Youth Support

Youth Support

Facilitate Youth Connections and Prosocial Activities

  • Encouraging and fostering positive social relationships and friendships can enhance protective factors. Support participation in activities that align with the youth’s interests.
  • It is recommended that the youth have a peer support person. The peer support person can help the youth with socialization, problem solving, increasing positive feelings and interactions, help decrease frustration, and reduce regulation difficulties
  • Consider connecting the youth to your local Children Services Youth Advisory Board so they can connect the youth to others who are going through what they are experiencing
  • Connecting with a positive role model can help the youth get out in the community and provide support for practicing social skills. Someone from a local agency, college/university or a paraprofessional might be interested in helping practice social and self-regulation skills and could serve in a mentorship role at home, after school, or in the community. Consider connecting the youth to supportive interaction opportunities like Big Brother or Big Sister, Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, or 4H.
  • Seek out recreational activities where the youth can spend time with others who have similar interests and developmental expectations. Explore summer camp options that can provide a fun setting to practice skill building.
  • For youth with social skill difficulties, consider finding a youth support group for youth with mood or trauma symptoms
  • Find peer support person or youth support group to help with socialization, problem solving, and regulation. Local programs may have social or friendship groups designed for young people with autism. These can also be appropriate for youth without an autism diagnosis.
  • o    Youth may prefer to explore ways to help feel connected and develop peer relationships through monitored online connections with a “virtual hangout buddy” or writing with a pen pal.
  • Identify mentors or life coaches

Empower Youth with Choices

  • Collaborate with youth to identify goals and interventions designed to empower them. Providing opportunities for the youth to take on helpful or leadership roles when appropriate can foster a sense of purpose and competence.
  • Youth’s behavior may reflect a desire for control as children often have limited autonomy over their daily experiences. Allow youth to gain control by offering choice within activities and contexts in which either choice is acceptable to adults.  

Accessibility Updates in Progress Notice

We are currently working to update content in this toolkit for accessibility. If you have difficulty accessing any of the content while we are making updates, please contact GRCAccess@osumc.edu

Online Peer Support

It is recommended to support the youth in connecting with other youth who have had similar life experience. Two resources to do this include Youth Move and Hey, I’m Here

Online Resources

Identify Youth Goals, Explore Motivators, and Build Upon Interests

  • Empower the youth to identify activities that are of interest to them and that will encourage self-worth, choice, and control
  • Explore motivators with the youth and work with the youth to identify their goals
  • Focus on the strengths of the youth to help empower, give hope, and create joy in their life
    • Encourage activities the youth enjoys that build on strengths or interests (E.g., participation in sports, working with animals, church choir, cooking or art classes).
    • Could also include career development opportunities that focus on the use of his strengths and interests while being sensitive to any support needs. Success in employment has been therapeutic for individuals to feel accomplished and can place effort on engagement in future planning.
  • Make sure the youth has some joy in each day
  • Encourage youth to associate difficult or non-preferred tasks with positive experiences
  • Find ways to promote strengths and leadership by having the youth mentor or help others with tasks in which they excel.
  • Leverage strengths to overcome challenges. Help the youth identify what they are good at and provide reminders during challenging times.

 

Visual Support Resources

Adding a visual component to daily routines and schedules can help the youth remember routines and schedule as well as help them to become more independent. There are numerous resources available to help learn about and create visual supports.

Resources for Trauma Informed Care

Youth who have experienced trauma should be provided interventions, instruction, and support that are trauma-informed. This applies to educational settings and especially to behavior support programs or interventions. Several resources to consider:

Wellness Resources

Trauma-informed wellness practices may enhance social-emotional learning, self-soothing skills, and cultivation of a sense of safety for the self.

  • CalmConnect
  • Youth Yoga Project- yoga and mindfulness
  • Interactive Journaling
  • Advocacy and Protection Services, Inc. (APSI)

    APSI is a not-for-profit organization that advocates for outcomes that promote dignity, respect, and enhanced quality of life for individual persons with developmental disabilities. They may provide technical assistance and resources that allows the person to maintain a level of decision making and control while providing protection of rights. Individuals may contact APSI to identify a representative payee or someone to help an them manage finances safely.

  • The Comprehensive Autism Planning System (CAPS)

    The CAPS is a tool to help teachers and educational teams to plan and implement a student’s program across the school but may be adapted to plan for success across other environments. The CAPS takes the team through the process of planning goals/objectives to be targeted in each activity of the day, the modifications and accommodations that should be provided to support the student in each activity, the sensory supports to help the student stay engaged, and the communication and social supports that the student needs to be successful. The CAPS model may be used alone or in combination with the Ziggurat Model.

    The Comprehensive Autism Planning System (CAPS) for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Related Disabilities book by Shawn A. Henry and Brenda Smith Myles is available in the OCALI library.

  • Disability Rights Ohio (DRO)

    DRO provides legal advocacy and rights protection to a wide range of people with disabilities. This includes assisting individuals with problems such as abuse, neglect, discrimination, access to assistive technology, special education, housing, employment, community integration, voting and rights protection issues.

  • Amaze.org

    This website offers evidence-based, age-appropriate, trauma-informed sexual health education videos on a variety of topics.

Additional Suggested Resources

Reading Recommendations

Toolkit Topics

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