Strategy

Engaged Institution Strategy

The institutions that are in a young person’s life – schools, local government, agencies, and organizations – are just as influential to the needs and growth of a young person as Roca. In recognizing this, Roca sought to create partnerships with these institutions, open the lines of communication, and benefit from each other’s expertise. Roca’s engaged institution strategy is designed to promote and/or develop informal and formal practice, procedure and policy change to positively impact very high-risk young people and their families.

At the core of Roca’s Engaged Institutions Strategy lies our Transformational Relationship Model, a building process that has proven as effective for use with institutional partners as with our young people. As is true with young people, in order to engage organizations and institutions in a process of development and change, it is essential to first spend the time to connect with them in positive relationships. With the Engaged Institutions strategy, participating organizations acknowledge over time that the current system is fragmented, deficient in appropriately addressing high risk youth. They commit to actively working, in dialogue and action, towards accountability, progressive collaboration, and, over time, enacting alternative, restorative policies and procedures to our communities’ system-based strategies. To begin this work of engaging other institutions, Roca first underwent its own, similar process: evolving from defensive youth advocacy of “fight the system to protect the young people,” to a deeper understanding of the need to be collaborative and respectful partners.

Roca’s work with all of the major institutions that affect poor, urban youth’s lives – criminal justice, child welfare, education, health, government, public health, etc. – has resulted in a range of informal and formal procedure, practice, policy, and systemic change. Examples of this work include: area-specific gang intervention practices, shared youth work practices with the area Department of Social Services, integrated partnership and on-site programming with the public schools; and an emerging alternative sentencing project in the district court. Currently, Roca is sharing its outcomes model based on the stages of change with two state institutions and is preparing to launch a series of sessions on the concept, practice and evaluation of intervention to address the issues of very high-risk youth and young adults.