Breaking the cycle of disadvantage through supported youth re-engagement: one youth at a time.
Building professional and community capacity to re-engage disadvantaged youth with schooling.
Evidence Papers: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AXf6dZLcg03a_wxEGPnVDVAs3BtZzAun?usp=drive_link
Mission
To re-engage disengaged young people with their schooling and help to break the cycle of disadvantage.
Aim
What
The Adrenaline project aims to interrupt the cycle of disadvantage for young people at the point of disengaging from their schooling.
Who
The program targets disengaging 14-15 year old youth who are from communities or circumstances that are socially, culturally, and/or financially impoverished or oppressed. The program also develops high achieving pre-professionals for quality community-based support and mentoring for disadvantaged youth.
How
We will identify youth and disrupt their path for disengagement.
We will support them to re-imagine their futures and reposition them with the skills and attributes for a more positive and re-engaged path.
We will provide a personalised high-energy and co-designed challenge opportunity … “Adrenaline” providing positive risk taking, identity building, self proving ground, and community recognition to bring youth to a new sense of self –respect.
We will embed the adrenaline program in a program of guidance and self development to build self-regulatory, self-determinant and a positively determined outlook for each of these youth.
Why
This program is community embedded, contracted for behavioural change, and visionary as a unique intervention model for disengaging youth. Collateral benefit is the development of high achieving pre-professionals with capability and vocational orientation to work effectively in disadvantaged communities.
Situation
The switch point[1]
There is a significant switch point for young people at about the age of 14 to 16 years. This transition is at the top end of middle schooling, a point where the foundation for adult identity is framed. At this stage, many young people switch their relationship to schooling across to “disengage”.
The risks
Disengagement brings the risk of sustained and negative life outcomes. There is an escalated likelihood for poor mental and physical health, poverty, delinquency and patterns of incarceration, particularly for youth already in culturally/financially impoverished circumstances.
A cycle of disadvantage
If a young person’s circle of influence, the broader community, or access to resources are impoverished or systematically challenged, the switch to “disengage” occurs with a sense of finality for negative life outcomes.
The context: the risks escalate for young people who experience systematic disadvantage and barriers, where schooling is under-valued and/or where attainment seems unachievable; where generational underemployment is prominent; where significant others are unskilled perhaps with a poor history of relationship with school themselves; or where there is lack of access to personal and cultural enrichment and positive recognition.
The opportunity: the risks multiply for young people who lack the opportunities for support, recognition and reward due to cultural or financial poverty, prejudice, systematic oppression and lack of access to resources/information/support.
The hardest nut to crack
All disengaging youth have fractured personal relationships with schooling. But the cracks are widest for those from minority groups with over-representation of poverty, poor general health, experience with racial prejudice, and under-employment. They lack both the context and the opportunity to break the cycle of disadvantage. These are our indigenous, refugee, and immigrant youth.
Professional response
There will always be disadvantage, sadly, and oppression. But its cyclic impact can be diminished if the professional community is aware and capable to respond. Social workers, allied health practitioners, lawyers and paralegals, teachers, community leaders, all start their journey as a professional in formal tertiary education. Sustained impact could be brought if the best of these pre-professionals are equipped with hands-on relational skills and orientations to respond and prevent disengagement for these kids.
[1] We coin the term switch point to identify a stage in a person’s life where there is significant change from their preceding sense of self. This is a point where an individual makes deliberate choices that frame their experience and identity going forward. There is a well-known switch point between childhood and adolescence. But there are other significant transitions in our life journey that could also be described as switch points.
Positive transitions: the stuff of legend
Adrenaline Potential 