Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals: Improving Child and Youth Program Experiences

By William B. Kearney, William H. Quinn and Robert J. Barcelona

Whether you are a seasonal volunteer, group leader or full-time professional, you need practical advice on how to provide young people with the tools they need to succeed.

Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals—E-QYP for short—provides best practices to help young people ages six to eighteen reach their potential. It also offers age-appropriate ideas that you can translate to your specific child and youth program.

E-QYP is a handy reference for individuals, as well as a powerful volunteer and staff development tool when adopted by organizations. It also serves as a great supplement to college textbooks on child and youth development. With easy-to-read information and sample activities that really work, this guide can help you help the young people in your life.

“Youth agencies serve huge numbers of kids in the United States, but few youth workers have specific knowledge about youth development, and agency budgets tend to have few dollars for staff training. Although the training and credentialing of all youth workers remains an aspiration, workers with and without training need ready access to research-based knowledge and practices. Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals provides both. Whether read as a whole or accessed for just-in-time information, Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals is a timely, valuable, and much-needed resource.”

—Irv Katz, president and CEO, National Human Services Assembly and National Collaboration for Youth

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491719367

William B. Kearney

William B. Kearney, co-owner of WBKEARNEY & Associates, has dedicated his career to helping young people. He has a master’s degree in public administration from the University at Albany, State University of New York, and has worked in the nonprofit, private, and public sectors. He is married and has three children and seven grandchildren; he lives in Cumming, Georgia.

Book preview

EQUIPPING QUALITY YOUTH

DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS

IMPROVING CHILD AND YOUTH PROGRAM EXPERIENCES

Copyright © 2012, 2014 William B. Kearney.

Author Credits: WBK&A, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For reprint requests, please send request by e-mail to [e-mail] or by sending requests by mail to WBK&A, Inc./E-QYP, 5950 Holland Drive, Cumming, GA 30041.

The authors, reviewers, and publishers do not assume any risk or liability arising from the use of the information. All information is representative of developmental characteristics and stages, but it is solely the responsibility of child and youth programs to prepare staff and volunteers for their specific programs, services, and activities.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1934-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1935-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1936-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013923008

iUniverse rev. date: 01/30/2014

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One Nurturing Young Children (Ages Six to Eight)

Chapter 1   Fostering Physical Development

Chapter 2   Promoting Cognitive Development

Chapter 3   Encouraging Social Development

Chapter 4   Supporting Emotional Development

Part Two Supporting Older Children (Ages Nine to Eleven)

Chapter 5   Fostering Physical Development

Chapter 6   Promoting Cognitive Development

Chapter 7   Encouraging Social Development

Chapter 8   Supporting Emotional Development

Part Three Guiding Young Teens (Ages Twelve to Fourteen)

Chapter 9   Fostering Physical Development

Chapter 10   Promoting Cognitive Development

Chapter 11   Encouraging Social Development

Chapter 12   Supporting Emotional Development

Part Four Mentoring Older Teens (Ages Fifteen to Eighteen)

Chapter 13   Fostering Physical Development

Chapter 14   Promoting Cognitive Development

Chapter 15   Encouraging Social Development

Chapter 16   Supporting Emotional Development

What’s Next?

Afterword

About the Author

Endnotes

Praise for

Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals: E-QYP

Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals (E-QYP) bridges the gap between the world of ideas and the world of action, giving a solid science basis for working with youth coupled with engaging and value-added activities that further positive youth development. I see E-QYP as being ideal for bringing alive the textbook world.

Many people who work with youth have good will but know little about good practices for working with those youth. E-QYP grounds them in solid child and youth development science and then leads them to effective practices.

Jay A. Mancini, PhD, Haltiwanger distinguished professor of human development and family science, and director of the Family and Community Resiliency Laboratory, University of Georgia

Having worked with children and adolescents for more than twenty years, I appreciate having a user-friendly and research-based reference to check age-appropriate characteristics, strategies, and resources at my fingertips. I have found E-QYP to be a valuable tool in my work as a therapist, as well as in my current position as the director of training for our state’s Division of Juvenile Justice Services. With the responsibility for training more than a thousand staff and case managers who work with youth in secure-care detention centers, and youth services centers statewide, I have utilized E-QYP in both training presentations and facility settings. E-QYP is a reminder that materials based on research can be visually appealing and easy to understand.

Carol Voorhees, LCSW, director of training, Utah Division of Juvenile Justice Services

E-QYP is research based and is a great child developmental resource for child and youth care workers, therapists, counselors, teachers, foster parents, and a host of other professionals providing child welfare, residential, community-based, mental health, education, and community/recreational services. E-QYP positions critical child and adolescent developmental content right at the fingertips of students, volunteers, and professionals, allowing quick and easy access to a range of information and practical approaches.

Lloyd Bullard, MEd, CEO, LB International Consulting, LLC, Sandy Spring, Georgia

E-QYP is well researched, and I like how all the information is laid out for the reader. I especially appreciate its emphasis on the importance of engaging children collaboratively and helping children develop age-appropriate independence and problem-solving skills at every stage of development.

Zach Lehman, McLean, Virginia

I have been using the E-QYP application for a few months and have found it to be a dynamic and useful tool. In my position as a psychologist, I have shared this application with other associates in the school system, and they have found it to be just as useful. As we work together as a team to evaluate and provide interventions for children, this tool is one of the first that we use. The suggested activities for children of all ages help us come up with interventions/strategies that we can use with our students and also recommend to parents. It is definitely a tool that I don’t want to be without. Thank you for sharing it with me.

Beverly Hammonds-Bolds, SSP, school psychologist, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina

This book is dedicated to all—individuals, organizations, and communities—who want to provide young people with age- and developmentally appropriate activities and experiences.

A special thank-you to Beatriz Aguirre-Kearney, whose love, support, and guidance has inspired me to greater heights, personally and professionally.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Graham Greene (1904–1991), English novelist, from The Power and the Glory (1940)

FOREWORD

Since the field of positive youth development emerged as an important alternative to problem-based approaches to youth work, there have been calls for improving the professional training and development of adult youth workers. The Carnegie Corporation in the early 1990s noted that the "adults who work with young people in their systems, whether on a paid or voluntary basis, are the most critical factor in whether a program succeeds, but do not receive adequate training, ongoing support and supervision, or public recognition.¹ Two decades later, people in the field are still talking about the importance of providing more accessible opportunities for youth development training and education, particularly as the linkage between a high-quality workforce and high-quality youth programs is becoming Clearer.²

It is also becoming clear that youth workers themselves are interested in more and better training, resources, and ideas to support their work. A growing number of intermediary organizations and national organizations offer training and support for youth workers. Organizations such as the National AfterSchool Association, the National Institute on Out-of-School Time, the National Collaboration for Youth, and the Academy for Competent Youth Work, among others, offer training, resources, and information for front-line youth workers. The higher-education marketplace has also responded to this growing demand. Since 2008, the number of colleges and universities offering majors or for-credit programs focused on youth work has increased by 900 percent.³

The digital and online revolution has provided enormous opportunities for formal