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Jessica Dawson, Carly Casto, Jeanine Wagner

Personal & Community Health

11-11-16

Youth Violence

A big problem in our society is youth violence and young adolescents thinking it is okay

to be violent. Bullying and school violence happens worldwide. We did some research to

understand how big of a problem youth violence is and the healthy people objectives told us a lot

about the problem we have. They had a lot of different objectives such as, reducing bullying

among adolescents and reduce the presence of school gangs. (Healthy People, 2016) There are

many more objectives that they talk about. The objectives that they mentioned had certain

percentages that represent a number of schools in America. The objectives also had target

numbers that Healthy People 2020 want to reach by the year 2020. We have come up with a

certain program that could help reduce the levels of youth violence in urban neighborhoods.

Youth violence is a growing issue in all parts of the United States. More specifically,

violence among adolescents in urban, low income populations is increasing rapidly. Healthy

People 2020 gave shocking statistics about the prevalence of youth violence and adolescent

bullying. Some of the pertinent evidence includes statistics of how big of a problem youth

violence in schools is. 31.5% of adolescents in middle school and high school physically fight

with each other in a school setting. The goal of Healthy People 2020 intends to decrease that

number to 28.4% of adolescent students engaging in fighting. Healthy People also found that

19.9% of adolescents are bullied, 5.6% of adolescent students carried weapons on school

property, and 12.4% of students in inner city schools are involved in gangs. Healthy People also

set goals for each of these objectives. There were statistics shown by Healthy People that showed
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that none of these objectives have reached their target, but there is hope that they will reach the

target by 2020. These staggering statistics show that youth violence is prevalent in many

different forms and are at a high enough number to be dangerous to a large number of kids. One

statistic that shows youth violence is caused by certain determinants of health is that 772,000

adolescents are mistreated in the home, 55% of which occur before the age of 7 years

(Weymouth, 2011). Child abuse is a determinant of health that cannot be avoided by the child

and can cause severe consequences to their overall social and physical development.

Often times, professionals can predict a child’s predisposition for violence by the age of 6

years based on their risk factors (Lecture). There are many risk factors that contribute to the

likelihood of youth violence. The factors that have the most influence on adolescent violence are

the individual determinants of health that are not possible to change. In other words, any

characteristics of an individual that are not determined by relationships or influences from others

are considered individual determinants of health. Examples include being a male, antisocial

behavior, low IQ/low education, and general offenses (Youth Violence). Along with individual

determinants of health that influence youth violence, family and community risk factors can also

lead to high risk behavior. Family dynamics cannot be changed by the individual, which can

have detrimental effects on the youth if it is an unhealthy atmosphere. As mentioned earlier,

parental violence towards kids leads to an increase in the child participating in violent behavior.

Other family determinants of health include parental separation, low socioeconomic status, and

abuse (Youth Violence).

In order to determine an effective program to minimize and/or prevent youth violence,

Individual and social determinants of health need to be understood. Individual determinants of

health that most influence youth violence are being male, displaying antisocial behaviors, living
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in a broken home, and have had previous encounters with law enforcement. Accumulations of

multiple risk factors, such as the ones mentioned, are the most threatening for kids to develop a

violent lifestyle. When adolescents grow up in a family with poor relationships and are living in

poverty, the child also increases their risk of becoming physically violent or getting involved in

gangs.

When developing a program to minimize youth violence among adolescents, it is

important to target individuals and families who display the most risk factors. With this in mind,

the program will target middle and high school kids within inner city schools and low income

areas. The individuals who will be targeted will be male adolescents who live in a broken home,

have a low IQ, have general offenses and display antisocial behavior. In order to reach this target

population, peer groups and after school programs will be utilized in order to provide an

alternative activity for individuals who are at high risk of being involved with violent activities.

The best intervention techniques to combat youth violence is to target all levels of the

socioeconomic model. In order to help combat this nation-wide problem each community should

do their part to help. Our program will attempt to get the entire community involved to help

reduce the presence of youth violence. Our program will be called Project Turn Around, which

displays the goal of redirecting kids’ lives from ones of violence and trouble with the law, to

becoming good citizens who contribute positively to their community.

The program will be held at the local middle school for most of the activities. The only

exceptions would be for the job shadowing part of the Life Skills Program, which would occur at

various businesses in the community. The program will be held for two hours after-school on

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The younger group in the Mentoring Program will be

comprised of boys ages ten to fourteen who come from broken homes, have committed general
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offenses, and display anti-social behavior. The Life Skills Program will be comprised of boys

ages fifteen to twenty who also come from broken homes, have low IQ, have committed general

offenses, and display anti-social behavior. We will discern who qualifies for each program by

consulting school personnel, and then advertising the program to those who it would benefit. In

addition, the program will be advertised to all boys who qualify in at least one category. This

will increase participation due to commonalities in friend groups, so that the boys will not feel

singled out. In order to pay the few main administrative positions, the program will operate on

cost per family plan based on what tax bracket they are in; those below the poverty line will be

asked to contribute if they can. In addition, we hope to establish relationships with local

businesses to donate money or equipment to help offset the cost paid by the participants, in

hopes that cost will not be a deterrent for participating in the program. Besides the initial startup

costs of the program, the only main expenses will be for the use of the building and paying the

administrators.

The Mentoring Program will rely heavily on volunteers willing to give up their time to

help things run smoothly. There will need to be mentors for this program between the ages of

seventeen and twenty-two, which we hope to find through school programs that require

community service such as Student Council and National Honors Society as well as local

churches’ young adult ministries. These mentors will serve as role models and a support system

to show the participants that someone cares about them. They will participate in games which get

the children active and moving around. They will also help with any homework the boys have to

give them one-on-one attention to make sure they understand what is going on in school. Finally,

the mentors will teach the boys using interactive techniques about topics such as learning how to

react to issues with friends, learning how to make good choices for their health, and
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understanding how to stand up to negative peer pressure. The mentors will serve to increase the

boys’ confidence and to help them believe they can reach any goal that they set for their futures.

The Life Skills Program will rely heavily on volunteers from the community to be

mentors. We hope to get a wide variety of different businesses and occupations involved in the

job shadowing portions of the program so that the boys can be exposed to many different career

paths. For one of the sessions held each week, the participants will choose an occupation that

they are interested in to shadow. They may continue to shadow one person they like or if they do

not know what they are interested in, they can try different occupations each week. These

mentors will also help to increase the participants’ confidence in themselves, and to encourage

the participants that they can accomplish any goal that they set for themselves. The mentors will

take turns teaching skills which will help to reduce the time commitment that is required for the

program. Some of the skills taught by the mentors will include small sewing projects, how to

balance a checkbook, how to make and maintain a budget, how to apply for scholarships and

jobs, how to create a resume, how to make quick and easy meals, and how to operate common

power tools. We will ask teachers to help with the education portion of the program which aims

to improve participants’ abilities in subjects such as language, literacy, and math. In addition,

GED tutoring will be offered for those who have dropped out of school or will not be able to

pass the state standardized tests required to graduate.

Since a lot of the participants are either at risk or have already committed some sort of

law violation, we want to get the police department involved in the program. Once a week, for

both the Mentoring and Life Skills programs, members of the police force will come in and

begin with icebreaker activities such as sports, team-building, or other types of games to break

down the barrier between them and the participants. After the activity, they will provide a short
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talk with the boys about topics such as the importance of neighborhood watches, proper self-

defense techniques, places and programs they can attend in their community for something to do,

how to deal with negative peer pressure, and how to properly act in court (for those who it

applies to). By having the police officers interacting with the boys, it will help to develop better

relationships between the two groups of the community.

The two hardest parts for starting this program will be finding funding and enough

volunteers. Money is always an issue when attempting to evoke change in a community;

however, even if money cannot be donated perhaps businesses will be willing to donate other

items that could be used. Time is almost as hard to come by as money for people in low-income

communities. It always seems like at least one person is looking for a way out of their current

situation, so we are relying on that mindset to help find people who will be willing to volunteer

to run the program. Even finding businesses who will be willing to let young men come shadow,

who have proven to be troublemakers in the past, will be difficult to find. The hardest part will

be to find the first few volunteers and the first few businesses, but once people see that the

program is working and there have not been any issues, many more will be willing to join. This

program attempts to impact the individual, interpersonal, organizational, and community levels

of the Socioeconomic Model, therefore it comes just shy of meeting every level, which has been

proven to be the most effective way to produce change within a population.

While developing this program, certain issues arose that will be likely barriers for the

success of this program. It can be very difficult trying to convince adolescents to step out of their

shells and try to change their ways. Asking a kid to stop being violent is like telling your dog to

stop barking. One barrier that was encountered was the lack of participation in the afterschool

programs from parental disapproval. This is a barrier that is anticipated because some parents
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will likely not feel comfortable leaving their children at school after hours. The parents also may

not be able to leave them after school because it would not match their work schedule or it could

be an overall hassle for transportation if the student usually rides the bus. Another predicted

barrier is that there will be a lack of interest by the target students. After school activities are not

always appealing to students, especially when they may not enjoy school in general. Getting

students to want to stay at school for longer than is required is an issue that will likely be

experienced. Another barrier is that the target population might not have a social group that

would be willing to participate in the program. Peer pressure and peer interactions is an

important aspect of why youth programs work or don’t work. If the students don’t have anyone

to go with, they will be less likely to go because of the fear of what their friends think. In order

to avoid a large amount of students succumbing to these barriers, the program will offer

incentives that will be difficult for the students to turn down, such as fun activities and food.

In conclusion, youth violence in low income neighborhoods is a problem everywhere in

America. We have set up a program that would give the adolescents a chance to get educated on

how it is important for them to know the good from the bad. We believe that if this program

would to be in place around urban neighborhoods it would decrease the numbers of violent

crimes in those neighborhoods and in schools. There are many different barriers that get in the

way of this program being successful. We hope that even with these barriers, the violent

adolescents can be persuaded and convinced to change their lives and their violent ways.
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References

Weymouth, L. A., & Howe, T. R. (2011). A multi-site evaluation of Parents Raising Safe

Kids Violence Prevention Program. Children and Youth Services Review,33(10), 1960-1967.

doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.05.022

Youth violence: A report of the Surgeon General. (2001). Chapter Four. Retrieved

November 13, 2016.

Healthy People 2020. (2011). [Online]. Available: www.healthypeople.gov [2016,

November 13].