Training and Networking results in Better Outcomes

Youth Workers are Community Health Workers who play an invaluable role in the lives of young people in urban settings. Youth Workers are adults serving youth in non school programs and performing community based outreach to youth. Well-trained, highly networked, community-based youth workers produce more positive youth development outcomes than those youth workers who are not trained and are not part of a network. Youth served by BEST/YWA report favorably on 72 youth outcome survey items. Among the skills youth reported positively on were decision-making, team-work, critical thinking and problem-solving. The Building Supports for Positive Youth Development project posited that well-trained, highly networked youth workers would produce better outcomes for youth they served. Health Resources in Action partnered with the South End/Lower Roxbury Youth Workers Alliance and Brandies University's Center for Youth and Communities to implement the set of studies that informed this project. This four year study investigated the effective aspects of a youth workers network, the essential pieces of HRiA's BEST Youth Worker Certificate Training and the impact that practitioners who were part of both of these had on the outcomes for youth compared to outcomes for youth served by not networked, not trained youth workers.