Meeting the Needs of Youth-at-Risk in Canada : Learnings from a National Community Development Project

1. Introduction

The challenges facing young people in Canada have received increasing attention over the past several years. Media accounts have highlighted issues such as youth violence, juvenile prostitution, teen pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and the appearance of growing numbers of street youth in many Canadian communities. Health Canada has responded by undertaking a variety of activities aimed at assisting youth-at-risk, or what it has termed "out-of-the-mainstream youth." Health Canada has sponsored numerous community consultations and programs as well as research projects to gain a greater understanding of the challenges facing youth-at-risk. This information represents an important knowledge base for governments, communities and service agencies seeking to develop more effective strategies for responding to the needs of these young people.

This document reports on the results of a national community development project aimed at youth-at-risk called the Community Development -- Out-of-the-mainstream Youth (CD-OOMY) project. The purpose of this project was to support community development and youth participation activities aimed at improving programs and services available to youth-at-risk. It came about, in part, as a result of a series of four workshops sponsored by Health Canada in 1993 and 1994 in selected locations across Canada. Workshop participants included representatives of various departments of the federal government, Health Canada's regional offices, community-based youth-serving agencies, young people and provincial/territorial government representatives responsible for funding the health and social services available to youth.

Information gathered from these workshops and through extensive consultations with youth and service providers revealed that traditional services are not meeting the needs of youth-at-risk. In many cases, the services were described as being inappropriate, having been designed primarily for mainstream clients. Many existing services are neither culturally nor socially sensitive to the needs of youth-at-risk. Moreover, clients often have to go to several different offices and deal with a number of workers to get the help they need. This fragmentation and lack of accessibility often discourages youth-at-risk from seeking and obtaining services. The young people participating in the workshops also noted that youth were seldom involved in the design and delivery of these services.

In addition to identifying problems associated with existing services for youth-at-risk, the people consulted offered a variety of suggestions for improving the existing situation. Chief among these was the need for greater cooperation by the agencies providing services to youth-at-risk. Many of the participants identified community development as a major way of helping to address the difficulties of the youth services system. Many felt that community development activities could result in better communication among agencies and would encourage the creation of more effective and efficient means of delivering needed services. Scarce resources could also be maximized if agencies working with the same client population shared information and cooperated to reduce duplication for meeting existing needs.

An important suggestion was the need to include young people, from the outset, in the planning, design and delivery of services. The participation of young people could ensure that the services are relevant to the target population, that they are socially and culturally appropriate, and that they are accessible.

1.1 Objectives of the Project and the National Steering Committee

The national community development project (CD-OOMY) was developed on the basis of the information gathered in the four workshops mentioned above and from a national consultation conducted as a part of a strategic plan developed by the Office of Alcohol, Drugs and Dependency Issues. Health Canada hired a consulting team to design and implement a plan to assist selected communities with their community development/youth participation efforts. The team consisted of Mr. Glen Murray, Mr. Richard Weiler and Dr. Tullio Caputo. This team worked with project participants in individual sites, offering advice, support and technical assistance where required. Among other activities, the consulting team helped participating communities conduct needs assessments, organize community meetings and address the challenges of fostering youth participation in community development groups.

A National Steering Committee was established to guide the project. The National Steering Committee comprised provincial/territorial representatives from each of the five sites, Health Canada representatives, youth representatives and the consultants. During the course of the CD-OOMY project, the National Steering Committee met three times to review activities taking place at each site, to provide guidance to the consultants on issues that had emerged in undertaking this project and to provide advice on the form and content of the final report.

One goal of the CD-OOMY project was to support communities in pursuing community development for youth-at-risk. The term "out-of-the-mainstream youth" has been used by Health Canada to refer to the alienated and marginalized youth who are characterized by: adopting the street lifestyle, academic failure or dropping out of school, involvement in alcohol and/or other drug use, and involvement in illegal behaviour (Anderson, 1993).

These young people face a number of immediate and long-term challenges to their health and well-being. Many suffer from the physical problems associated with life on the street, including respiratory illnesses, malnutrition and other diseases associated with poor nutrition and hygiene. Many come from home situations that include psychological, physical and sexual abuse (Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, 1990). As a result of this type of trauma, they have considerable mental health needs. Those that turn to the streets are exposed to the dangers of street life, including violence, alcohol and other drug use, and the health risks associated with participation in high-risk sexual activities (Kufeldt, 1991). In the long term, many of these young people face economic marginalization as a result of periods of employment at poor-paying jobs interspersed with lengthy bouts of unemployment and welfare (Brannigan and Caputo, 1993).

A second objective of this project was to document the activities of the participating communities across the country engaging in community development activities aimed at improving the services available to at-risk youth. The consulting team worked with key actors in each site to record project activities and developments so that the lessons learned from these experiences could be made available to others interested in working with this population. This report contains the lessons learned from the experiences of CD-OOMY project participants, including a brief history of the activities undertaken at each site. It also includes general lessons drawn from a review of relevant community development/youth participation literature and related materials.

1.2 The Five Sites Participating in the Project

At the outset of this project, Health Canada invited all provinces/territories to take part. After some discussion, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia agreed to participate. Consultations with the provincial/territorial partners resulted in the identification of five sites (13 projects in 42 communities) as suitable locations for CD-OOMY project initiation or support. Some of these sites already had community development efforts in place; others did not. The consultants worked closely with representatives from Health Canada's regional offices and the provincial/territorial representatives. In many sites, the national CD-OOMY project built on the work already initiated by the Health Promotion and Programs Branch (HPPB) regional office.

A detailed account of what took place in each of the five sites is presented in Appendix A of this document. Below is a brief introduction to the sites and a short description of the activities that were taking place when the CD-OOMY project got under way.

In the Yukon, the consultants worked with the Youth Empowerment and Success (YES) project. YES was formed after the 1994 Edmonton workshop on "out-of-the-mainstream youth" sponsored by the Canada's Drug Strategy Secretariat and the Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and Northwest Territories, HPPB offices. YES is made up of a group of people from Whitehorse and outlying communities across the Yukon interested in working with youth-at-risk. Its membership includes both adults and youth from Yukon First Nations, government and non-government agencies and other community members. The group has a variety of goals that reflect a community development and youth participation approach. It enjoys substantial financial and policy support from the territorial government. At the time CD-OOMY began, YES was in the process of hiring two full-time coordinators, one adult and one youth, to build on the momentum of the Edmonton workshop and to begin working on some of the group's goals.

The second site involved two communities: High Level in Northern Alberta and Hay River in the Northwest Territories. These two communities undertook a "twinning" exercise to encourage cooperation and the sharing of resources and information by small Northern communities. When the CD-OOMY project began, the High Level/Hay River site enjoyed the support of both the provincial and territorial governments, the regional office of Health Canada and various representatives of youth-serving agencies in each community. However, no community development activities related to the CD-OOMY project had formally begun.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan also included the participation of multiple communities in the CD-OOMY project. In this case, key stakeholders in the region decided to build on existing community development/youth participation projects that were already in various stages of progress in nine different locations across Manitoba and Saskatchewan. One of the main objectives in the Manitoba/Saskatchewan site was to document the history of the various projects that were under way so the lessons that had been learned about community development and youth participation could be shared with other Canadian communities.

The project in Quebec was located in downtown Montreal. The objective in this site was to establish a multi-agency, interdisciplinary, community-based network for addressing the needs of youth-at-risk in the area. Montreal Centre is an area facing a number of serious issues related to youth-at-risk, and there is considerable support for addressing these issues. An existing interagency network focusing on homelessness in the community provided a forum for youth-serving agencies to connect with each other. This existing link was seen as the basis on which to build a wider community-based network focusing on youth-at-risk issues. The provincial government committed staff and office resources to support the project.

The final site was Halifax, Nova Scotia. Here, the consultants made contact with an existing community group called the Community Youth Network (CYN). CYN is a network of community-based agencies that provide a variety of services to youth-at-risk. CYN was started some 10 years earlier by staff in employment-training agencies such as the YMCA Job Generation program and Options Youth. Its activities include sponsoring workshops and conferences for individuals working with youth. At the time the CD-OOMY project began, CYN was preparing to broaden its focus and reach out to a wider audience of community-based, youth-serving agencies. Its objective was to promote community development activities to enhance youth services, especially those for youth-at-risk in the region.

1.3 Outline of This Report

The report has been designed to be useful to individuals and agencies interested in community development as a means to address the issue of youth-at-risk. It is based on both project experience and a review of relevant community development/youth participation literature. It outlines a general model of community development, noting steps taken at different stages in the process. It also highlights key aspects of the experiences of the five sites participating in the national CD-OOMY project. An important objective was to identify common patterns and practices, build on successes and outline how the sites dealt with the challenges they encountered.

In Section 2, a definition of community development is presented. As well, some of the advantages of taking a community development approach to address the needs of youth-at-risk are considered. Various issues related to youth involvement in community development are discussed and the increasing support for youth participation by government, youth-serving agencies and young people themselves is considered. Section 3 provides a detailed discussion of the community development model. Included here are the lessons learned from reviewing relevant literature on the subject and from the experiences of the five sites that participated in the project. The conclusions and implications drawn from the CD-OOMY project are discussed in Section 4. A short history of each of the five sites is presented in the Appendix A at the end of this document.