Standards of Practice
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Strengthening Youth and Family Environments: Essentials for Success
Dramatic social, demographic and economic changes during the past 30 years have transformed America’s youth and their families. Generally young people and families are coping well; however, an increasing number are facing new and complex challenges.

Whatever the challenge may be – divorce, marriage, teen pregnancy, poor education, or lack of financial support – schools, communities, businesses and civic leaders are agreeing that when young people and/or families are in trouble, so is their community. Strengthening families and fostering community collaboration increasingly have come to be seen as interrelated and complementary approaches to solving social problems.

This section of the guide describes the essential community conditions for implementing standards of practice that strengthen youth and families. The following section details the standards of practice themselves.


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Focusing on Strengths
Not Problems

Focusing on Youth and
Families as Resources

Focusing on Building a
Quality Community

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Essential: Shifting the Focus from Problems to Strengths
Researchers, citizens and policy-makers these days all are asking the question: “What can be done to promote the well-being of our young people and families?” This is a dramatic and exciting shift from government reports, newspaper headlines and television news reports focusing on the many problems youth and families face. Focusing on problems can contribute to a sense of hopelessness that encourages fragmentation of efforts rather than attempts to provide comprehensive solutions.

Shifting the focus from problems to strengths concentrates efforts on empowering youth and families to build the capacities and skills they need to be healthy and contributing citizens. A medical analogy would be focusing on preventing illness rather than on treating illness after it happens. For example, a person who catches the flu might take medicine to feel better or keep the disease from getting worse. Or a person might take the preventive step of getting a flu shot to strengthen his or her immune system in the hope of avoiding the flu. Going a step farther, an individual might strengthen his or her resistance through exercise and a wholesome diet.

8 CHECK THE ENVIRONMENT
As a group, place an “X” on the scale to identify where you believe your community is today. Then place an “O” to indicate where you believe the community realistically can be in three years.
Our community focuses
on its problems
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 Our community focuses
on its strengths

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Essential: Shifting the Focus to Youth and Families as Resources
Greater success within communities in strengthening youth and families is noted when there is an ongoing process in which people are engaged and invested in issues that affect them. When people interact with other people – their peers, family members and community – they often understand the issues better and can better contribute to positive solutions.

In turn, people who are involved in finding and applying positive solutions use and improve their skills in successfully addressing complex issues. As people connect and focus their efforts, they gain understanding and appreciation of the diversity the community offers. In this way, people become the producers of their own development.

8 CHECK THE ENVIRONMENT
As a group, place an “X” on the scale to identify where you believe your community is today. Then place an “O” to indicate where you believe the community realistically can be in three years.
Our community does not focus on youth and families as resources
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 Our community does focus on youth and families as resources

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Essential: Focusing on Building a Quality Community
The quality of the community that young people and families live in plays a major role in promoting their health. The quality of the community begins with meeting the basic physical needs such as food, shelter, water and warmth. Beyond these basic physical needs, healthy communities are ones that meet people’s needs for safety, for places and opportunities to interact and connect with one another, and to develop a “sense of community.” Collectively, when members of a community work together on these issues, the community is better equipped to address new and emerging issues confronting young people and families.

8 CHECK THE ENVIRONMENT
As a group, place an “X” on the scale to identify where you believe your community is today. Then place an “O” to indicate where you believe the community realistically can be in three years.
Our community does not have a strong sense of community
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 Our community has a strong sense of community

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Exercising Standards of Practice... Supporting Youth
Practice: An Environment That Provides Safety and Structure
Successful youth live in environments that are safe. Young people need to feel that their environment is a safe place and that it cares for and values them. In addition, they need to feel there is some predictability about daily events. Safe environments include designated places (e.g., parks, community centers and meeting halls) that promote positive interactions among adults and youth. A variety of youth programs (e.g., 4-H, YMCA, Scouts, Boys and Girls Club and religious clubs) and extracurricular activities (e.g., interscholastic sports, intramural sports, school yearbook and drama club) provide supportive learning and social environments for young people.
Practice: An Environment That Promotes Skill Development
Successful youth live in environments that provide opportunities for them to contribute to others through community service. Engaging in community service enables youth to develop a sense of interdependency with the community. Further, it gives them opportunities to confront real-world problems and create solutions. This helps them build their problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and social competencies. Successful youth live in environments that give them useful roles in community life. They are involved in decision-making bodies of the community. Instead of simply being objects or recipients of programs, they have opportunities to lead, make decisions, and provide input to the programs and activities that involve them.
Practice: An Environment That Promotes A Sense of Belonging
Youth need to have a sense of belonging to a community — a feeling that they are not only accepted in the community, but a valued part of it. “Community” is defined as the social group with whom you identify. Thus, communities that provide opportunities for youth to engage in programs, extracurricular activities, leadership, and service activities enable them to develop an attachment and a sense of ownership to a specific group. These groups give young people the positive relationships with peers and adults that they need to succeed. Positive relationships with adults provide youth with positive role models.
Practice: An Environment That Encourages A Healthy Lifestyle
Physical and mental health are important attributes of youth who are successful. Environments that provide opportunities for physical activity and exercise foster a healthy lifestyle among youth. Communities that foster positive youth development provide places and recreation facilities where such activities can occur. In addition, environments that guard against alcohol and tobacco advertisements are taking a stand to encourage healthy behavior.
Practice: An Environment That Promotes Cultural Competence
Successful youth respect and respond positively to differences among people of diverse backgrounds, interests and traditions. Communities that promote cultural competence provide opportunities to become knowledgeable about and comfortable with people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds and establish a climate of sharing and understanding.
Practice: An Environment of Caring
Youth are able to draw strength from an environment that maintains an atmosphere of caring, hope, and high expectations. Through various programs and positive interactions with adults, young people develop their sense of values, equality, and justice. Youth who are in a safe environment and feel valued are empowered to act on their own convictions and stand up for their beliefs. A climate of caring gives youth the opportunity to develop values of integrity, honesty, responsibility, and spirituality. Indeed, research has demonstrated that spirituality is an important quality of youth who are resilient.2
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Exercising Standards of Practice... Supporting Families
Practice: An Environment That Meets Basic Needs
Families have specific basic needs that must be met to ensure the positive development of all family members. Every family requires these minimal and basic needs be met before it can even begin to promote positive development of its children and youth. At the most fundamental level, communities must support families by providing opportunities for them to meet these basic needs.
Practice:An Environment That Provides Safety and Structure
Successful families live in environments that are safe. This includes a perception that the community is a caring place where people look out for each other. Communities that are safe environments provide designated places (e.g., parks, community centers and meeting halls) that promote positive interactions among adults and youth. There is some predictability about local events and social gatherings. Family nights are a part of the community’s culture.
Practice:An Environment That Promotes A Sense of Belonging
Families need to feel they belong to a community and are a valued part of that community. Communities that provide opportunities for families to engage in community leisure and service activities enable them to develop an attachment to and a sense of membership in the larger group. Further, these groups then become built-in social support networks. The more supportive networks that families have surrounding them, the more resistant they are to breakdown in the face of risk factors or crisis. Families are social institutions and cannot effectively exist alone. They need to have a sense of belonging to a community. Community is defined as the social group with whom you identify. Such a community may be a faith community, a school community or a neighborhood. Belonging to a community that cares about the well-being of the family promotes the success of a family by building an infrastructure of social support that meets the needs of families in times of crisis.

Social support can be thought of as “social capital,” and the more types of support a family has — i.e., the more social capital it has — the more likely it is to weather a period of crisis without faltering or breaking.

Social support has five dimensions, including:

  • Emotional support - sharing of information
    about caring;
  • Esteem support – sharing of information affirming the importance
    of family members and what they do;
  • Network support – sharing information among members that
    belong to a larger group;
  • Expectations - sharing information of evaluation that give
    members a sense of expectations and boundaries.
  • Altruistic support – sharing of information indicating the
    importance of giving of oneself for the benefit of others.3
Practice: An Environment That Provides Skills
To build their capacity to deal with challenges, families need informal and nonformal educational opportunities to develop their coping skills, communication skills, money management skills and problem-solving skills. Research has provided evidence that successful and resilient families possess these skills.4 Communities need to provide opportunities for parents to develop their parenting skills, to advance their learning, and to master hobbies. Children and youth need multiple opportunities to develop a sense of mastery, employability skills and expressive skills.
Practice: An Environment That Encourages A Healthy Lifestyle
Physical health plays an important role in a family’s level of stress. A family faces more challenges when its members are not healthy. Communities that foster positive development of families provide recreation and other facilities and services that promote current and future physical health.
Practice: An Environment That Promotes Community Service
Communities that strive to create an atmosphere of caring engage individual citizens and families in community service. Such communities establish a climate of sharing and community responsibility. Being involved in community service translates the abstract idea of caring into real-world actions that have a tangible outcome and are grounded in real human relationships. Caring fosters the ability to form relationships and commitments, and an attitude of concern for and acceptance of others. In addition, family members gain esteem and a sense of belonging by getting involved in altruistic acts that are important to the community.
Practice: An Environment of Hope
Families are able to draw strength from a community that maintains an atmosphere of hope and high expectations. Through support networks and their community’s hope and high expectations, families cope with the sense of helplessness that they feel in a crisis situation. In addition, family members seem to draw hope from their spirituality. Research has demonstrated that spirituality is an important component of families’ ability to successfully deal with crisis.

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