PHA-Exch> Supporting Youth at Risk

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC) ruglucia at paho.org

 *Supporting Youth at Risk*

*A Policy Toolkit for Middle-Income Countries*



*The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank,
2008*

This work was supported by the Finnish-Norwegian Trust Fund for
Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (TFESSD).



Available online as PDF file [135p.] at:

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2008/05/16/000333038_20080516062635/Rendered/PDF/437050WP0ENGLI1YouthAtRisk01PUBLIC1.pdf



This policy toolkit on youth at risk in middle-income countries contains
five sections:

* *

*Section I: Introduction*

• Background and Rationale

• Definitions and Conceptual Framework

* *

*Section II: Core Policies *

These six policies have an established track record in *preventing
*disadvantaged
children and young people from engaging in risky behavior and, thus, should
form the basis of any country's youth portfolio. We recommend that
governments of middle-income countries should adopt and implement these
policies on a large scale. These core policies consist of
(i) expanding integrated early child development for children from poor
households;
(ii) increasing the number of young people who complete secondary school,
particularly those from poor families;
(iii) using the fact that students are a captive audience while in school to
provide them with key risk prevention messages
     and to identify at-risk youth who are in need of remedial support;
(iv) developing youth-friendly pharmaceutical services;
(v) using the media to describe the costs of risky behavior and present
alternatives (combined with improved services); and
(vi) promoting effective parenting of and by young people.



*Section III: Promising Approaches *

These nine approaches focus on *helping *those affected by risky behavior to
recover and return to a safe, productive path to adulthood. Young people in
this category range from school dropouts to the incarcerated and are more
difficult to reach than others in their age group. Although not as many of
the interventions in this category have yet been evaluated, there is
sufficient evidence to enable us to make some recommendations in the areas
of
(i) education equivalency,
(ii) job training,
(iii) financial incentives for completing secondary school,
(iv) after-school programs,
(v) formal youth service programs,
(vi) mentoring,

(vii) employment services,
(viii) life skills training in all interventions aimed at youth at risk, and

(ix) selfemployment and entrepreneur programs.

*
Section IV: General Policies with a Disproportionately Positive Effect on
Youth at Risk *

These seven policies address critical risk factors at the community and
macro levels, but also have been shown to be particularly effective at
reducing risky behavior by young people and should therefore form an
essential part of an overall strategy to reduce the number of youth at risk.
Examples of these types of policies include
(i) safe neighborhood investments that support community policing and
improved services for high violence communities,
(ii) reducing the availability of firearms,
(iii) restricting the sale of alcohol,
(iv) increasing access to contraception,
(v) promoting anti-violence messages in all media,
(vi) strengthening the justice system to focus on treating and
rehabilitating rather than incarcerating young people, and
(vii) registering the undocumented.

* *

*Section V: Moving from a Wish List to Action*

This section presents strategies and tools for turning these policy
recommendations into a well-designed and well-implemented youth portfolio.
Included in this section are thoughts on how to assign and coordinate
institutional responsibilities based on comparative advantage; how to
reallocate resources away from ineffective programs toward recommended
programs; how to improve the development, analysis, and use of data for
program monitoring and impact evaluations; how to select programs based on
cost-effectiveness and a cost-benefit analysis; and how to benchmark
progress against international data sources.

**
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