The Maze to Recovery: Navigating Your Way through Resources for At-Risk Clients

Format

Poster Presentation

Location

Harborside Center

Strand #1

Mental & Physical Health

Relevance

  1. This proposal is related to the Health strand as the main focus of the research project was to gage the accessibility to resources for an at-risk and often excluded population; Transition Age Youth. Considered a “hot topic” with the ushering in of President Barack Obama’s Emerging Adult Initiative, this initiative seeks encourage providers to provided effective and realistic services to this population which often times are poverty stricken. When coupled with lack of education and inaccessibility to resources, the poverty cycle becomes ongoing and detrimental to their total mental and physical health and well-being.

Brief Program Description

  1. This presentation is an in depth look at the world through the eyes of a transitional age youth. As former direct service professionals, we will introduce the Transition to Independence Model and the competencies and tools associated with facilitating young adults through their transition to independence.

Summary

  1. According to Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) cites that “Transition age youth” are commonly defined as individuals between the ages of 16 and 25 years. They have unique service challenges because they are too old for child services but are often not ready or eligible for adult services. Transition age youth with mental health challenges maneuver within a system where resources are few and effect their wellbeing. The ecological perspective explains how individuals adapt to their environments. Transition age youth with mental health challenges are constantly creating, restructuring, and adapting to the environment as the environment is effecting them (Ungar, 2002). Whether these youth are born with mental challenges or have adopted them through some uneventful circumstance, development is effected by everything in their environment. By way of ecological system the youth's environment is effected on four different levels; microsystem (effects youth's most immediate environment---themselves and family), mesosystem (the effects of relationships on youth), exosystem (the indirect effect on youth i.e. parents financial situation), and microsystem (includes culture and all other systems that have an effect on youth i.e. politics). By applying an ecological perspective, this research can help look at the youths' families, cultures, communities, and policies to identify and intervene upon strengths and weakness in the transactional processes between these systems. The opportunities for take home learning would be the interactive tools distributed in the session. As presenters, we will introduce and model TIP methods such as ENGAGERS, SODAS, TIPS and Motivational Interviewing; session participants will be able to work more effectively to facilitate transitional barriers such as housing and education.

Evidence

  1. The incorporation of evidence-based approaches such as the Transition to Independence model should assist with more accurate services and improve the quality of services provided to those that fall in the identified age range of transition age youth. Also, the incorporation of mental health services that seek to engage this abnormal population, which is too old to be eligible for child and adolescent services but too young to “fit in” to the adult mental health services and groups that may be provided. Lastly, it has agency implications for staffing, serving this population required agencies to become creative with service provision and employ staff that is knowledgeable of youth trends and can relate to the population.

Biographical Sketch

  1. Tia Fletcher and Shonta Hazel are currently Masters of Social Work students at Savannah State University that previously worked at Gateway Behavioral Health under the Emerging Adult Initiative, formerly known as the Healthy Transitions Grant. Shinaz Jindani is a professor of Social Work at Savannah State University.

Keyword Descriptors

Transition-Age Youth and Young Adults, Healthy Transitions Initiative, Emerging Adult Initiative, Transition to Independence, Homelessness, Mental Illness, Service delivery models

Presentation Year

2016

Start Date

3-8-2016 4:00 PM

End Date

3-8-2016 5:30 PM

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Mar 8th, 4:00 PM Mar 8th, 5:30 PM

The Maze to Recovery: Navigating Your Way through Resources for At-Risk Clients

Harborside Center

  1. This presentation is an in depth look at the world through the eyes of a transitional age youth. As former direct service professionals, we will introduce the Transition to Independence Model and the competencies and tools associated with facilitating young adults through their transition to independence.