JULY 27: YOUTH & YOUNG ADULT TRANSFORMATION TEAM |
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Welcome to the Youth and Young Adult Transition Team's 5 Things Digest highlighting 5 things to consider when Maximizing the Success of Young Adult Professionals with Lived Expertise.
Young adult professionals with lived experience bring a unique and valued perspective to the workforce. Young people are able to use their personal experiences and skills to shape and improve programs, services, and policies to create better outcomes for youth. Here are 5 things to consider in order to maximize the success of young adult professionals.
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#1: Organizational Readiness
Young adult professionals need agency-wide administrative support, co-workers who value youth partnership, and leadership which sets a positive culture for the full team. These individuals need access to supporting resources, similar to all new employees. Identifying policies and procedures that might create challenges to young adult employment is critical. It’s recommended to review the following policies to ensure they are designed to support staff with lived experience and any barriers to hiring have been removed:
- Background check requirements -- consider what level of background check is essential for the position, and determine organizational value of lived experience and how to respond to a criminal background history.
- Align education and years of experience requirements with the expertise that lived experience brings to the position.
- Align pay scales for positions that require lived experience to reflect the value this lived experience brings and ensure pay is in line with all other staff positions.
- Review requirements of staff access to transportation and determine whether this requirement can be removed, lowered, or supported by the organization to allow access to employment for youth without access to a vehicle or driver's license.
- Review policies to allow for less rigid physical appearance and dress requirements (consider tattoos, hair care and color, etc.).
RESOURCES
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#2: Support Pathways to Career and Personal Success
It is important to create a unique professional development plan in partnership with each young adult professional. There are unique, age appropriate factors to be considered and it should be recognized that plans might not follow traditional career pathways. All too often, positions which require lived experience do not have clear professional pathways to more advanced positions. Consider how young adults in these roles can identify next steps to include program management, supervisory roles, and other helping roles, and consider how to develop more advanced positions in your organization which also prioritize hiring for lived experience. When creating professional development plans, key considerations include:
- Offering flexibility in scheduling
- Providing tuition reimbursement as a workforce benefit
- Identifying and providing additional training (beyond initial onboarding and orientation)
- Adding life skill supports into training plans (housing, transportation, meeting attire, identifying and building natural supports)
- Creating intentional opportunities for peer networking, within your organization and beyond
- Expecting learning to be a part of core job responsibilities
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#3: Wellness Planning
It is important to create a culture of wellness across your entire organization, where all positions are encouraged to form a wellness plan. Providing holistic wellness support to staff includes providing access to support at work (from colleagues and supervisors), ADA accommodations, crisis planning prior to a crisis occurring, and other resources to maintain wellbeing. It is never appropriate to require a wellness plan from just one staff member, rather it should be the practice that all staff members maintain this practice and discuss wellness in supervision.
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#4: Youth Driven and Authentic Youth Engagement
Young adult professionals are value added to any organization. To maximize this value, be creative about incorporating multiple avenues to authentically use their expertise. Young adult staff can uniquely inform practice and policies impacting better outcomes for young adults being served.
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#5: Workplace and Self Advocacy
Advocacy in the Workplace
Mentors within the workplace can help to guide conversations about critical feedback outside of a typical supervision structure. Mentors can also add support to the organization and the young adult professional through help with understanding organizational structure, chain of command, how to be tactful, grant requirements, and similar topics; encouraging growth of strong workplace relationships; and more.
Self-Advocacy
Supporting young adult professionals' self-advocacy can include providing information and mentoring (including information on how to “stand up” for yourself, how to tactfully speak up about things that aren’t working, and possibly information on strategic sharing), helping to ensure their clear understanding of the chain of command, supporting their understanding of organization structure, offering supports within the work and organization, mentoring, and similar supports.
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Contact the National Training and Technical Assistance Center for
Child, Youth, and Family Mental Health
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This announcement is supported by SAMHSA of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $15,000,000 over five years (2020-2025) with 100 percent funded by SAMHSA/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by SAMHSA/HHS, or the U.S. Government. |
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