Welcome to the Reaching Teens community. We are a group of youth-serving professionals and community members who care for and about young people, and who are willing to be intentional about being the kind of adults who will support all youth to thrive.

Because you entered the electronic version of Reaching Teens through the pathway specific for your practice setting, you will receive the following tailored materials.

• An introduction to why Reaching Teens is particularly relevant in your setting.
• Suggested chapters that will be most helpful to you.
• Group learning and discussion/personal reflections cases written for the youth you interact with in your setting.

The pathway designed for your setting does not exclude you from any content. Rather, it gives you the option of streamlining your experience.  We suggest that in addition to taking advantage of the pathway, you become familiar with the other options of navigating Reaching Teens. Chapter 10 offers a detailed description, but Navigating Reaching Teens provides a good summary.

[Please note that if you view a chapter from the below access points, you will get the general audience materials, whereas if it has been selected in your setting-specific pathway and you access it from that pathway, you may have tailored materials.]

Getting Oriented to the Toolkit

You may find it useful to first have an overview of key philosophical and practice points. Once you “own” these, you’ll get more out of every other chapter.

We recommend the following chapters to get started:

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Adult Young People Need in Their Lives” (Chapter 1)
• “Reframing Adolescence: Holding Youth to High Expectations and Refuting Undermining Portrayals” (Chapter 6)
• “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13)
• “The Language of Resilience” (Chapter 27)
• “Trauma Sensitive Practice: Working with Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37)
• “Reframing Youth Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization” (Chapter 38)
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44)
• “Healer, Heal Thyself: Self-care for the Caregiver” (Chapter 90)

Orienting New Staff

Professional development (PD) sessions are generally offered in an annual or biannual cycle. This means that staff hired on an ongoing basis may not be exposed to key information until the next time the topic is offered. This leaves them unprepared to join your organizational culture, and more importantly could lead to their making unnecessary errors in serving youth. In addition, many staff may be coming from programs that do not use a strength-based perspective and will need extra support to shift to this approach.

You may assign these chapters to orient new staff prior to their contact with youth:

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Adult Young People Need in Their Lives” (Chapter 1)
• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24)
• “De-escalation and Crisis Management When a Youth Is Acting Out” (Chapter 34)
• “Trauma Sensitive Practice: Working with Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37)
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44)
• “Helping Youth Overcome Shame and Stigma (and Doing Our Best to Not Be a Part of the Problem)” (Chapter 49)
• If new staff does not a youth-development background:
  • “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13)

Familiarizing Yourself with All 95 Chapters Available

You can see the overall Table of Contents here. 

If you want to see a brief overview of what each chapter contains, the easiest way to view that is by looking at the introduction page to each of the 11 Reaching Teens sections. The introduction page offers a brief description of each chapter in the section. Click to see the chapters within each section.

• Section 1 (Chapters 1–6): Orientation to a Strength Based Approach sets the philosophical tone and rationale for strength-based, trauma-sensitive communication.
• Section 2 (Chapters 7–12): Orientation to Using Reaching Teens as a Toolkit offers strategies to get the most out of this toolkit in your personal practice or professional setting.
• Section 3 (Chapters 13–21): Understanding Adolescents and Their World prepares you to consider the developmental milieu and environmental contexts that affect teens.
• Section 4 (Chapters 22–25): Connecting with Adolescents and Their Families offers strategies to build trustworthy and effective relationships.
• Section 5 (Chapters 26–35): Communicating with Adolescents offers essential strategies and approaches to reach youth and facilitate behavioral change.
• Section 6 (Chapters 36–43): Working with Adolescents Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization focuses on applying trauma-sensitive practices.
• Section 7 (Chapters 44–51): Empowering Adolescents to Build on their Strengths and Avoid Undermining Behaviors offers specific strategies that use a shared decision-making model to empower youth to make wiser decisions and healthier choices.
• Section 8 (Chapters 52–58): Supporting Effective Parenting considers how we as youth-serving professionals can support parents to most effectively monitor and guide their children.
• Section 9 (Chapters 59–79): Mental, Emotional. And Behavioral Health includes strategies to help youth navigate a variety of specific psychosocial and environmental challenges.
• Section 10 (Chapters 80–89): Serving Young People Deserving of Focused Attention addresses the specific needs of unique populations.
• Section 11 (Chapters 90–95): Caring for the Caregivers recognizes that this work is emotionally challenging, sometimes exhausting and demoralizing, and that unless we care for ourselves with the same degree of commitment with which we care for others, our capacity to serve over a lifetime will be diminished.

Broader Topics and Overarching Themes

Whether you use Reaching Teens to develop professional development sessions or are navigating it on your own, you will likely want to teach (or learn) overarching themes or broader topics. In some cases, a single chapter will suffice for a topic (e.g., depression). In most cases, however, you’ll consider topics like “How to remain calm amidst chaos,” or “How to transform to trauma-sensitive practices.” In these cases, you’ll want to draw key elements from a group of chapters.

Below are some topics we know based on feedback and experience that the Reaching Teens community have been interested in. Others may be added as we gain feedback from the second edition. Click here to see the variety of chapters that intersect to support each topic. You’ll notice that many key chapters exist in more than one unit. This allows for reinforcement of critical concepts.

• Transforming to a Strength-Based Approach
• Helping Communities and Youth-Serving Professionals See Youth Through a Strength-Based Lens
• Honoring Diversity and Practicing Cultural Humility
• The Basics of Effective Communication With Youth
• Adolescent Development 101
• Adolescent Resilience 101
• Instituting Trauma-Sensitive Practices
• Helping Young People Learn Self-regulation Both to Calm Their Minds and to Improve Their Behavior
• Stress Management
• Building a Sense of Control Within Youth
• Maintaining Your Cool Amidst Chaos So You Can Better Co-regulate With Youth and Settle Their Behaviors
• Supporting Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health
• Meeting the Needs of Youth Who Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer/Questioning
• Creating Effective Professional Boundaries
• Preventing Professional Burnout
• Self-care for Youth-Serving Professionals

Truly understanding and honoring diversity and practicing cultural humility in our everyday and professional lives, especially when working with youth experiencing homelessness or human trafficking, proves to be an invaluable skill. Employing inclusive, affirming, and equitable approaches to youth care is essential in our practice, particularly for youth who have experienced discrimination and marginalization based on their background or identification. We must competently display sensitivity and awareness when working with individuals from different cultural, racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds; those who identify in the LGBTQ+ community; or those with different types of immigration statuses. Authentic respect and celebration of diversity allows for the cultivation of positive, trusting relationships that allow staff to help young people strive for and reach their goals of independence. With a strength-based approach, we can help youth overcome the stigmas that may be attached to their various forms of diversity—stigmas that may have, to no fault of the young person, led to homelessness or exploitation.

Primary Chapters:

• “Cultural Humility” (Chapter 28) understands that we are all “other” to somebody and that the only way we can be uniformly respectful to people is to consistently be prepared to learn about their culture and environment. A critical first step in being culturally humble, however, is having an awareness of our own unconscious biases.
• “Examining Our Unconscious Biases” (Chapter 29) looks at thinking patterns and assumptions we may have that can interfere with our ability to objectively draw the most appropriate conclusions, and even guide people towards their most positive futures.

Supportive Chapters:

• “The Traumatic Impact of Racism and Discrimination on Young People and How to Talk About It” (Chapter 42) discusses the life course impact of chronic stressors such as racial discrimination. It prepares professionals to have authentic discussion with youth about these undermining forces.
• “Youth Who Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Queer/Questioning” (Chapter 82)
• “Serving Youth Who Are Transgender and Gender Diverse”(Chapter 83)
• “Reaching Youth Who Are Immigrants” (Chapter 84)

Our ability to develop impactful, healing relationships with young people and help them to pursue and enjoy life’s satisfactions (physical and emotional health, spirituality, independence, and autonomy) rests largely on the strength of our communication strategies. The concrete ways in which we engage young people—the words we use (and those we actively avoid), the tone we strike, our body language, etc.—play a critical role in helping youth identify their inner strength and self-worth. Using effective communication approaches when working with youth experiencing homelessness or human trafficking can reduce shame and stigma, provide motivation, and create a safe and affirming space for dialogue. When youth in turn feel comfortable communicating their emotions, needs, and hopes for the future, they develop confidence, resiliency, and decision-making skills that empower youth and increase their likelihood of success.

Primary Chapters:

• A brief overview of the basics of communication is offered in “Communicating with Adolescents 101” (Chapter 26).
• “The Language of Resilience” (Chapter 27) offers examples of how we support versus undermine resilience with our words.
• “Body Language” (Chapter 30) describes how we can reinforce or undermine our connection with youth through nonverbal communication. In fact, our words represent the smaller fraction of what we convey to others. People skilled in the use of body language can better engage and empower people, as well as diffuse tension.
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44) is the heart of Reaching Teens. It is about seeing young people the way they deserve to be seen and leveraging their behaviorally-operational strengths to drive their forward progress. This can be useful with all young people, but can be key to engaging demoralized youth who may have internalized disempowering messages.
• “Helping Adolescents Own Their Solutions: Talking with Youth, Not at Them” (Chapter 48) offers an approach to facilitate youth to make their own decisions. The strategies covered in this chapter both facilitate healthy development and are central to trauma-sensitive practices because they increase youths’ self-control. The chapter offers communication strategies to use in lieu of the dreaded lecture, which backfires by triggering and disempowering youth. It also offers a strategy for working with youth who have grown to view themselves as powerless in their ability to move away from worrisome behaviors. It allows them to contemplate alternate futures and take simple steps toward desirable behaviors.

Supportive Chapters:

• “Youth are Experts in Their Own Lives” (Chapter 5) covers how recognizing teens as the greatest experts on their own lives—one of the core principles of positive youth development—better positions adults to engage in a shared decision-making process with adolescents.
• “Reframing Adolescence: Holding Youth to High Expectations and Refuting Undermining Portrayals” (Chapter 6) discusses the myths and misperceptions about adolescents that generate an undermining cultural narrative. This false storyline harms teens’ self-perceptions and undermines adult-youth engagement. If young people are falsely seen as inherently risky or irrational, adults will believe they have little influence. They will mistakenly believe that youth lack the ability to make informed, rational decisions. If young people are seen as rejecting adult guidance, or uniformly resentful of parental involvement, we will pull away precisely when we should be drawing nearer.
• “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13) offers a whirlwind tour of the social, cognitive, emotional, and moral development of youth, but focuses on those points that affect our ability to effectively interact with youth.  
• “The Teen Brain” (Chapter 15) tells us about the rapidly developing adolescent brain. An understanding of the teen brain enables us to better understand adolescents’ emotions, thinking patterns, and behaviors. It also prepares us to more effectively communicate with young people.
• “The SSHADESS Screen: A Strength-Based Psychosocial Assessment” (Chapter 32) is a verbal behavioral screen that starts by contextualizing risk within a broad initial understanding of the young person’s strengths.
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems Using Strength-Based Rather than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45) is about including rather than excluding youth. It allows us to hold young people accountable to being their best selves in a way that supports, rather than disrupts, our relationships with them.
• “Motivational Interviewing” (Chapter 46) is a strategy rooted in the transtheoretical model of behavioral change that facilitates youth to consider advancing to the next stage of change. It trusts them as the experts in their own lives and lets them guide their own progress.
• “Helping Youth Overcome Shame and Stigma (Doing Our Best to Not Be a Part of the Problem)” (Chapter 49). Our youth have been through enough. We need settings that are genuinely nonjudgmental and understand that we must see people as they deserve to be seen and not through the lens of the behaviors they may have needed to display or the labels they may have received.

Too often in our agencies, youth are treated like adult clients and not adolescents. Marginalized adolescents, particularly youth of color, are not allowed to be children. They are expected to grow up too quickly, creating many challenges and roadblocks. Instead, youth experiencing homelessness or human trafficking should be met with both direction and intentionality as they are supported in their development, as well as with patience and understanding. Organizations providing housing must, of course, maintain a safe and secure sanctuary. Rules regarding behavior and conduct are essential, and at the same time we need to let young people be young people.

We need to understand the ways in which homelessness and exploitation, and any antecedent or associated adversities, impacts healthy development. Further, we need to understand not only the ways in which adverse experiences can shape the teen brain, but how staff can proactively work with young people to reverse those negative impacts. This is of great importance if we are to truly guide youth to become experts in their own lives as they pursue opportunities for better positioning in life.

Primary Chapters:

• "Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13) offers a whirlwind tour of the social, cognitive, emotional, and moral development of youth, but focuses on those points that affect our ability to effectively interact with youth.  
• “The Teen Brain” (Chapter 15) tells us about the rapidly developing adolescent brain. An understanding of the teen brain enables us to better understand adolescents’ emotions, thinking patterns, and behaviors. It also prepares us to more effectively communicate with young people.

Supportive Chapters:

• “Youth are Experts in Their Own Lives” (Chapter 5) covers how recognizing teens as the greatest experts on their own lives—one of the core principles of positive youth development—better positions adults to engage in a shared decision-making process with adolescents.
• Female and male sexuality are covered in chapters 17 “Sex(uality) Happens: Fostering Healthy, Positive (Female) Sexuality” and 18 “Male Sexuality.” These chapters offer a deeper dive into the key developmental adolescent task of developing a healthy sexuality. The sexuality chapters simultaneously address avoiding perilous risk behaviors sometimes associated with sexual awakening. This is a relevant read for those of us who run agencies where, by necessity, we restrict displays of sexuality. In some ways, we are asking young people to be something other than young people.
• Spirituality and religion are integral parts of the lives of many of the teens we serve. “Spirituality and Resilience in Adolescence: Connection, Purpose, and Love” (Chapter 20) discusses how a better understanding of these elements of young people’s lives can better prepare us to support them as they seek meaning and purpose. This can be particularly critical for young people who were rejected by traditional religious settings.
• “Working Towards a Healthy Masculinity” (Chapter 21) acknowledges that many young men feel pressure to fit into a box, and that in the efforts to live up to these externally imposed standards, they give up a piece of themselves. This chapter prepares us to support young men to be a complete version of themselves. This is critical for our young men who have suffered but who were also raised with the belief that they should “just get past it.”

Youth overcoming homelessness or human trafficking possess remarkable resilience and an innate drive to not only cope and survive in the face of adversity, but to thrive and excel. Despite the significant trauma they may have experienced, they develop emotional toughness, grit, spiritual strength, and a willingness to turn tragedy into triumph. Staff can leverage these strengths as they proudly walk alongside youth, aiding them on their journey. Helping a young person to identify, acknowledge, and appreciate their inherent strengths and self-worth provides a foundation upon which they can see the promise and opportunity in their lives.

Primary Chapters:

• “The 7 Cs: An Interdisciplinary Model That Integrates Positive Youth Development, Resilience-Building Strategies, and Trauma-Sensitive Practices” (Chapter 2) will introduce a comprehensive model that captures the key ingredients youth need to thrive in good times and rise above adversity in challenging times.
• “The Language of Resilience” (Chapter 27) offers examples of how we support versus undermine resilience with our words.

Supportive Chapters:

• Spirituality and religion are integral parts of the lives of many of the teens we serve. “Spirituality and Resilience in Adolescence: Connection, Purpose, and Love” (Chapter 20) discusses how a better understanding of these elements of young people’s lives can better prepare us to support them as they seek meaning and purpose. This can be particularly critical for young people who were rejected by traditional religious settings.
• “Supporting Youth to Build Their Self-Regulation Skills” (Chapter 39) discusses approaches to helping youth gain a sense of control and regulate their response to stressors.
• “Stress Management and Coping: Powerful Strategies to Take Control Over One’s Life” (Chapter 50) will allow you to move beyond telling youth what not to do, and instead will prepare you to suggest positive coping strategies that also alleviate stress. The comprehensive coping strategy presented will aid youth to choose healthy means to deal with discomfort rather than reaching for potentially dangerous quick fixes.
• “Mindfulness Practice for Resilience and Managing Stress and Pain” (Chapter 51) helps youth live fully in the moment while forgetting the past and not worrying about the future. It relieves stress and allows focused thinking.

Young people who have experienced homelessness, unstable housing, or human trafficking by definition have experienced trauma. When you couple the traumatic nature of these lived experiences with the often-accompanying set of childhood adversities, the young people we serve require sensitive approaches. The Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model holds as a central imperative to integrate positive youth-development principles, resilience-building strategies, and the knowledge we gained while working with people who have suffered trauma and hardships. It is this integration that assures we will offer the accountability critical to growth and maintain the high expectations that generate confidence. It is this integration of models that gives us hope; we trust that under the right circumstances people can recover from hard experiences. Therefore, all of the chapters that focus on development and resilience are an integral part of our trauma-sensitive approach.

Our trauma-sensitive model consists of four key principles:

1. Knowing what is about you, and what is not about you.
2. Changing the lens with which we view behavior from “What’s wrong with you!” to “What happened to you?”
3. Seeing people as they deserve to be seen, not based on labels they’ve received or behaviors they’ve displayed.
4. Giving control back to people from whom control has been taken away.

Materials that prepare you to apply these principles are found throughout this toolkit. Section 6 is specifically focused on “Working With Adolescents Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization.” Let’s first highlight chapters that are not in this section. They are organized by the four key principles of our trauma-sensitive practices model.

Knowing what is about you, and what is not about you.

It is hard work to be able to understand that behavior directed at you may not be about you. But it is critical to do so if you are to remain radically calm rather than grow defensive.

• “The Teen Brain” (Chapter 15) will help you better understand the heightened emotional nature of adolescents.
• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24) will help you navigate the reflective practices that enable you to understand what pushes your buttons. Boundaries are not what separate us from people, they are what allows us to draw nearer in a way that is safer for youth and for us.

Changing the lens with which we view behavior from “What’s wrong with you!” to “What happened to you?”

The following chapters, to name a few, offer context to the forces that shape youth. We who serve the youth who have navigated marginalization and oppressive forces their whole lives are acutely aware of what has happened to our youth. Our challenge is to live with that knowledge even when the young people we serve are acting out. The chapters below are reference chapters and do not have to be formally included in this unit. Rather, they serve as stark reminders of the lives our young people have navigated.

• “Grief” (Chapter 65)
• “Bullying” (Chapter 76)
• “Unhealthy Relationships” (Chapter 77)
• “Emotional, Physical, and Sexual Abuse” (Chapter 78)
• “Youth Violence” (Chapter 79)
• “Supporting Youth in Foster Care to Engage in Services and Supports” (Chapter 86)
• “Working With Youth Involved With Juvenile Justice” (Chapter 87)

Seeing people as they deserve to be seen, not based on labels they’ve received or behaviors they’ve displayed.

Many chapters focus on changing how we view, and therefore interact, with youth. They recognize that safe, secure, and sustained—even loving—relationships are what heal young people. They recognize that there is an undermining cultural narrative for all young people and a deeply toxic one for marginalized youth.

• “Examining Our Own Unconscious Biases” (Chapter 29) will help a reader understand what might get in the way of the active “reframing” we must do if we will see people in their best light.
• “Reframing Youth Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization” (Chapter 38)
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44). This chapter may be the most important implementation chapter in Reaching Teens. It is about listening intensely for behaviorally operational strengths and leveraging those strengths to support a person to move beyond undermining behaviors. We see people as they deserve to be seen, so they can see themselves as they deserve to be seen. This is a critical inflection point for people who have a longstanding history of receiving undermining assessments. Rather than being asked to identify strengths, protective factors, or things they are proud of, youth facing homelessness and who have been assessed dozens—even hundreds—of times are often asked to recount traumatic experiences, behaviors that may be viewed negatively, and “problems” they have endured.

Giving control back to people from whom control has been taken away.

Chapters throughout this toolkit offer either the philosophical underpinning of why youth must achieve control over their own lives or offer specific strategies to help young people gain self-control.

• “Youth Are Experts in their Own Lives” (Chapter 5)
• “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13) serves as a reminder that gaining increasing control is a core need for all This is a reminder that applying trauma-sensitive practices universally supports every adolescent.
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems by Using Strength-Based Rather Than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45) reminds us that we restore control to people when we include—rather than exclude—them in healing processes.
• “Motivational Interviewing” (Chapter 46) is a technique that has been shown to support positive behavioral outcomes. It is designed precisely to assure that people have control over what actions they choose to take and the pace of those actions.
• “Helping Adolescents Own Their Solutions: Talking with Youth, Not at Them” (Chapter 48) focuses entirely on harnessing youth wisdom to help them reach healthier conclusions and develop their decision-making capacities.
• “Stress Management and Coping: Powerful Strategies to Take Control Over One’s Life” (Chapter 50) recognizes that quick easy fixes to cope with uncomfortable feelings or experiences often are also destructive. People can take control over their lives when equipped with a repertoire of positive coping strategies.
• “Mindfulness Practice for Resilience and Managing Stress and Pain” (Chapter 51) describes a technique proven to restore balance and a sense of control.
• “Finding Resilience in Sports and Physically Active Recreation” (Chapter 60) speaks to how exercise can build confidence, blow off steam, and allow people to regain higher thinking powers.

Beyond the model…

As we think about trauma-sensitive practices, we recognize that youth-serving professionals who feel supported and have had the opportunity to nurture their personal strengths are positioned to best implement trauma-sensitive services. We recognize this is complex and demanding work that requires intention. For these reasons, Chapters 24 (“Boundaries”), 92 (“Creating Healthy Biocratic Organizations”), and 93 (“Supporting Frontline Staff Who Bear Witness”) are central to implementation.

Now that you are oriented to understand that trauma-sensitive practices are presented throughout this work, let’s prepare you for what is specifically in section 6, which explicitly focuses on trauma-sensitive practices:

• “The Impact of Trauma on Development and Well-Being” (Chapter 36) offers the scientific grounding on what childhood trauma does to the body, brain, and behavior.
• “Trauma-Sensitive Practice: Working With Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37) provides a detailed summary of the Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model and contextualizes it in the existing trauma-sensitive literature. As the anchor of the trauma-sensitive practices in this work, it is likely your starting point.
• “Reframing Youth Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization” (Chapter 38) covers the importance of avoiding labels and understanding past traumatic experiences as the origins of current behavior. It goes a step further by offering strategies in recognizing, elevating, and reinforcing the strengths of youth who have endured adversities.
• “Supporting Youth to Build Their Self-Regulation Skills” (Chapter 39) discusses approaches to helping youth gain a sense of control and regulate their response to stressors.
• “The Power of Safe, Secure, Sustained Relationships in the Lives of Youth” (Chapter 40) reviews the role of consistent and caring relationships with adults as a stabilizing force in the lives of youth who have endured trauma.
• “Radical Calmness” (Chapter 41) discusses the importance and approaches to remaining calm even in the face of challenging youth behavior. Calm begets calm, reinforces felt-safety, and therefore lowers hyperarousal and the need for hypervigilance. It is key to co-regulation.
• “The Traumatic Impact of Racism and Discrimination on Young People and How to Talk About It” (Chapter 42) discusses the life course impact of chronic stressors such as racial discrimination. It prepares professionals to have authentic discussion with youth about these undermining forces.
• “Working with Youth Who Have Endured Sexual Trauma” (Chapter 43) reviews approaches to working with youth who have experienced sexual violence victimization.

Young people experiencing homelessness or human trafficking not only endure the stressors that accompany an unstable—or non-existent—home environment, but often contend with chronic stress resulting from years of adverse childhood experiences. For these youth, empowering them with abilities to recognize their stressors and learn new coping and self-regulation skills are key to ultimately helping them to regain a sense of control over their own lives. Helping a young person to identify the benefits of employing positive coping strategies and behaviors can reduce the risk of recurring homelessness or exploitation and can lead to increased social-emotional well-being.

Primary Chapters:

• “Supporting Youth to Build Their Self-Regulation Skills” (Chapter 39) discusses approaches to helping youth gain a sense of control and regulate their response to stressors.
• “Stress Management and Coping: Powerful Strategies to Take Control Over One’s Life” (Chapter 50) will allow you to move beyond telling youth what not to do, and instead will prepare you to suggest positive coping strategies that also alleviate stress. The comprehensive coping strategy presented will aid youth to choose healthy means to deal with discomfort rather than reaching for potentially dangerous quick fixes.
• “Mindfulness Practice for Resilience and Managing Stress and Pain” (Chapter 51) helps youth live fully in the moment while forgetting the past and not worrying about the future. It relieves stress and allows focused thinking.

Supportive Chapters:

• “The Teen Brain” (Chapter 15) tells us about the rapidly developing adolescent brain. An understanding of the teen brain enables us to better understand adolescents’ emotions, thinking patterns, and behaviors. It also prepares us to more effectively communicate with young people.
• “Examining Our Unconscious Biases” (Chapter 29) looks at thinking patterns and assumptions we may have that can interfere with our ability to objectively draw the most appropriate conclusions, and even guide people towards their most positive futures. If we are not aware of our biases, we can inadvertently trigger youth’s reactive behavior. Because they are acutely aware of our biases.
• “Body Language” (Chapter 30) describes how we can reinforce or undermine our connection with youth through nonverbal communication. In fact, our words represent the smaller fraction of what we convey to others. People skilled in the use of body language can better engage and empower people, as well as diffuse tension.
• “Healing Centered Engagement: Fostering Connections Rather Than Forcing Disclosures” (Chapter 31) underscores that our goal is to form relationships, not to gain information. This is key to creating the safe, secure, and sustained relationships that heal youth.
• “De-escalation and Crisis Management When a Youth Is Acting Out” (Chapter 34) offers strategies to restore calm to a youth whose anxiety, anger, or frustration may be building.
• “Delivering Bad News to Adolescents” (Chapter 35) acknowledges our own internal struggles with being the bearer of difficult news and offers approaches to conveying information in a supportive manner.
• “The Power of Safe, Secure, Sustained Relationships in the Lives of Youth” (Chapter 40) reviews the role of consistent and caring relationships with adults as a stabilizing force in the lives of youth who have endured trauma.
• “Radical Calmness” (Chapter 41) discusses the importance and approaches to remaining calm even in the face of challenging youth behavior. Calm begets calm, reinforces felt-safety, and therefore lowers hyperarousal and the need for hypervigilance. It is key to co-regulation.
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems Using Strength-Based Rather than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45) is about including rather than excluding youth. It allows us to hold young people accountable to being their best selves in a way that supports, rather than disrupts, our relationships with them.

Along the various pathways through which young people wind up experiencing homelessness or human trafficking, in most cases youth will have also endured a loss of power, control, and a sense of ownership in their lives. Whether through unsupportive or unstable home environments, rigid institutional settings (e.g., child welfare, criminal justice, etc.), or the harsh conditions of street homelessness, young people are likely to have developed a sense of powerlessness. Providers can employ concrete strategies to help youth re-frame their decision-making, improve their problem-solving skills, and recognize that they are experts in their own lives.

Chapters throughout this toolkit offer the philosophical underpinning of why youth must achieve control over their own lives and give specific strategies to help them gain self-control.

Primary Chapters:

• “Youth are Experts in Their Own Lives” (Chapter 5)
• “Helping Adolescents Own their Solutions: Talking with Youth, Not at Them” (Chapter 48) focuses entirely on harnessing youth wisdom to help them reach healthier conclusions and develop their decision-making capacities.

Supportive Chapters:

• “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13) serves as a reminder that gaining increasing control is a core need for all
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems Using Strength-Based Rather than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45) reminds us that we restore control to people when we include—rather than exclude—them in healing processes.
• “Motivational Interviewing” (Chapter 46) is a technique that has been shown to support positive behavioral outcomes. It is designed precisely to assure that people have control over what actions they choose to take and the pace of those actions.
• “Stress Management and Coping: Powerful Strategies to Take Control Over One’s Life” (Chapter 50) recognizes that quick, easy fixes to cope with uncomfortable feelings or experiences often are also destructive. People can take control over their lives when equipped with a repertoire of positive coping strategies.
• “Mindfulness Practice for Resilience and Managing Stress and Pain” (Chapter 51) describes a technique proven to restore balance and a sense of control.
• “Promoting Balanced Parenting: Warmth, Clear Boundaries and Effective Monitoring” (Chapter 54) covers how parents can help their children learn self-control. However, in many of our settings, we serve as surrogate parents. This can guide your staff how to achieve that balance of warmth, flexibility, and rules.
• “Finding Resilience in Sports and Physically Active Recreation” (Chapter 60) speaks to how exercise can build confidence, blow off steam, and allow people to regain higher thinking powers. In your setting, you may find that a young person about to “lose it” will feel better when given the opportunity to “run it off”, “shadow-punch it out,” or play it out on a court or field.

Direct-care staff play a pivotal role in setting the tone for effective youth engagement, and staff’s ability to maintain calm in the face of chaotic settings or circumstances is key to successful communication practices. Measures that staff take to regulate their own emotional state and process their own triggers and stressors help them to model positive self-regulation for young people. Youth facing homelessness or human trafficking can benefit from engagement approaches that employ radical calmness and them overcome the high-stress nature of their current circumstances.

Primary Chapters:

• “Radical Calmness” (Chapter 41) discusses the importance and approaches to remaining calm even in the face of challenging youth behavior. Calm begets calm, reinforces felt-safety, and therefore lowers hyperarousal and the need for hypervigilance. It is key to co-regulation.
• “Supporting Youth to Build Their Self-Regulation Skills” (Chapter 39) discusses approaches to helping youth gain a sense of control and regulate their response to stressors.

Supportive Chapters:

• “The Teen Brain” (Chapter 15) tells us about the rapidly developing adolescent brain. An understanding of the teen brain enables us to better understand adolescents’ emotions, thinking patterns, and behaviors. It also prepares us to more effectively communicate with young people.
• “The Language of Resilience” (Chapter 27) offers examples of how we support versus undermine resilience with our words.
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems Using Strength-Based Rather than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45) is about including rather than excluding youth. It allows us to hold young people accountable to being their best selves in a way that supports, rather than disrupts, our relationships with them.
• “Advancing Adult Compassion Resilience in Youth Serving Professionals” (Chapter 91) speaks to the imperative of serving with compassion throughout our careers. It addresses both the barriers to doing so and the strategies to assure we can.
• “Supporting Frontline Staff Who Bear Witness” (Chapter 93) addresses the toll that this work can take on each of us and the necessity of processing both our triumphs and challenges with those who can best relate to our experiences: our coworkers.
• “De-escalation and Crisis Management When a Youth Is Acting Out” (Chapter 34) offers strategies to restore calm to a youth whose anxiety, anger, or frustration may be building.

Building authentic caring relationships is critical to helping young people facing homelessness or human trafficking on their journey to heal from trauma and work toward independence. Effective healing relationships convey absolute respect and unconditional love while also relying on professional boundaries that benefit both youth and staff. Developing trust and rapport with youth who have experienced maltreatment and confronted the uncertainty of homelessness or human trafficking requires a balanced approach—one that provides optimal caring and support while allowing young people to become empowered and develop a sense of autonomy.

Primary Chapters:

• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24) is a critically important chapter in a body of work that states “unconditional love and absolute respect” are key to reaching youth. We must not be afraid of the word “love,” but we must be very clear about what it means. We must practice love with boundaries, both to be protective of our own emotions and to prevent youth from becoming reliant on us in a way that could interfere with their own autonomy. This chapter is a cornerstone of this work and should be continually reflected upon as part of your organizational culture and individual practice. Boundaries are what allow us to serve over a lifetime while maintaining our personal lives. They are not what separate us from the youth we serve, they are what allows us to draw nearer.

Supportive Chapters:

• “Youth are Experts in Their Own Lives” (Chapter 5) covers how recognizing teens as the greatest experts on their own lives—one of the core principles of positive youth development—better positions adults to engage in a shared decision-making process with adolescents.
• “Setting the Stage for a Trustworthy Relationship” (Chapter 23) offers a strategy to initially address some of the major issues teens and families consider as they extend their trust to you.
• “Healing Centered Engagement: Fostering Connections Rather Than Forcing Disclosures” (Chapter 31) underscores that our goal is to form relationships, not to gain information.
• “The Power of Safe, Secure, Sustained Relationships in the Lives of Youth” (Chapter 40) reviews the role of consistent and caring relationships with adults as a stabilizing force in the lives of youth who have endured trauma.
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44) is the heart of Reaching Teens. It is about seeing young people the way they deserve to be seen and leveraging their behaviorally-operational strengths to drive their forward progress. This can be useful with all young people, but can be key to engaging demoralized youth who may have internalized disempowering messages.
• “Motivational Interviewing” (Chapter 46) is a strategy rooted in the transtheoretical model of behavioral change that facilitates youth to consider advancing to the next stage of change. It trusts them as the experts in their own lives and lets them guide their own progress.
• “Helping Adolescents Own Their Solutions: Talking with Youth, Not at Them” (Chapter 48) offers an approach to facilitate youth to make their own decisions. The strategies covered in this chapter both facilitate healthy development and are central to trauma-sensitive practices because they increase youths’ self-control. The chapter offers communication strategies to use in lieu of the dreaded lecture, which backfires by triggering and disempowering youth. It also offers a strategy for working with youth who have grown to view themselves as powerless in their ability to move away from worrisome behaviors. It allows them to contemplate alternate futures and take simple steps toward desirable behaviors. This also is about young people taking control, reminding us that our role is as facilitator, not “fixer”.
• “Healer, Heal Thyself: Self-care for the Caregiver” (Chapter 90) builds the case for the importance of caring for yourself and offers concrete strategies to do so.
• “Advancing Adult Compassion Resilience in Youth Serving Professionals” (Chapter 91) speaks to the imperative of serving with compassion throughout our careers. It addresses both the barriers to doing so and the strategies to assure we can.
• In “Creating Healthy Biocratic Organizations,” (Chapter 92), Dr. Sandy Bloom, author of multiple books on the subject, speaks to those organizational structures and processes that can be healthy or unhealthy. Without the scaffolding of healthy organizations, none of us can reach our potential to serve others while remaining whole ourselves.
• “Supporting Frontline Staff Who Bear Witness” (Chapter 93) addresses the toll that this work can take on each of us and the necessity of processing both our triumphs and challenges with those who can best relate to our experiences: our coworkers.
• “Have I Really Made a Difference? Trusting That Our Presence Matters” (Chapter 95) reminds us that although we sometimes wonder if we have made a difference, we need to trust that our guidance can have a lasting effect—even after our visits are a distant memory. Our knowledge that we are planting seeds restores us on a daily basis.

Accompanying young people facing homelessness on a journey to heal and achieve independence can take a heavy toll on staff—emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, or even physically. In order to honor a commitment to developing and sustaining consistent and caring relationships with young people, staff—and agencies—must incorporate intentional self-care strategies that prevent burnout and guard against vicarious trauma. The effects of vicarious trauma, a lack of proper boundaries, and insufficient measures to support self-care among staff can lead to high turnover rates, departure from the field, or (perhaps worse) disengagement that can be harmful to youth.

Primary Chapters:

• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24) is a critically important chapter in a body of work that states “unconditional love and absolute respect” are key to reaching youth. We must not be afraid of the word “love,” but we must be very clear about what it means. We must practice love with boundaries both to be protective of our own emotions and to prevent youth from becoming reliant on us in a way that could interfere with their own autonomy. This chapter is a cornerstone of this work and should be continually reflected upon as part of your organizational culture and individual practice. Boundaries are what allow us to serve over a lifetime while maintaining our personal lives. They are not what separate us from the youth we serve; they are what allow us to draw nearer.
• “Vicarious Resilience: How and Why Working With Youth Helps Us Thrive” (Chapter 25) reminds us that, in fact, this work itself is life-affirming and that we benefit from the privilege of working with young people.
• “Have I Really Made a Difference? Trusting That Our Presence Matters” (Chapter 95) reminds us that although we sometimes wonder if we have made a difference, we need to trust that our guidance can have a lasting effect—even after our visits are a distant memory. Our knowledge that we are planting seeds restores us on a daily basis.
• “Advancing Adult Compassion Resilience in Youth Serving Professionals” (Chapter 91) speaks to the imperative of serving with compassion throughout our careers. It addresses both the barriers to doing so and the strategies to assure we can.

Supportive Chapters:

• “Youth are Experts in Their Own Lives” (Chapter 5) covers how recognizing teens as the greatest experts on their own lives—one of the core principles of positive youth development—better positions adults to engage in a shared decision-making process with adolescents. Further, knowing that our role is to empower youth to recognize their own strengths relieves us of the sole responsibility to “repair” youth. The mistaken notion that we must do the work, rather than facilitate the youth’s internal wisdom, leads to our burnout.
• “Trauma-Sensitive Practice: Working With Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37) provides a detailed summary of the Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model and contextualizes it in the existing trauma-sensitive literature. As the anchor of the trauma-sensitive practices in this work, it is likely your starting point. The first major principle within the Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model is “Knowing what is about you, and what is not about you.” This allows us to understand that anger seemingly directed towards us is not really about us or the services we are trying to provide. Knowing this will, in the short term, allow us to serve without becoming defensive. In the longer term, it will lessen burnout because we will be able to be supportive during expressions of pain without personally absorbing them.
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44) is the heart of Reaching Teens. It is about seeing young people the way they deserve to be seen and leveraging their behaviorally-operational strengths to drive their forward progress. This can be useful with all young people, but can be key to engaging demoralized youth who may have internalized disempowering messages. It also empowers youth with the seeds of change, emphasizing that our role is as facilitator not “fixer”. This allows us to retain more of our own energy.
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems Using Strength-Based Rather than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45) is about including rather than excluding youth. It allows us to hold young people accountable to being their best selves in a way that supports, rather than disrupts, our relationships with them. Rejecting youth is inconsistent with our values; such inconsistencies lead to our own demoralization and therefore contribute to our burnout. Restorative practices allows us to more consistently live by our values of service.
• “Health Realization—Accessing a Higher State of Mind No Matter What” (Chapter 47) assumes that humans have a natural predisposition to be healthy, and that professionals can be more effective when we assume the role of facilitating youth back to that state of equilibrium. You, similarly, have that predisposition.
• “Mindfulness Practice for Resilience and Managing Stress and Pain” (Chapter 51) helps youth live fully in the moment while forgetting the past and not worrying about the future. It relieves stress and allows focused thinking. The lessons apply to us as well.
• “The Role of Lifestyle in Mental Health Promotion” (Chapter 59) and “Finding Resilience in Sports and Physically Active Recreation” (Chapter 60) speak of the preventive power of wellness as well as the capacity of health-promoting strategies to restore health, wellness, and spirituality, even in the face of extreme stress or trauma.
• “Healer, Heal Thyself: Self-care for the Caregiver” (Chapter 90) builds the case for the importance of caring for yourself and offers concrete strategies to do so.
• “Supporting Frontline Staff Who Bear Witness” (Chapter 93) addresses the toll that this work can take on each of us and the necessity of processing both our triumphs and challenges with those who can best relate to our experiences: our coworkers.

For many young people facing homelessness or human trafficking, strengthening connections to family can be a pivotal approach to helping them overcome trauma and take steps toward wellness and independence. Even in cases where youth have experienced strained family relationships, in some instances, effective communication strategies with parents and family members can lead to successful reunification. Agency staff have the opportunity to employ the same strength-based communications strategies that they use with young people when they work with parents or other family members. Using these skills can also help family members who have experienced trauma and marginalization, in part by recognizing their resilience and through working to reduce shame and stigma.

Primary Chapters:

• “Promoting Balanced Parenting: Warmth, Clear Boundaries, and Effective Monitoring” (Chapter 54) helps you guide parents toward a parenting style that has been demonstrated to be associated with greater academic success, higher levels of emotional health, and lower risk among a wide spectrum of behaviors.
• “Delivering Upsetting News to Parents: Recognizing Their Strengths First” (Chapter 55) offers a strategy to engage parents so that they can support their children to navigate through challenges. It focuses on doing so without shame or stigma, while recognizing the parents’ strengths and their critical role in their teen being able to move forward.
• “When Parents’ Resilience Reaches Its Limits” (Chapter 56) recognizes that parenting a teen can sometimes be difficult and that moments of anger and exhaustion are expected. It emphasizes that especially during those times, parents need to make the effort to renew strong connections with their teen.
• “Parents Who Have Experienced Trauma and Marginalization: Engaging Them in a Strength-Based Partnership” (Chapter 58) discusses how we can best meet the needs of teens and families whose parents may have earned the right to be hyper-vigilant, reactive, or not trusting of professionals or service agencies. It is a reminder that if we are to be trauma-sensitive and strength based, we must be so for the family unit and community, not just for the young people. It reminds us of the imperative of being as trauma-sensitive and universally respectful with parents and other caregivers as we are with young people.