Strategy

Roca’s theory of change for young people is that when a young person is re-engaged through positive and intensive relationships they can gain competencies in life skills, education and employment.

Roca has taken Prochaska’s stages of change and adapted them for a very high-risk youth development model. Roca uses the stages of change as: 1) an assessment where young people are in relation to their readiness and/or willingness to change; 2) a guide to inform youth workers’ use of self in their work with young people; and 3) a foundation for designing engagement and competency-building programming that meets young people where they are.

The five stages of stages that an individual typically will move through on the way to undertaking intentional efforts to improve his or her life and then sustaining those changes are: 1) Pre-contemplation: The young person is not thinking about or has explicitly rejected change; 2) Contemplation: The young person is now thinking about change and perhaps seeks out a youth worker or some other program; she or he may respond to some suggestions from staff; 3) Planning: The young person and case manager talk about what it would take to make change happen and what the young person wants for the future; 4) Action: The young person begins to take positive steps toward improving his or her life through practice (trial and error) in the context of a plan that has been discussed in detail between the young person and case manager; and, 5) Sustaining: Through continuing staff support during difficult times and new cooperative efforts, the young person is able to achieve concrete improvements in his or her life, move demonstrably toward achieving a self-sustaining lifestyle, and is living in safety.

As change is not easy for any of us, relapse is often part of the process and can happen at any point in the stages of change. Relapses can be painful, embarrassing, demoralizing; can make change seem impossible; or provide a (weak) justification for not changing. However, they are also the times where a great deal of incredible learning can take place and work can be done. The relapse period can provide the opportunity for identifying barriers or harmful behaviors that prevent change, can make young people fight and yearn for where and who they really want to be, and can help young people understand that they have to hold themselves in their change process not just when it is easy, but more importantly, when it gets hard.

We believe that this relentless commitment to case management and refusal to give up on young people is what enables Roca to re-engage youth in life skills, education, and employment. Roca has worked very hard to create places where our young people can learn and practice the necessary skills that will allow them to successfully reconnect and to advance their educational and employment opportunities. We design and develop appropriate programming that corresponds to the stages of change to meet young people where they are and to serve our specific target populations. Additionally, Roca has developed a unique transitional employment model to move young people with virtually no job skills to learn and practice the skills they need to get a job and stay employed. In creating these transitional employment opportunities, we borrowed best practices from leading transitional employment programs for adults, adapted them and combined them with business creation, earned income strategies, workforce and youth development, and Roca’s powerful culture that actively engages young people in a transformational process for personal growth and work readiness.

Roca’s organizational theory of change is that given the right circumstances, all young people can live with hope, contribute and excel. Roca believes that the key to the work with young people is the stages of change programming that transforms very high-risk, disenfranchised young people. The more trained staff is in the stages of change, the more able the organization is to drive towards outcomes for young people. The greater Roca’s commitment to outcomes, the more young people will re-engage productively with relationships, work and community. We believe that the more young people succeed, other youth-affecting organizations and institutions can be leveraged and inspired to work more effectively with young people.

Roca has also translated this theory of change into its work with institutions, developing the lessons necessary to achieve institutional programmatic and policy changes across the region, ensuring that we are continuously working to meet the needs of our very high-risk young people.