Community-Based Partnerships That Focus on Positive Youth Development and Meet Young People’s Needs: Youth Opportunity Hubs
By Sara Carrión, Policy Associate and Brandon Martinez, Research Associate
Across New York City, many young people are in need of youth-centered spaces that meet their diverse needs and draw on and lift up their strengths. Unfortunately, funding constraints of the social service system often lead to siloes between organizations, making it difficult for youth to access all of the services available to them. The Youth Opportunity Hubs, opened with CJII funding in 2017, were created to address these challenges and better serve young people.
Five lead organizations (The Door, Henry Street Settlement, Living Redemption, New York-Presbyterian, and Union Settlement) in Manhattan were selected to open Youth Opportunity Hubs in collaboration with partner organizations in CJII’s focus neighborhoods—East Harlem, Central and West Harlem, Washington Heights, and The Lower East Side—which have experienced disproportionate rates of involvement in the criminal-legal system.
Hubs use a trauma-informed, positive youth development framework to provide comprehensive services to young people ages 13-24. By offering opportunities and emphasizing young people’s strengths, the Hubs aim to address both risk and protective factors—including in such areas as health, educational attainment, household income, and connections to school or work—and reduce the likelihood that youth will have interactions with the criminal legal system. Services offered to participants vary across the Hubs, but each Hub provides some services in each of the following categories:
Education
Employment
Prosocial
Health
Criminal justice
Family services
Other services
Westat and Metis Associates are conducting outcome and process evaluations and a cost analysis of the Youth Opportunity Hubs initiative and have released mid-evaluation findings related to the process evaluation. Here, we spotlight some of the key findings related to participants’ experiences within the Hubs.
The Hub Wraparound Model Promotes Flexible, Tailored Engagement in Services for Youth
The Hub partnership structure allows youth to be connected to more service providers than they typically would be. Staff help remove some of the barriers that youth encounter when looking for services: On behalf of youth, they communicate and coordinate with staff from other organizations to determine and ensure young people’s program eligibility. They also empower youth to become more comfortable seeking the services they need for themselves.
Hubs also are able to revisit their partners and services offered from year to year: The Hubs’ flexible funding model (with a funder amenable to changes, as needed) allows them to adapt and offer what they feel best meets their youths’ needs. When youth first join the Hubs, they share their needs and interests with staff and choose from a menu of programming available at the main Hub sites or with their partner providers. Participants shared that they felt that they had agency and control over the services they would receive.
Youth are learning how to ask for help - I think that it made a positive impact on them, on how they speak to and how they present themselves in front of adults, and most importantly, how they open up to say they need help, they need resources, ‘I want to do this, but I don’t know how.’ (Henry Street Settlement Hub staff)
It’s not school. There’s no like head count numbers. That isn’t important. I can just go there and be myself, ask for help, or just sit down and chill. I feel like they’ve given me a lot of what I need, which is to be able to be independent but also focus on myself as well. (Henry Street Settlement Hub participant)
Hubs Meet Holistic Participant Needs Including Basic Supports, Mental Health Services, and Educational, Employment, and Enrichment Opportunities
One of the most important functions of the Hub is offering services that meet the basic needs of the youth they serve: Helping participants with food security, homelessness supports, clothing, and transportation helps to address the most pressing needs of young people and their families, as well as engages youth in other offerings of the Hub that could benefit them. Hubs also offer opportunities for participants to earn income through internships or stipends, which helps with financial security of youth and their families.
I didn’t really know what to expect. But as I started to go through with them, they kind of help you with a little bit of everything and anything if they can. You know, whether it’s needing advice or needing someone to talk to…needing a job opportunity or internship, any type of training. Down to if you need something on your back to wear or you need food for your stomach, they provide all of those things through the program. (Living Redemption Hub participant)
Some of the other common services that youth express interest in upon entering the Hubs are education, employment, and prosocial services. (One third (31%) of youth served by the Hubs have been out of school and out of work at the time of enrollment.) Through the Hub, participants can access high school equivalency (HSE) classes, pre-HSE classes, vocational trainings, tutoring support, internships, computer literacy, high school preparation, job readiness trainings, and more. Prosocial activities such as art classes, basketball clinics, music, and cooking classes are ways to grab the interest of youth, as well as opportunities for them to develop hobbies and interests.
Equally important are the mental health, counseling, and social-emotional supports that participants are connected to at the Hubs. These services help participants better navigate other services, thrive in school and employment, build life skills, and learn strategies for de-escalating situations that may otherwise lead to interactions with the criminal legal system.
Hubs Staff Model Healthy Relationships for Young People and Foster Community Engagement
Another aspect crucial to the Hub model is prioritizing the development of positive relationships with youth. Hubs are a safe space for youth to feel heard and supported by staff, which may not be the experience they have had with other adults in their lives. Developing these relationships builds trust and encourages transformation and healing. The Hubs also provide a place for youth to build relationships with other young people from their communities, which give participants a greater sense of belonging.
They’re getting their home, away from home, right? They’re getting normalcy. They’re getting mentors and positive influences to continue to hold them accountable. (Union Settlement Hub staff)
A reoccurring theme that we’ve been hearing from our young people is their sense of belonging to something and being part of something that they feel safe being part of. (New York-Presbyterian Hub staff)
The community-based nature of the Hubs has also led youth to be more involved in their communities and more likely to see a future for themselves there and a path to building safer communities. Overall, the experience of being a part of the Hubs was reported to give youth a sense of hope about their own lives and potential of their communities.
I know for a fact that for those individuals who are part of the Hub, their exposure to other Hub sites, other Hub youth, other Hub perspectives has indirectly or directly shaped how they go about being more civically educated and engaged and obviously using that towards advocacy efforts. (Henry Street Settlement staff)
And the fact that because they’re part of the Hub they’re able to go to all these places and benefit from what the city has to offer, especially in such a gorgeous green area like Northern Manhattan, I think is hugely impactful. I think it gives them hope. (New York-Presbyterian Hub staff)
About the Program and Evaluation
Since their inception, Youth Opportunity Hubs have helped youth meet basic needs, provided services across a variety of areas that are important to them, supported young people’s positive development and provided them with supportive relationships, and given them a greater sense of belonging and hope in their lives and communities—and as a result, Hubs have protected against youth involvement in the criminal legal system. Work on the outcome evaluation and cost study is underway – findings will be published in 2023. The mid-evaluation report, including process evaluation findings, is available here.
About the Criminal Justice Investment Initiative
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII) focuses on three investment areas—crime prevention, reentry and diversion, and supports for survivors of crime. The Youth Opportunity Hubs are part of the CJII’s crime prevention-focused investments in Youth, Families, and Communities.
The CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance manages and provides technical assistance to CJII contractors, and conducts oversight and performance measurement throughout the lifetime of the initiative.