Tri-State Summit Fosters Collaborations to Help Disadvantaged Youth
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CHARLOTTE, NC-- With the current economic crisis putting an enormous strain on state budgets across the U.S., funding for youth services has unfortunately been drastically reduced, or worse, entirely eliminated.
“It is more important than ever for state agencies and non-profit organizations to collaborate to maximize their efforts and resources to keep disadvantaged youth connected to key supports,” said Dr. Judith A. Rizzo, executive director and CEO of the Hunt Institute. “A heavier focus must be placed on the needs of children in order to eradicate many of the problems students face both in school and at home.”
To help foster greater collaboration among state agencies and non-profit organizations that serve disadvantaged youth, the James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, in partnership with the Georgia Afterschool Investment Council, the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs, and the South Carolina Afterschool Alliance, sponsored the Tri-State Summit: Meeting the Needs of Disadvantaged Youth in Afterschool Hours on December 3-4, 2009, in Charlotte, N.C.
“When it comes to particular bad economic times, we are not thinking about the welfare of young people. We are thinking about budgets of self-interest,” said John Dornan, executive director of the NC Public School Forum. “Given the state of the economy, there is a necessity and a sense of urgency to come up with a plan for young people that is holistic and complete, and with benchmarks. It may seem to be a reach, but I do not think it is preposterous.”
The Summit brought together state leaders and policymakers in education, juvenile justice, health and human services, and afterschool to discuss the importance of cross-sector collaboration and integrated services in meeting the needs of disadvantaged youth. During the sessions, participants discussed the status of disadvantaged youth across the three states and the barriers that state agencies face in collaborating to serve those youth. One of the key barriers discussed was communication across state agencies and programs.
“We talk past each other in our own little languages, but that is symptomatic of a bigger problem—all of us have our paradigms,” said Judge William Byars, director of the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, during a panel discussion at the event. “There needs to be more communication. We have got to be able to work together to overcome barriers—sit down, talk to each other, and get past them.”
As participants learned during the event, the scope of the problem across the three states is large, but not unmanageable. Based on data from Kids Count and the Afterschool Alliance, there are:
- More than 4.1 million school-aged youth in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia
- Approximately one-quarter of school-aged youth that are unsupervised during the afterschool hours—estimated to be one million
- Nearly 108,000 16-19 year olds are high school dropouts—7 to 8 percent of the population
- More than 67,000 teen mothers—ages 15-19
During the Summit, participants were also able to learn from four innovative programs that are successfully integrating services to help meet the needs of disadvantaged youth: the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York; the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice Teen After-School Centers; the Center of Hope Boys & Girls Club in Charlotte, NC (the nation’s first Boys & Girls Club program in a homeless shelter); and Elev8 New Mexico.
The purpose of the Summit was to begin to build collaborative relationships across the various state agencies and organizations in the hopes of building partnerships for serving youth. Many of the participants expressed appreciation for the opportunity to meet people from other agencies and to learn what they are doing and how that connects to their own work. Some of the short-term goals discussed by state attendees included organizing retired administrators to review the quality of afterschool programs; hiring additional staff to help with teen programs; gaining more direct feedback from parents and students regarding their needs; connecting data that would be helpful to agencies; planning a series of regional meetings to incite discussion among leaders and involved parties; and connecting with more elected leaders.
One promising development at the Summit was the pledge by Judge William Byars, director of the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, to devote as many as five positions within his department to coordinating youth services with other state agencies and the South Carolina Afterschool Alliance. He called on his counterparts in the other agencies to make a similar commitment.