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Workforce Support for Urban After-School Programs: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities
- Source :
- Am J Community Psychol
- Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- Organized after-school programs can mitigate risk and build resilience for youth in urban communities. Benefits rely on high-quality developmental experiences characterized by a supportive environment, structured youth–adult interactions, and opportunities for reflective engagement. Programs in historically disenfranchised communities are underfunded; staff are transient, underpaid, and undertrained; and youth exhibit significant mental health problems which staff are variably equipped to address. Historically, after-school research has focused on behavior management and social-emotional learning, relying on traditional evidence-based interventions designed for and tested in schools. However, after-school workforce and resource limitations interfere with adoption of empirically supported strategies and youth health promotion. We have engaged in practice-based research with urban after-school programs in economically vulnerable communities for nearly two decades, toward building a resource-efficient, empirically informed multitiered model of workforce support. In this paper, we offer first-person accounts of four academic– community partnerships to illustrate common challenges, variability across programs, and recommendations that prioritize core skills underlying risk and resilience, align with individual program goals, and leverage without overextending natural routines and resources. Reframing obstacles as opportunities has revealed the application of mental health kernels to the after-school program workforce support and inspired lessons regarding sustainability of partnerships and practice.
- Subjects :
- Health (social science)
Urban Population
media_common.quotation_subject
Parks, Recreational
Psychological intervention
Health Promotion
Article
Education
03 medical and health sciences
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Behavior management
Child Care
Child
Applied Psychology
media_common
030505 public health
Schools
business.industry
05 social sciences
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Mentoring
Cognitive reframing
Public relations
Mental health
Social Learning
Health promotion
Evidence-Based Practice
Sustainability
Workforce
Health Resources
Business
Psychological resilience
0305 other medical science
050104 developmental & child psychology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Am J Community Psychol
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3f5b74b808108ae332a89a7d749035cb