Ebook: Building Healthy Individuals, Families, and Communities: Creating Lasting Connections

Youth have nearly always exhibited behaviors that frustrate adults. It can be diffi­ cult to understand why young people engage in risky or destructive behavior, and it is challenging to develop strategies to encourage more healthy and responsible behavior among our youth. However, it is helpful to realize that despite the fact that large numbers of youth engage in frightful and destructive behaviors for pe­ riods of time during adolescence and early adulthood, a large proportion of youth find a way not only to survive but also to bounce back and contribute significantly to the furtherance of human development. We are not the first generation of adults to experience the pain, fear, and frustration of dealing with our youth. More important, we recognize that we are not helpless when faced with the problems youth experience. While it is true that adolescents have always exhibited problem behaviors, a number of effective tools and approaches have always been at our disposal to assist with appropriate youth development. Of course, the most effective approaches require a tremendous amount of focused time and energy.

---

Today, more than ever before, we have available to us a large body of knowledge about how to reach and influence youth, even high-risk youth and families, that help them build resiliency. Building HealthyIndividuals, Families, and Communities describes a program, CreatingLasting Family Connections, which is based on COPES' successful demonstration program, Creating Lasting Connections (CLC).
CLC, a research demonstration project, was designed as an ecumenical, community based program that focused on increasing community, family and individual (youth) protective factors that would lead to delaying the onset and reducing the frequency of alcohol and other drug use among at-risk 12-14 year olds.
CLC received the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention's Exemplary Prevention Program Award for 1994 and CLFC received this honor in 1999; CLC has been included in the International Youth Foundation's YouthNet International, a directory of the most effective youth programs worldwide; finally, it was selected as one of only seven model prevention programs by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention for national dissemination.
While the program focuses on alcohol and other drug-related issues and outcomes, much of this approach is applicable to youth and families across a larger spectrum of issues and behaviors, including violence and inappropriate sexual behavior.