Community-Based Youth Agency: Technical Assistance Manual

• NCJ Number: 142962
• Author(s): C M Kane; I A Spergel
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 82 pages
• Grant Number(s): 90-JD-CX-K001
• Agencies: OJJDP-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Training (Handbook/Manual)

Annotation

This manual is designed to guide community-based youth agency personnel, citizens, and professionals from communities with documented gang problems through a series of steps that will result in the design and implementation of a multifaceted gang suppression and intervention program.

Abstract

The program design is based in the belief that no single agency or organization can deal effectively with youth-gang crime. Rather, only a comprehensive sustained community-based approach has the potential of addressing the problem. A key participant in this approach is the community-based youth agency. The community-based youth agency, with ties to the community, youth, and the justice and service systems, is in a position to mobilize the community and orchestrate a broad-based coordinated response to gang-prone and gang-involved youth who range in age from early adolescence to young adulthood. The manual therefore proposes that the community-based youth agency assume the leadership in identifying or enabling the identification and definition of the gang problem. To do so, the agency is urged to work with local officials, justice system representatives, school personnel, business people, other agencies, community groups, parents, and youth themselves. The community-based youth agency itself must provide a range of services to youth and their families: outreach or street work, intake, case management, group activities, education, employment, family support, and victim assistance. The manual advises agency directors to select and train staff carefully to work with gang youth and to advocate an evaluation component as part of any initiative. The manual also discusses the need for additional funding if any new program is to be implemented.