Youth are Served

Growing in a Safe Place

Youth Guidance’s strength-based, healing centered and culturally responsive Counseling and Prevention, Community and After School, and Career Readiness and Success programs have been developed with input from young people to best meet their needs.

Partnering with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Youth Guidance’s STRIVE program (Strategies to Rejuvenate Interest and Value in Education) successfully helps youth in care of the state who have endured trauma or neglect transition into adulthood and lead productive lives.

In 2011, the organization created Working on Womanhood (WOW), a healing-centered group counseling and clinical mentoring program that brings behavioral intervention and supports to young women of color in sixth through twelfth grade who are exposed to traumatic stressors in under-resourced communities. WOW is a two-year school-based curriculum that draws on cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance commitment therapy and narrative therapy, and is organized around five core values: self-awareness, emotional intelligence, healthy relationships, and visionary goal setting. This year WOW anticipates serving more than 2,300 students in 64 schools across Chicago’s south, north and west side neighborhoods, as well as Waukegan, Ill., Boston, Dallas, and Kansas City.

A 2023 study of WOW conducted by the University of Chicago Crime and Education Lab discovered that Chicago high school-aged girls suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder twice the rate as Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans. WOW, the study said, is making a significant difference in reducing that number.

“The study found that thirty eight percent of ninth to eleventh grade adolescent girls in Chicago’s neighborhood schools exhibit signs of PTSD,” Adler-Morrison said. “Participation in WOW is highly effective in reducing these symptoms, leading to a twenty two percent decrease in PTSD and significant decreases in depression and anxiety. At a per-participant cost of $2,300, WOW results surpass widely accepted thresholds for cost-effectiveness and provide evidence for a promising mode that can be replicated at scale within resource-challenged public schools across the country.”

BAM

Youth Guidance initiated its Becoming A Man (BAM) program in 2001as a school-based group counseling program guiding young men in seventh to twelfth grades to learn, internalize and practice social cognitive skills, make responsible decisions for their future, and become positive members of their school and community.

Each 50-minute session is built around a lesson plan designed to develop a specific skill through stories, role-playing and group exercises. Launched in Chicago’s Roberto Clemente High School by Youth Guidance counselor Anthony Ramirez-Di Vittorio, the curriculum addresses six core values that relate to both personal and academic success: integrity, accountability, self-determination, positive anger expression, visionary goal setting, and respect for womanhood. The program has been rigorously evaluated and demonstrated significant improvements in on-time graduation rates and a 50% reduction in violent crime arrests. Based on its strong evidence-base, the program has been expanded to Seattle, Dallas, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Boston, Washington D.C., and internationally in London.

“We’ve learned to adapt the program for different contexts,” Adler-Morrison said. “For example, we provide training and coaching to the Mental Health Foundation who implements our BAM program in London neighborhoods that have a high incidence of youth violence. We also implement BAM in Chicago’s Juvenile Detention Center in support of justice-involved youth.

“Driven by the groundbreaking external evaluations of our programs, we’ve tripled in size and impact in bringing evidence-based programs across the nation and beyond. While we’ve grown our reach, I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface in meeting the need that exists in bringing high quality evidence-based supports to youth living in poverty.”

Career Readiness and Success is another priority focus of Youth Guidance’s programs. These include Project Prepare, BAM@Work, WOW@Work and TFI (The Fellowship Initiative), a partnership with JP Morgan Chase that builds a diverse community of young men of color who possess a broad range of skills and experiences. The three-year leadership development program is designed to support rising high school sophomores in earning their degree from an accredited four-year college or university. Youth Guidance also launched a post-high school program, Project Prepare Blue, providing intensive support to young adults struggling with the transition into the world of work or post-secondary education.

Partnering with JACSW 

Field instruction is an important part of the JACSW curriculum, and Youth Guidance has served as one of the more than 280 field placement sites for more than 40 years. It allows students to apply classroom knowledge to real-world situations and gain practical experience under the supervision of experienced social workers.

“Some of our greatest interns have been from JACSW and I’m proud to say that many have come back as staff,” Adler-Morrison said. “We have full-year internships and offer a broad range of placement opportunities – clinical, school-based counseling, program management, evaluation, administration, human resources, finance, and development, to name a few. We are hoping to significantly increase the number of JACSW students at Youth Guidance.”

Jarvis Burks was not exposed to Youth Guidance growing up in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood, as the organization did not have a presence at any of the schools he attended. While seeking employment following his graduation from Eastern Illinois University, his stepmother, Danielle, a WOW counselor at the time, knew of her stepson’s passion for helping youth, and suggested he apply for an internship. That was in 2015, and he hasn’t left.

“As an intern, I fell in love with BAM,” said Burks, who recently began working part-time as a private counselor to improve his clinical skills and lend support to adults transitioning to different phases in life, coping with stress, navigating relationship challenges, and seeking personal growth. “I knew this was something I could see myself doing for a living.

“I find my work at BAM so rewarding that I don’t always feel like I’m working.”

Once his internship concluded, Burks was hired as a fulltime employee and was placed in an elementary school, working with students in sixth through eighth grade. He was promoted to his current role as a curriculum specialist in 2021.

Burks’s goal had always been to return to school to receive an advanced degree, but he was unsure what direction to take. In 2019, Adler-Morrison presented him with the opportunity to attend JACSW through a partnership between the college and Youth Guidance. He vowed to make the most of his opportunity, and he succeeded, receiving his diploma in 2022.

“Being a student at Jane Addams was a life changing experience for me,” Burks said. “I received straight A’s for the first time in my life, I learned many valuable skills to aid my practice and formed meaningful relationships that have allowed me to succeed in ways I never imagined.”

To learn more about Youth Guidance, visit www.youth-guidance.org.