in our congregate settings. View the exercises through that lens.
• “Serving Youth Who Are Transgender and Gender Diverse” (Chapter 83). Many transgender youth are vulnerable until they are accepted in the identity that fits them. This chapter guides staff on how to be most supportive to these young people.
• “Reaching Youth Who Are Immigrants” (Chapter 84). Youth who are immigrants have unique strengths and challenges, as well as responsibilities to their families. They often also must endure forces of racism. This chapter guides you how to understand the process of acculturation as they learn to live in a new culture while maintaining ties to their roots. This chapter will help you to meet their needs.
• “America’s Children: The Unique Needs and Culture of Youth Affiliated With the Military” (Chapter 85). Youth from military families have a unique set of circumstances and are deserving of people who serve them understanding both their strengths and challenges.
• “Supporting Youth in Foster Care to Engage in Services and Supports” (Chapter 86). Many of the youth in juvenile justice also interface with the foster-care system. This offers an overview of how being a youth in the foster-care system affects them. Also, be aware that Reaching Teens has a portal of entry for professionals who serve youth in foster care. If a large part of your caseload includes these youth, you can enter through that portal as well to learn more.
• “Youth Living With HIV” (Chapter 88). This chapter is written primarily for health care providers. If, though, you have a youth who is HIV positive on your caseload, you might find it helpful.
• “Serving Youth Who Are Experiencing Homelessness or Are Unstably Housed” (Chapter 89). Many of the youth in juvenile justice also experience homelessness or unstable housing. Some have endured human trafficking. This chapter offers an overview of how these forces affect them. Also, be aware that Reaching Teens has a portal of entry for professionals who serve youth enduring homelessness. If a large part of your caseload includes these youth, you can enter through that portal as well to learn more.