Understanding Disconnected Youth
“Disconnected Youth” are young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither working nor in school and usually not well connected to the community. Put another way, they are youth who are struggling to transition to independent adult life and work.
Our mission since our inception has been to prevent youth disconnection by bringing critical skills training and resources to youth with specific risk factors between the ages of 16 to 24. When Together We Can was founded in 2008, that mission was narrowly focused on the risk factor of teens in foster care. Later, that expanded to include additional risk factors that tend to produce youth disconnection, such as:
- In or exiting from foster care.
- Not in school and lacking a high school diploma.
- Not working or connected to the legitimate labor market.
- Either homeless or with no fixed address.
- If they are still in school, they are performing below grade level.
- Living in high-poverty families often headed by a single parent, possibly experiencing frequent family homelessness.
- Alienated from families due to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse in the home or rejected by families because of sexual orientation.
- Struggling to raise a child of their own.
- Involvement with or at risk of sanction by the juvenile criminal justice system.
- Struggling with substance abuse.
- Experiencing mental or behavioral health challenges.
- Living with a mental disability or impairment.
How We Serve
An important part of our success lies in our partnerships with municipal and community institutions and organizations. We count on them to identify and bring together the youth we are trying to reach, and they count on us to bring the very best in adult life-work success skills training and resources.
Many organizations in our region have replaced their in-house services with our programs and resources because they have seen firsthand the impact of our specialization in this area of programming. Our in-person skills training programs, smart guides to adult life, and online self-paced courses can help you serve disconnected youth more effectively.
We have chosen to partner with organizations that already serve youth with the traditional risk factors for disconnection.
We specialize in providing success skills training and informational resources to organizations that serve youth. Organizations like these have found real value in our services. If you work for or partner with an organization like one of these listed below, you might find real value in what we can provide:
- Public School Career/Vocational/Technical Centers
- Public School Transition Specialists
- Public School Career Counselors
- Autism and Special Needs Educators
- Foster Care Agencies (municipal)
- Therapeutic Foster Care (municipal and community NGOs)
- Foster Care Support organizations (community NGOs)
- Juvenile detention facilities
- Boy and Girls Clubs
- Friends of the Juvenile Court organizations
- Youth Serving Community NGOs
- Human Services NGOs
- Community Colleges
- Community Mentoring Agencies
- Faith-based youth programs
- Redevelopment and Housing Authorities
- Homeless youth shelters
- Substance abuse treatment programs
- Incarceration reentry programs
- Programs impacting young adult drop-outs or individuals wanting to re-enter the workforce
How Who We Serve Is Changing
Since we have been in operation, we have noticed a change in the nature of youth disconnection. While we have effectively reduced the rate of disconnection among youth with the traditional risk factors, the number of youth without these risk factors who are experiencing disconnection has risen dramatically.
Beyond the traditional risk factors, a confluence of factors seems to be impacting many more youth with an often lengthy interruption in the transition to adult life. Those factors include:
- The dramatic rise in mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among teen populations.
- The isolation and de-socialization of algorithmic, screen-based culture.
- The developmental delays and social changes brought about by the pandemic.
- The impact of mass shootings and violence on youth culture.
- The general level of polarization and factionalization in the world.
- A genuine concern about the ability to enter into adult life financially (purchase a home, start a family, live a life on par with their parents’ or grandparents’ generations).
What this means for us is a shift in how we reach the youth we serve. In addition to our traditional service partnerships, we have begun to explore a self-paced, online version of our traditional programming (Smart Transitions Online), the distribution of our Smart Guides to more youth both inside and outside of our service region, and offering Smart Transitions Instructor Certification to individuals and organizations outside our service region.
What We Can Do — And Help You Do
A certain amount of success in life comes down to luck and where and to whom you were born, but most successful people will also credit the knowledge they’ve acquired, the skills they’ve developed, and the experiences they’ve had.
At-risk youth may not have gotten the luck of the draw that some of us have, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to offset that with the kind of knowledge, skills, and experiences that promote success. This is where Together We Can—Smart Transitions comes into play.
Social research and scientific studies of early brain development suggested that timely intervention in early childhood education could have a significant impact on a youth’s progress through primary school and readiness for secondary school and higher learning. This was based on our understanding of a critical point in brain development from birth to around five years of age. Recent brain research indicates that far from being complete at age five, a young person’s brain experiences another significant developmental growth spurt between puberty and the age of twenty-four. This is the period in which the adult brain develops, and, just like in early childhood, if certain developmental experiences are missed, the development of a healthy and functional adult brain could be in jeopardy.
In Hampton Roads, as in many places across the country, the awareness of the critical period of brain development associated with early childhood galvanized the community and was adopted as a variety of initiatives in early childhood education. What the Together We Can Foundation is suggesting is a parallel initiative to better address the need of all teens in transition to adult life, especially disconnected youth and youth at-risk of disconnection: Smart Transitions.
As a community partner in Southeastern Virginia, we work with agencies and organizations who directly serve youth with risk factors for disconnection. As a relatively small agency, we focus on the kind of intervention we do best: providing outstanding success skills classes and resource materials tailored to the needs of at-risk youth. These classes and resource materials are designed by a staff with years of curriculum development and educational and training experience working with at-risk teen populations. We focus on critical areas of adult work-life success:
- Improving self-awareness leading to smarter career identification and alignment;
- Identifying a vision and personal goals that motivate and inspire;
- Developing a working plan with recognizable action steps;
- Cultivating a work brand that is attractive and of value to employers;
- Enhancing personal presentation and interviewing skills;
- Building a strong support network; and
- Adopting a mindset of grit, resilience, and mental flexibility.
In addition to these highlights of our Smart Transition Training, we also provide resource materials for youth and the adults that work with them (Smart Guides) in areas such as:
- Workforce Development
- Personal Money Management
- Physical Health, Mental Health, and Happiness
While youth disconnection is the term that defines the problem, we believe that there is another way of seeing this issue. For us, every youth is an “opportunity youth” and every opportunity youth holds a piece of our future as a community.
Still Not Sure What Disconnection Is or Why It Matters?
“Disconnected Youth” are young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither working nor in school and usually not well connected to the community.
Most of us know or have known youth who seemed incredibly mature at 16 or 17. We also probably know youth who seem stuck in adolescence at 24 or 25. The truth is that this is probably perfectly normal. Science tells us that the adult brain (the part of the brain capable of self-control, long-term planning, deferred gratification, effective decision-making, emotional regulation, and self-awareness) does not fully develop until the mid to late twenties.
In very practical terms, this means that about 40% of the average youth population across the country will transition to adult independence and the workforce effectively through the traditional pathways of high school graduation, college, or post-high school skills training and entry into the workforce. With strong family and financial support, these youth will become the 21st-century workforce. Another 40% will also make that transition with some competence, though most families and many youth will admit to wishing they had better information and a more effective preparation for adult life. But around 20% of this population will struggle profoundly and may fail to effectively transition at all. They will become what we have come to call our “disconnected youth population.”
This percentage includes youth with one or more risk factors for disconnection who are currently on track to transition effectively, but may be one misstep away from disconnection. Disconnected youth who hit a crisis point often end up homeless, unemployed, and possibly even incarcerated. But even if they avoid incarceration and are marginally employed and tentatively sheltered, they are not likely to be the kind or quality of workforce we need to be competitive in the 21st century. It doesn’t matter whether we claim these youth as our own or reject them as being someone else’s problem. The fate of these disconnected youth will impact everyone in the years ahead.
And, of course, this number does not include the increasing percentage of youth without the traditional risk factors who are falling into extended periods of disconnection.
The Cost of Disconnection
Disconnection among youth is a significant challenge. It’s a social services issue. It’s a taxpayer issue. It’s a criminal justice issue. It’s a workforce development and regional economic issue. It’s a human rights issue and a moral issue.
As one end of the population spectrum matures, can we really afford not to pay attention to how the generation that will be supporting this aging class is coming of age itself?
This is also an issue with worrying trends. Unemployment among young people is twice the rate of that of adults. Teens who used to learn about work and the workforce with summer service jobs and part-time employment are no longer able to find those jobs when they are competing against older out-of-work Americans. What will we do with a significant portion of a generation of youth that is coming of age without exposure to the world of work?
What are the costs of disconnection? The human costs for 3 or more years of disconnection are quite profound and include a lower lifetime earning potential, chronic difficulty getting and keeping a job, chronic homelessness, becoming single parents and living in extreme poverty, lack of health insurance and erratic healthcare that strains the medical system, substance abuse, and chronic depression.
But there is also a very real financial cost. Each disconnected youth imposes an immediate taxpayer burden of $13,900 per year and an immediate social burden of $37,450 per year.
Taxpayer burden is everything that taxpayers will pay for in terms of services (lost tax revenue, criminal and corrections costs, healthcare, and social welfare costs). Social burden is all other relevant costs (lost wages and productivity, higher health care and insurance costs, crime costs, marginal excess tax burden, etc.) in the country and you have a huge lifetime taxpayer burden and social burden.
If you multiply the number of disconnected youth in the country times the immediate taxpayer burden and immediate social burden, you have a huge cost.