Community Service Learning TLP Outcomes

I’ve been thinking a lot about outcomes lately. One reason is that an article on outcomes will be next month’s addition to the JTFest Consulting Online Library (to be posted April 1st). A second reason is that it is grant writing season in the federal Runaway and Homeless Youth funding world, and there are some interesting new twists regarding outcomes.

The one I want to highlight has to do with Transitional Living Program (TLP) outcomes. For those unfamiliar, the TLP is for older homeless youth (16-21) and provides up to 18 months of housing and related services with the intention of transitioning a young person from homelessness to independence. One of the outcomes being focused on is a participant’s involvement in “Community Service Learning”.

As I understand it, Community Service Learning (CSL) is different from “regular” service learning in that the focus is on giving back to the community. CSL activities are intended to involve young people in projects that benefit others, based on the theory that such involvement has significant positive impact on the participant. One way to think about it is; doing good unto others does good unto oneself.

There are several things I like about this outcome. For one, the focus is on what the program is doing rather than what the young person is accomplishing. I believe this to be an important shift in outcome focus, and I speak about this in greater detail in the upcoming library article. I also appreciate the emphasis on meaningful participation, as this is one of the critical environmental protective factors fostering innate resilience, one of the key concepts involved in the Youth Development approach.

My enthusiasm, however, is tempered with caution. While the end is prescribed, the means are not, and as programs struggle to demonstrate this outcome to their funding source, some potential pitfalls arise. One is that the opportunity might not be implemented consistent with what we know about how participation positively impacts the participant. To be specific, when we are talking about participation as a protective factor, we are talking about participation in things that directly affect the participant. Meaningful participation in the Youth Development sense of the word refers to young people meaningfully participating in the actions and decisions that directly affect them. This doesn’t rule out service to others, but such service is reduced in its impact on the individual the moment it moves from voluntarily motivated service to mandated service. If programs attempt to meet this outcome by developing mandated “opportunities” to serve, they run the risk of a less productive and, in some cases, counter-productive impact on the young person participating.

A second pitfall can be the priority service to others has in a young person’s life during transition from homelessness. At the point a young person moves into a transitional living program, they have a scant 18 month period to overcome the challenges and traumas that have lead them to homelessness in the first place. Quite frankly, with all the service they need to provide to themselves there may be little time left for service to others, and one might even consider doing what they need to do to get off of the streets is a service to others. Another danger is that most young people in this situation are carrying a lot of anger from betrayal and neglect by the adults in their lives. As they work through these issues, being mandated to “give back” to a community that they feel betrayed by might not be received as we intend it to be.

But please do not interpret the above paragraphs as a rejection of the CSL outcome. I actually support this new focus. I just want to point out that it can be implemented in ways that defeat the purpose. I propose two guidelines for the development of CSL opportunities within TLP’s that should go a long way towards avoidance of these pitfalls.

First, realize it is not for everyone, at least not at the same time. CSL should be readily available, but not fully mandatory. By that, I mean that there should be some level of personal choice about how and when a young person is involved in CSL activities. One size fits all should be carefully avoided and, for some youth, CSL might not be appropriate until very late into, or even after, their transition.

Second, participants themselves should have maximum control over the development of CSL activities. Avoid the pattern of creating CSL and trying to excite young people about it. Rather, give young people the means and motivation to create the CSL activity themselves, which eliminates the need to convince them to participate. You might want to use the “what” versus “how” formula I utilized at Bridge House, the TLP I operated for about a dozen years. In this model, the grant requirements determine “what” has to be done, but the program participants determine “how” it will be done. They may change the “how” as often as they wish, but they can’t decide that the “what” need not be done. With the CSL outcome, my approach would be to give the residents as much information about CSL and the funding requirement to meet it, and leave it up to them to come up with a plan for implementing CSL within the program. An approach such as this allows for all the benefits while avoiding the potential pitfalls.