Jeffrey M. Jenson

At no time in U. S. history have young people been confronted by such an array of positive and negative influences and opportunities. The recent coronavirus pandemic, in particular, has adversely impacted the behavioural health of young people by disrupting normal school, family, interpersonal, and social norms. In this text, the authors respond to recent calls from practitioners, policymakers, and the public to increase the use of effective prevention approaches for child and adolescent behavioural health challenges. This book reviews evidence and identifies practice and policy issues pertaining to the prevention of common child and adolescent behavioural health problems: 1) substance use/misuse; 2) delinquent conduct; 3) violence, including the perpetration and victimisation of bullying, sexual violence, and dating violence; and 4) school dropout. The authors identify effective prevention approaches and discuss the challenges associated with developing, implementing, and testing prevention strategies. The applied nature of the book offers readers detailed program and intervention examples. All eight chapters in this new edition have been thoroughly updated to reflect the latest scholarship and thinking in the field. A key highlight of the book is the accompanying Active Learning resources for students. This is a must-have text for clinical and community practice, social policy, and youth and human development courses in social work, family studies, public health, psychology, and other human services programs.

Risk, Resilience, and Positive Youth Development: Developing Effective Community Programs for High-Risk Youth: Lessons from the Denver Bridge Project describes an approach to developing and testing effective community-based programs for at-risk children and youth. This volume shows how elements of risk and resilience, positive youth development, and organizational collaboration are used to develop a comprehensive intervention framework called the Integrated Prevention and Early Intervention (IPEI) Model. The IPEI is then applied to a community-based after-school program called the Bridge Project to illustrate how an integrated intervention framework can be used to prevent childhood and adolescent problems and improve academic achievement. Findings from an evaluation of the Denver Bridge Project intervention components are presented, and recommendations for advancing policy and practice for high-risk youth in community-based programs are described. Readers will follow the planning, development, implementation, evaluation and assessment of the Bridge Project guided by first-person perspectives from program participants who share their stories throughout the book. Risk, Resilience, and Positive Youth Development presents an integrated theory and model for working with at-risk youth, demonstrated in a detailed case example, giving practitioners, administrators, educators, researchers and policymakers a complete package.