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Youth Master Plans

“The gaping hole in many of today's youth is a sense of place in the community and a stake in that community. The absence of such bonding strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a person, which is, in part, being beholden to others. It also strikes at the very heart of our political structure, for if teens do not view themselves as being subscribers to the social contract, they will see no sense in following it." -American Youth Policy Forum
	Introduction
	Onsite-Insights (O/I) provides a variety of expertise and services that will ensure that a city’s Youth Master Plan is successfully created and implemented. Our staff have a vast array of experience in youth master planning, youth development, and youth engagement and in merging this experience with the resources and talents of the youth and adults living and working in your city. We not only bring the experience you need to guide you through a Youth Master Planning process, we also bring an unwavering belief in the power and value of youth as change agents and the understanding that the issues facing young people and families are more about improving systems than they are about changing kids. O/I not only will help your city create a functional planning document, we will also assist you in ensuring you have the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to implement the plan's strategies, and that the planning process will optimize success.

	Understanding Our Approach to Youth Master Planning
	Creating a Youth Master Plan is a strategy that an ever-increasing number of cities and counties are beginning to explore in their attempt to more effectively and efficiently address the seemingly overwhelming number of issues that are impacting its' children, youth and families. O/I incorporates a planning model based on the National League of Cities position paper entitled, A City Platform for Strengthening Families and Improving Outcomes for Children and Youth. This platform, while identifying the key focus areas, also allows for a great deal of adaptation, ensuring current and unforeseen issues in your city will also be addressed. We also believe that for a community to shift how it works with and provides for its children, youth and families it must learn a new youth development language. To assist your community learn this new language we draw heavily and the Developmental Assets (SM) framework developed and championed by Search Institute. O/I also believes that the effectiveness of a Youth Master Plan is far more dependent on the pre-planning, initiation and implementation phases than on the strategies identified in the document itself. Our efforts go far beyond simply creating a document outlining the status of your city's children, youth and families. We ensure that the process leading up to the plan is comprehensive and inclusive and that the structure needed to ensure long-term viability is in place. Our planning model also puts into place a whole new way of addressing and engaging youth from your city and creates a process that brings young people and adults together as effective partners and change agents. All the experience and research from the field of youth development indicates that to effectively address youth related issues, communities must shift from applying approaches that are reactive and deficit-based to those that are well-planned and strength-based. The following diagram indicates the shifts O/I facilitates in its pre-planning approach:
		Deficit-based Approach Intended to solve youth problems Focused on individuals Focused on problems Addressing the few in need Reducing deficits Fragmented in its approaches	»	Strength-based Approach Building a community where all youth thrive Focused on systems Focused on opportunities Addressing the first two decades for all youth Increasing assets Collaborative in its approaches
	To accomplish these shifts O/I focuses on helping a community become developmentally attentive to its children, youth and families. We define a developmentally attentive city as one that uses strength-based approaches to intentionally support the healthy development in all its' children through the first two decades of their lives. We accomplish this by creating a "snapshot" of what the city wants to accomplish. During the initiating phase we attend as much to building partnerships that ensure success as we do to data gathering. O/I creates a process that greatly increases the likelihood that those interested in contributing have the opportunity. During the initiating phase we assist in the creation of a vision embraced by the many, rather than the few, we help those involved understand the "real" current reality, rather than the "statistics only" reality, we assist in creating a groundswell of support to ensure resources and energy can be placed into the development of a city's children and youth, and we create structures that begin the process of learning to work effectively and efficiently together, especially among the city's youth and adults. Our youth development, youth engagement and youth planning lessons were learned from our efforts in Hampton, Virginia, and from over 200 communities who have contracted with us. These lessons include: Successful youth planning occurs only when a city can shift its view of young people from merely recipients of services to resources and partners in the overall well being of the city. Karen Pittman’s basic premise of youth development is that "Problem free is not fully prepared, fully prepared is not fully developed, and fully developed is not fully engaged". O/I believes that a Youth Master Plan must focus as much attention on the development of all youth as it does on the prevention or remediation of those individuals deemed to be at risk. It also needs to view young people as important contributors in all aspects of the planning process. A Youth Master Plan document is only a guideline or road map. Without a citywide commitment of the resources needed to make the plan work, to the training needed for young people and adults to work more effectively and efficiently together, and an understanding that the process is a journey not a destination, it will prove to be ineffective. The information that is collected and used to create a Youth Master Plan must focus as much on what's working for youth in the city as it does on what needs to be improved. Therefore, data collection must be both an engaging and anecdotal process involving a variety of citizens and a process for obtaining official data points. All citizens, including young people, should be able to have a role in both the planning and implementation phases of the Youth Master Plan. The more who participate, the more the chances of success. Everyone should be able to support what the plan identifies as important. Those assigned to staff or mange the strategies identified in a Youth Master Plan must be given the authority needed to implement and should have the knowledge, skills and abilities to oversee such an initiative. These individuals do not all need to be city employees, in fact we have found that partnerships with youth-serving organizations are a good way to marry much needed skills and resources. O/I will assist your city in assessing your community's current ability to provide the developmentally attentive services, supports and opportunities needed for all youth to thrive. We also provide the knowledge and skills needed to allow young people to become more able to contribute to their community. We access the talents and energy in a community and help ensure that potentially fragmented approaches can become part of a well-orchestrated plan. And finally, we assist in the creation of strong youth and adult partnerships that allow a city to access the special gifts of both populations and to allow every citizen to play a meaningful role in the future health and welfare of the community.

	Our Youth Master Planning Approach
	From experience, O/I believes that it requires at least a year to effectively create and implement a successful Youth Master Plan. We believe that Youth Master Plans are only useful if the implementation strategies are well designed and embraced by all the key stakeholders. Facilitating a planning process requires time. To ensure that this planning process is successful, O/I is committed to adhering to the following Planning Process Guidelines: Our number one focus throughout the planning and implementation phases is inclusiveness. We prepare participants with the skills needed to assume the responsibilities given to them. The data used to create the plan is compiled from as many existing and new sources as possible. We want to know how each group of stakeholders responds to the question, "What do we want for our young people?" We facilitate sharing and learning among all participants. We blend our expertise and connections with the expertise and connections of those working and living within your city. We our committed to leaving your city with a Youth Master Plan that is inclusive, visionary and realistic, and developmentally attentive.