Youth Development and Leadership— Youth and Family Section

The transition into adult life can be more effective and fulfilling if youth are supported by their families in developing understanding and skills in the five areas of youth development - working, learning, thriving, connecting, and leading.

Resources

Because I Love You: The Parent Support Group
http://www.becauseiloveyou.org/
This website contains information and resources to help parents deal with everything from messy rooms and school achievement to truancy, drugs, and abuse.

DisabilityInfo.Gov
http://www.disabilityinfo.gov/
The comprehensive Federal website of disability-related government resources for health, education, employment, independent living and more.

Independent Living Centers
http://www.ilusa.com/links/ilcenters.htm
The website provides information on the history of independent living and links to Centers for Independent Living in the United States and overseas.

National Center for Secondary Education and Transition (NCSET) Parent Briefs
http://www.ncset.org/publications/default.asp#parent
These briefs introduce important issues to parents and youth including youth leadership and the IEP process.

Parent Training and Information Centers
http://www.taalliance.org/centers/
The website contains information on locations of PTI's in each state, training and information to parents of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities, and to professionals who work with children.

Working

Disability Mentoring Day (DMD)
http://www.dmd-aapd.org/
DMD is a community-based program designed to bring students and job seekers with disabilities into the workplace where they can learn first hand about career opportunities. This site contains a fact sheet, promotional materials, a list of local coordinators, a toolkit, and more.

Group Goal Setting Activities: An Approach from Youth Service Corps
http://www.sabes.org/resources/adventures/vol4/4pece.htm
The website provides helpful exercises for goal setting and links to additional articles and resources.

Job Shadowing
http://www.jobshadow.org
Launched in February, Job Shadow 2004 promotes encourages adults to take on a youth mentor and introduce him or her into their workplace as they are “shadowed” while going through regular work-day activities.

Learning

Help for Youth with Disabilities Entering Post Secondary Education
http://www.heath.gwu.edu/usefulanswers.htm
This site answers a number of questions youth with disabilities may have as they consider entering post-secondary questions.

IEP Resources from the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY)
http://www.nichcy.org/resources/iep1.asp
These resources from NICHCY helps parents understand the IEP process and enable them and their children become active participants in the process.

Thriving

Growing Up and Getting Medical Care: Youth with Special Health Care Needs
http://www.ichp.edu/reports_briefs.asp
This article introduces the benefits of planning a transition to adult care-givers, and how to make a smooth transition that includes the family, pediatric care-giver, and the adult care-giver.

Healthy and Ready to Work
http://www.hrtw.org/healthcare/index.html
This section from Healthy and Ready to Work website provides useful resources to help parents and youth understand health care, get through transition from pediatric to adult care, and how youth can communicate with their doctors.

Questions to Ask Potential Adult Care Physicians (PDF)
http://internet.dscc.uic.edu/forms/psu/4206.pdf
The Division of Specialized Care for Children provides a number of fact sheets for parents and youth including this one that provides a list of questions to ask a potential physician during the transition to adult care-givers.

Transition Timeline
http://depts.washington.edu/healthtr/Timeline/12to18.htm
This resource from the Adolescent Health Transition Project provides a point-by-point timeline for healthy development through childhood to the transition to adult health care.

Connecting

Boys and Girls Club of America
http://www.bgca.org/
The Boys and Girls Club offers youth an opportunity to promote and enhance their development by instilling a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging, and influence.

Disability Mentoring Day (DMD)
http://www.dmd-aapd.org/
DMD is a community-based program designed to bring students and job seekers with disabilities into the workplace where they can learn first hand about career opportunities. This site contains a fact sheet, promotional materials, a list of local coordinators, a toolkit, and more.

National Mentoring Partnership
http://www.mentoring.org/
This organization provides resources to support mentors as well as provides a venue for mentors to find mentees and vice versa.

Leading

The 4-H Club
http://www.4-h.org/info/
The 4-H Club has branches all over the country that provides meetings, activities, trips and workshops to help youth in their development of leadership skills.

Volunteer Match
http://www.volunteermatch.org/
Volunteer Match.org provides a searchable database of volunteer opportunities for everyone, type in a zip code and find out what opportunities exist in that area.

Youth on Board
http://www.youthonboard.org/
Youth on Board prepares youth to be leaders and decision makers in their communities and strengthens relationships between youth and adults through publications, customized workshops, and technical assistance.

Youth Leadership Forum
http://www.dol.gov/odep/programs/ylf.htm
The Youth Leadership Forum for Students with Disabilities (YLF) is a unique career leadership training program for high school juniors and seniors with disabilities. By serving as delegates from their communities at a four-day event in their state capital, young people with disabilities cultivate leadership, citizenship, and social skills.

Youth Leadership Institute
http://www.yli.org
The Youth Leadership Institute provides vital training to youth, youth practitioners, policy-makers, and people in community development systems to share information and promote best practices in youth development.