Format
Individual Presentation
First Presenter's Institution
University of West Georgia
First Presenter’s Email Address
weston.robins@eternalstrengthatl.com
First Presenter's Brief Biography
Our founder, Weston Robins, is a licensed professional counselor and a visionary leader in the realm of radical youth work. Wes has been an advocate both in practice and in academia for a truly humanistic and person-centered approach since he has been in the field-- serving youth across levels of care from emergency stabilization to finding their own purpose and spiritual path. Wes has spent more than a decade dreaming of a place where youth and clinicians can experience mutual liberation and come into greater mental freedom together, a center where the binds of standardized sociological pressures are cut away and every youth’s inner wisdom can rise up as an undimmable beacon of light and joy. Wes serves the team at Eternal Strength with the same value system as he does the families that come to the center, building sacred space, bolstering each individual’s divine strengths, and creating space for synchronicity and enlightenment.
Location
Session Eight Breakouts (Verelst)
Strand #1
Home: Family & Community Engagement
Strand #2
Health: Mental & Physical Health
Relevance
This presentation will focus on the development of a community-based program dealing with adolescent substance abuse and mental health issues. The program, Eternal Strength, is based on principles derived from scholarship developed by Hans Skott-Myhre (Human Services KSU) and Kathleen Skott-Myhre, (Psychology UWG) (H. Skott-Myhre 2020, 2008a, Skott-Myhre and Skott-Myhre, 2015, 2011, 2008b, 2008c and K. Skott-Myhre 2016) in their work on Radical Youth Work. Radical Youth Work is defined in the work of the Skott-Myhre’s, as youth and adults working together for common political purpose.
Utilizing theoretical frameworks derived from collaboration with Dr. Hans Skott-Myhre (Kennesaw State and Kathleen Skott-Myhre (University of West Georgia) Eternal Strength (a community based program located in the Atlanta Metro) has focused their work on re-engaging young people struggling with mental health challenges and substance abuse through a collaborative and collective approach to building and sustaining a therapeutic milieu that addresses the issues above.
Brief Program Description
Eternal Strength Center for Radical Youth Work is a blended community center with customizable mental health therapeutic support for youth, young adults and families. Providing humanistic and person centered psychotherapy and counseling, alongside experiential therapies and community engagement we support families and youth struggling with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, self harm, suicidality and other challenges on their developmental growth journey.
Summary
While the key conceptual frameworks of Radical Youth Work have been used in bits and pieces by various agencies nationally and internationally, Eternal Strength is the only agency we are aware of who has used the concepts as a basis for their entire approach to working with young people. Blending elements found in the Skott-Myhre’s work on Radical Youth Work, such as humanistic psychology (Watts, 2017 , Rogers, 2015) the radical systems theory of Gregory Bateson (2000), the postmodern thought of Deleuze and Guattari (1988), the nomadic feminism of Rosie Braidotti (2011), and the theoretical work of anti-psychiatrist R.D. Laing (2018), Robins has put into practice a radical approach to working with young people who struggle with their relationship with substances. Robins defines his approach to working with young people as “seeing youth, not as a separate developmental period, but rather as a creative, living, breathing, lifeforce that flows through each of us always. Key to the Eternal Strength model is a flattening of hierarchy between the adult staff and the young people they engage. In addition, the program does not use diagnosis or traditional developmental frameworks. Instead, the approach is fundamentally relational and collaborative.
Evidence
Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. University of Chicago Press.
Braidotti, R. (2011). Nomadic theory: the portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Duke, K., Gleeson, H., Dąbrowska, K., Herold, M., & Rolando, S. (2021). The engagement of young people in drug interventions in coercive contexts: findings from a cross-national European study. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 28(1), 26-35.
Kingeman, H. (2020) Successes and failures in treatment of substance abuse: Treatment system perspectives and lessons from the European continent. Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 2020, Vol. 37(4) 323–337
Laing, R. D. (2018). The politics of the family: And other essays. Routledge.
Maiese, M. (2022). Neoliberalism and mental health education. Journal of Philosophy of Education.
Rogers, C. (2015). Rogers' Humanistic Theory of Personality.”. Boundless Psychology. Boundless, 20.
Skewes, M. C., & Gonzalez, V. M. (2013). The biopsychosocial model of addiction. Principles of addiction, 1, 61-70.
Skott-Myhre, H.A. (2008a). Youth and subculture: Creating new spaces for radical youth work. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
Skott-Myhre, H.A. (2020). Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry: Reconceptualizing the Self Beyond Capitalism. New York: Routledge.
Skott-Myhre, H.A. and Skott-Myhre, K.S.G. (2008b). Radical youth work: Love and community. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice. Vol. 20 No. 3, 48-57.
Skott-Myhre, H.A. (2008c). Radical youth work and becoming youth: Creative force, resistance and flight. Scottish Youth Issues Journal. Vol. 10 pp. 17-28.
Skott-Myhre, K. S. (2016). Youth: A radical space of pilgrimage. In Youth Work, Early Education, and Psychology (pp. 179-193). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Waldron, H. B., Kern-Jones, S., Turner, C. W., Peterson, T. R., & Ozechowski, T. J. (2007). Engaging resistant adolescents in drug abuse treatment. Journal of substance abuse treatment, 32(2), 133-142.
Watts, A. (2017). Psychotherapy east & west. New York: New World Library.
Learning Objective 1
Learn about Radical Youth Work as a methodology
Learning Objective 2
Understand mutual liberation and co collaborative work between youth and adults
Learning Objective 3
Holistically understand a humanistic approach to working with youth struggling with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, self harm and suicidality
Keyword Descriptors
radical youth work, humanistic, person centered, community, hazardous youth work, mutual liberation, co-collaborative, community youth center
Presentation Year
2023
Start Date
3-8-2023 9:45 AM
End Date
3-8-2023 11:00 AM
Recommended Citation
Robins, Weston J., "Radical Youth Work: A Community Based Approach to Working with Youth, Young Adults and Families" (2023). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 25.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2023/2023/25
Included in
Clinical Psychology Commons, Community Health and Preventive Medicine Commons, Community Psychology Commons, Counseling Commons, Counseling Psychology Commons, Developmental Psychology Commons, Mental Disorders Commons, Music Therapy Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Social Work Commons, Theory and Philosophy Commons
Radical Youth Work: A Community Based Approach to Working with Youth, Young Adults and Families
Session Eight Breakouts (Verelst)
Eternal Strength Center for Radical Youth Work is a blended community center with customizable mental health therapeutic support for youth, young adults and families. Providing humanistic and person centered psychotherapy and counseling, alongside experiential therapies and community engagement we support families and youth struggling with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, self harm, suicidality and other challenges on their developmental growth journey.
