- Established partnerships with academic institutions and youth-serving organizations.
- Since October 1995, provided 46 training events for more than 500 youth workers, representing more than 65 agencies.
- Developed an undergraduate degree with a specialization in youth services programming and management in partnership with Aurora University.
- Established core competencies for youth workers that were also adapted for school-age child care workers.
- Developed the framework for a certification system for youth workers.
- Opportunities for youth workers to learn developmental skills in working with youth across and within their organizations.
- Institutions/organizations to adopt systems and policies that reflect an asset-based approach to their work with youth.
- Advocates for youth and youth workers in the policy arena.
- Current evaluation and research information and opportunities about youth development.
- To expand the audiences who grasp the youth development approach beyond youth workers to corporations, educators, and the general public.
- Provide program and institutional support through the convening of practitioners, academics, and policy-makers to engage in joint learning and practice.
- Professional development of youth workers using tools such as certification, competency-based training, standards, and degree programs.
- Provide technical assistance to agencies, collaboratives and individuals as they shift to a youth development approach.
- Develop strategies and tools to build institutional capacity around a youth development approach.
- Advocate for a youth development agenda in multiple arenas.
- Conduct research and evaluation that will help to articulate best practices, youth outcomes, and performance outcomes for staff, programs, and agencies.
CHICAGO YOUTH AGENCY PARTNERSHIP Youth work in Chicago is undermined by a variety of factors. Some of these factors include, the focus of policy and practice on "fixing" troubled youth rather than supporting and empowering all youth, the fragmentation in the conceptualization youth, family and community development at the neighborhood and policy levels, the layering of new initiatives on top of the old, race issues, the lack of substantive working relationships between public and private sectors, and an applied understanding of an asset driven approach in working with children, youth, and families.  These factors,
combined with limited development opportunities for staff and volunteers
in youth and community-based organizations, and the lack of credibility
and status of youth workers, hamper the effectiveness of youth workers
and youth-serving organizations. For youth work to be successful in Chicago, there must be a strong, consensus-building, advocating body to support and extend the current work occurring in communities, to be strategically positioned to convene a range of parties and to be a voice for youth development in the city. The Chicago Youth Agency Partnership represents a unique collaboration of public and private youth-serving organizations and academic institutions from throughout Chicago whom are addressing these issues. The mission of the Chicago Youth Agency Partnership is to provide the support and opportunities to facilitate the professional development of youth workers and enhance the capacity of organizations and institutions to work with youth in an asset driven approach. Since its founding in 1994, the Partnership has: In our efforts over the past three years, the Partnership has become even more aware of the degree of fragmentation of services to youth and the increased need for: The Chicago Youth Agency Partnership is now entering into the next phase of its work and is strategically poised to fulfill these needs, through its relationships with more youth-serving organizations and academic institutions. Over the course of the next three years the Partnership will:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
