Adolescent and Youth Services

Vision:

Is to protect youth by developing supports for the safety, permanency, and well-being needs of youth, with their families, friends, and communities.

Mission:

Is to use a positive youth development (PYD) approach in educating, equipping, empowering and evaluating practices that:

Strengthen the protection of youth and young adults from the risks of maltreatment and/or exploitation.
Strengthen the protective strategies to help reduce the risks to youth and young adult development.
Strengthen the developmental processes and assets needed to achieve and maintain youth-to-young adult self-determination and self-sufficiency.

Philosophical Approach:

As a national model of care, we strive to collaboratively work together with others to strengthen the assets, hopes, and dreams of youth, their families, friends, and communities by using evidence-informed practices and designing promising approaches that are informed by youth and family voices.

Our Strategy:

Is to use an inclusive, collaborative positive youth development approach as our basic foundation for youth-to-youg adult development. This strategy inclusively connects and affirms each youth and community member's role, responsibilities, and contributions to helping youth survive and thrive.

Our Positive Youth Development PYD (PYD) approach includes an emphasis on mobilizing community support resources by using the "40 Developmental Assets" Model that provides a quick checklist to inventory how many internal and external developmental assets a youth currently has and needs. Our goal is to help youth gain and maintain 31 or more assets.

Learn More: To access and download these free, on-line checklists, click on these links:

Checklists for:

Youth Serving Professionals

Public and Private Funders

Policy and Decision Makers

Contact:

Bob Coulson, MPA, MA, MDiv
Adolescent Services Administrator,
303-866-4706

revised 01/20/2012