The Myth of the Teen Brain:

Spiritual Involvement as a Predictor to Completing a Salvation Army Substance Abuse Treatment Program

Spiritual Involvement as a Predictor to Completing a Salvation Army Substance Abuse Treatment Program

Michael Wolf-Branigan & Jerry Duke

This study investigates successful completion at a faith-based organization providing residential substance abuse treatment services. Method: The authors apply a complex systems paradigm using a single moderator variable. The participants are primarily African Americans and most have current criminal justice involvement. Probabilities of treatment program completion for participants active in spiritual activities versus similar participants not involved in these activities are calculated. Results: Participation in the spirituality component appears to provide a valuable attractor to treatment completion. Conclusions: In the past decade, evaluation methods have included the greater use of probabilistic approaches, most notably Bayesian inference. Findings suggest that this model, as applied to the complexities of a faith-based organization, is useful for understanding treatment completion.

The Chinese Positive Youth Development Scale: A Validation Study

The Chinese Positive Youth Development Scale: A Validation Study

Daniel T L Shek, Andrew Siu, & Tak Yan Lee

Objective: This article describes the development and initial validation of the 90-item Chinese Positive Youth Development Scale (CPYDS), which contains items related to 15 aspects of positive youth development. Method: Adolescents with well adjustment ( N = 162) and poor adjustment (N = 160) responded to the CPYDS. Results: The findings showed that the CPYDS measures possess acceptable internal consistency and were able to discriminate the two groups. Although the CPYDS measures were positively related to thriving, life satisfaction, and perceived academic achievement, they were negatively related to substance abuse, delinquency, and behavioral intention to engage in problem behavior. Conclusions: The CPYDS can be used as a global measure of positive youth development in Chinese adolescents, but its dimensionality and subscales should be further examined.

Typology of Religious Characteristics of Social Service and Educational Organizations and Programs

Typology of Religious Characteristics of Social Service and Educational Organizations and Programs

Ronald Sider & Heidi Rolland Unruh

The general term faith-based organizations is inadequate because no clear definition exists of what it means to be faith-based. This article proposes an inductively derived sixfold typology of social service and educational organizations and programs based on their religious characteristics: faith-permeated, faith-centered, faith-affiliated, faith background, faith-secular partnership, and secular. The typology is divided into two sections, organizations and programs, recognizing that the religious characteristics of an organization may differ from the programs it operates. The analysis of religious characteristics focuses on the tangibly expressive ways that religion may be manifest in a nonprofit entity. The article provides examples of each type based on case studies of 15 congregations with active community-serving programs. This framework, once empirically tested, can add clarity and precision to research, public discourse, and funding decisions concerning community-serving organizations.

Youth At-Risk for Truancy Detour Into Faith-Based Education Program: Their Perceptions of the Program and Its Impact

Youth At-Risk for Truancy Detour Into Faith-Based Education Program: Their Perceptions of the Program and Its Impact

Jill Witmer Sinha
University of Pennsilvania

Many minority adolescents in the United States today are at a high risk for truancy, dropout, and academic under-achievement. Truancy is related to a host of preceding and subsequent risks such as delinquency and limited vocational outcomes. Using participatory research methods, this federally funded, 10-month study assessed youths' perceptions of a publicly funded, faith-based, alternative education program with 73 minority youth participants who were at risk for truancy. The study assessed whether change occurred in peer dynamics, youths' use of time, and educational aspirations. The program was found to have a positive impact on peer dynamics and the use of both school hours and free time. The program supported or did not hamper educational aspiration. Implications about the impact of alternative education programs for at-risk youth and the faith-based nature of the program are discussed.

Mapping Your Community's Faith-Based Assets

Mapping Your Community's Faith-Based Assets

An asset inventory tool for collecting and using data on the faith-based community organizations in your city

Spring 2006

Keeping Faith in the Faith-Based Initiative: From Formal Neutrality to Full Pluralism in Government Partnerships with Faith-based Social Services

Keeping Faith in the Faith-Based Initiative: From Formal Neutrality to Full Pluralism in Government Partnerships with Faith-based Social Services

This paper was presented at the 2005 Abraham Kuyper Lecture by Stanley W. Carlson-Thies

How to Talk to Your Kids About Anything: 10 Tips for Talking with Kids About Tough Issues

10 Tips for Talking with Kids About Tough Issues. These tips are for parents and youthworkers engaging children and teens from the organization: Talking With Kids.

Frontline: Juvenile Justice

Should teenagers who commit serious crimes be tried as juveniles or adults? What happens to young offenders who reach the 'end of the line' in the juvenile court system - and how do you rehabilitate these young people to prevent future criminal behavior? FRONTLINE explores these questions as it follows four juvenile offenders - one white, two Hispanic, and one African American - through the Santa Clara, California, juvenile courts, observing how the criminal justice system treats their cases and determines their fates.

Frontline: Medicating Kids

A report on parents, educators and doctors trying to make sense of a mysterious and controversial mental diagnosis: ADHD

Frontline: Inside the Teenage Brain

Frontline: Testing Our Schools

Frontline: Failure to Protect

Failure to Protect: The Caseworker Files
Failure to Protect: The Taking of Logan Marr

When should a parent lose the right to raise a child? Frontline goes behind the scenes of one state's child welfare system.

Frontline: The Meth Epidemic

The Meth Epidemic

An investigation into how and why meth use spiraled out of control and became the fastest-growing drug abuse problem in America.

Also see the Oregonian report.

OFF BALANCE: Youth, Race & Crime in the News

Frontline: When Kids Get Life

"The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that allows children under 18 to be prosecuted as adults and sentanced to life without parole. Currently there are more than 2000 of these young offenders imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives. This is the story of five of them in the state of California."

At Project 1:17, this semester we have been looking at the Juvenile Justice system. I believe that as William Booth said that we should "go for souls and go for the worst" - our commitment to work with youth whom society has deemed, "the worst of the worst" should be the people who we care for and minister to. This Frontline Documentary, When Kids Get Life, captures this world. You can watch the show online and explore the webpage for a variety of additional resources.

I have become more and more fascinated with correctional ministry - I would love to see more and more Salvationists get involved in chaplaincy in these types of facilities.

George Scott Railton - The Wild Stallion

Find below a quote from Commissioner Frederick Booth-Tucker on the relationship of George Scott Railton to the William and Catherine Booth and the mission of The Salvation Army.

I find interesting parallels between the relationship of the "first Lieutenant" to the General... and how this can easily become a model to exemplify the relationship of youthworker to Corps Officer.

When combining the 'reckless zeal' and 'single-eyed devotion' of the young leader to the wisdom of a good Corps Officer who knows how to "curb without crushing" and "control without perverting a disposition" - I believe that impossible dreams for our broken communities can be realized.

I would rather face the challenge of directing the energy of wild stallions than spend time trying to motivate tame mules who refuse to move!

What do you think?

"Need we say that we are describing Mr. Railton as he was, rather than as he is? Mr. and Mrs. Booth recognized and appreciated this untamed genius... They admired his reckless zeal... his perfervid courage - his single-eyed devotion to his Master's cause. They would sooner mount a horse that would run away with them than one who would not go. And here was one of Nature's throughbreds, requiring neither whip nor spur... They believed they posessed the capacity to curb without crushing and to control without perverting a disposition so full of nobility, and whose very mistakes were only virtues magnified. And they were not disappointed.”

"There were awkward times... when the Army chariot was carried round awkward corners at a dangerous speed," that "would have left (the Army) a useless wreck by the roadside... But the 'iron hand in the velvet glove' which held the reins was there to avert the passing danger. The rashness of the daring saint was always more easily forgiven than the torpidity of the timid looker-on."

Commissioner Frederick Booth-Tucker The Life of Catherine Booth, p.28f.

Pop's Culture: A National Survey of Dad's Attitudes on Fathering

Findings from a national telephone survey of 701 American men selected to be representative of American fathers age 18 and older with at least one biological or adopted child (not a stepchild) under the age of 18.

Let's Get Married - PBS Frontline Documentary by Alex Kotlowitz

Marriage is in trouble. Over the past half-century the number of single-parent households has skyrocketed to one-third of all U.S. families. The traditional American family structure appears to be crumbling.

President Bush and a growing marriage movement think it's time to take action. They are promoting marriage -- especially among the poor. Get people married, the thinking goes, and poverty will be reduced. Stem the tide of divorce and we'll solve many of society's ills. But is it that simple? Should the government have an activist role in personal relationships? And does marriage, in fact, really matter?

In "Let's Get Married," author and FRONTLINE correspondent Alex Kotlowitz explores these questions. "During my reporting, I became convinced that marriage, this most private of institutions, has very public consequences," Kotlowitz says. "And yet we have such a tough time talking about it. Why is that? This was kind of a personal journey for me -- an effort, in part, to answer that question -- and to figure out a way to talk about marriage and its critical place in our social framework."

"Let's Get Married" examines the social, political, and economic forces that have converged to advance the modern marriage movement -- an amalgam of Christian activists, political conservatives, and intellectuals.

Making a Difference in the Lives of Youth: An Urgent Agenda

This is a presentation from the White House's Helping America's Youth program. This presentation, called Making a Difference in the Lives of Youth: An Urgent Agenda is by Larke Huang. It was presented on April 11, 2007 at the Regional Conference.

Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents

Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents presents the updated prevention principles, an overview of program planning, and critical first steps for those learning about prevention. Thus, this shortened edition can serve as an introduction to research-based prevention for those new to the field of drug abuse prevention. Selected resources and references are also provided.