How a Tapestry of Care Helps Teens Succeed

Should police be law enforcers or social responders? Some leaders say "guardian" duty is at least important as purely law enforcement tasks, sometimes known as "warrior" work. That idea is rooted in centuries-old principles of policing.

Cleveland has struggled through the years to reduce youth violence. But important lessons have been learned, here and elsewhere. City officials say they are factoring those lessons into their latest plans to reduce violence among young men in the city.

The Volunteers of America's Face Forward 2 program offers a second chance to youth offenders by focusing on education and employment. Destyni Iverson believes the program potentially changed the trajectory of life. She said she felt hopeless when she enrolled, and was on the verge of becoming a high school dropout. Now she is enrolled as a nursing student at Cuyahoga Community College and believes she has a bright future.

The ecosystem of D.C. charter schools that has evolved over the last two decades represents a cornucopia of creative and nontraditional approaches to education, in addition to fairly traditional college-prep schools, and is now producing some of the highest graduation rates, college acceptance rates, and average test scores in public schools in the nation.

Start With Hello, an initiative from the NGO Sandy Hook Promise, gives students the opportunity to diversify who they know and interact with in a long-term effort to prevent school violence and shootings. The program, funded by public and private grants, has spread to 11,600 schools across the United States, with each school also getting training on inclusivity. While an impact evaluation hasn't been finished, early studies show that those who participate in the program respond better to mental distress.

Oregon schools are leveraging the power of relationships to improve attendance and graduation rates for Pacific Islander and Black students. Community resource specialists step in to get students to school, doctor's appointments, family funerals, and more: “I’m honestly not doing anything special. I hate to say that, there’s no science around what I’m doing. It’s just trust and building a relationship and giving them the time."

In the last decade, collaborations between non-profit student-support organizations and public schools have fostered a model called "Last-Chance Schools" with remarkable success. The program targets root causes for dropping out, including economic disadvantages, mental health challenges, violence, and unstable home lives. As several Boston charter schools demonstrate, use of social-emotional learning, conflict mediation instead of zero-tolerance discipline, and flexible curricula has helped boost graduation and college acceptance rates while lowering suspensions.

Some local programs see youth employment as more than just a workforce development issue. They also view jobs as a way to offer stability to young people, especially those from Cleveland area communities with high violence rates. The research bears them out. These are the voices of some of the voices speaking in favor of more jobs and less violence.

A correlation exists in Cuyahoga County between the idle youth rate -- base on teens who are neither working nor in school -- and the youth violence rate, according to an analysis done for The Plain Dealer by Claudia Coulton, co-director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University and a professor of urban social research.

Operation Focus is a nationally recognized initiative to help curb gun violence; however, its effectiveness has proven to not be sustainable. The city of Cleveland has evaluated the problems of the initiative and has put forth a new plan to address underlying issues related to gun violence. Cleveland’s new approach treats violence as a preventable condition.