Community

A place-based community response to youth problems

The issues faced by adolescents and young adults are not necessarily simple problems that lend themselves to simple solutions. The service systems directed at young people tend to be crisis-oriented and designed to respond to a designated target groups of young people who meet certain program criteria.

Given the societal changes over the past 50 years in particular, the issues faced by young people are complex and difficult and have resisted significant remediation. A new way of thinking is to seek greater integration of services and improved cooperation of agencies and departments. Rather than focus on aspects of a problem with specific programs unconnected with other specific programs, a more promising approach is to focus on developing interventions where the problems occur – a focus on place or place-based service provision.

There are several approaches that can be described as place-based service provision. One is simply to pour more resources and programs into a particular disadvantaged area; another is to emphasis better coordination and integration of existing services within a community; while a third more robust place-based approach is ‘collective impact’.

Collective impact requires a rigorous discipline and a system reform agenda – the formation of a community collective of key stakeholders around a vision for the future and an agenda for change, shared data amongst participating services, a system of services and supports that compromise a functioning local system of support for young people, constant communication amongst partners and with the community in which the collective acts, and lastly but not least, sustained backbone support for the duration of the change and in order to ensure the maintenance of the changed local service system.